2016 Nanaimo Reports

Out tonite off the fingers. Got one just legal on a new sandlance spoon. 800 feet of water. 99' on the rigger.
 
Spent Friday morning off the Fingers - starvation until I went out really deep. Got two about 10 lbs in 1000 ft around low water. Green hoochie and small green Tomi spoon. Large herring in them. Great weather.
 
a really unbelievable amount of shakers out there today they were everywhere: fingers, spoil ground neck point. Fished spoons, 80-185 ft
 
Was out this morning, mostly in 1000ft and had 5-6 undersize, one of which was 61cm and then got blown off the water, might head back out tonight if it calms down. Spoon on one side, green splatter back hoochi on the other. Hoochie got all the action.
 
was out this morning few small springs 5-7 lbs got a 22lb and lost another that looked mid to high teens. Had to weed through lots of hake though.
 
Where you fishing at? Any tips if im only hittin undersize?
was about 3 miles off the fingers. Last two trips out all we got were shakers. The two good fish we had on yesterday were within 10 minutes of each other so probably just hit a small school out there.
 
With the Fraser run predicted to be not that good this year I wonder how that's going to affect Nanaimo's fishery?

Are you suggesting the very good Chinook fishing Nanaimo has experienced every mid April through early May are primarily Fraser River fish?
 
Not suggesting anything, I don't have enough knowledge about the runs that travel on the east coast to make that presumption.
 
Hey AF, the Fraser runs have been weak for more than a few years.
A good proportion of these inside fish are coming out of Puget Sound due to their aggressive black mouth hatchery program.

God bless America.
 
Are you suggesting the very good Chinook fishing Nanaimo has experienced every mid April through early May are primarily Fraser River fish?
Sort of, about 25% of the fish caught in Area 17 are Harrison/Chilliwack fish. The other issue this season is the warm blob off the west coast broke up over the winter. There is a lot colder water along the west coast this season which looks to be encouraging the fish to run down the west side rather than the east side. I the past 4 or 5 years the water conditions encouraged a lot of fish that would normally run down the west coast to slide down the inside. I'm guessing this colder water is drawing fish down the west side. Hope I'm wrong.
 
Braved the wind today and managed 1 keeper and 1 shaker before we got sick of being blown around.
 
How have guys been doing prawning lately? Haven't had a chance to through the gear yet and wondering if it's worth dragging it out.
 
Are you suggesting the very good Chinook fishing Nanaimo has experienced every mid April through early May are primarily Fraser River fish?

Pretty obvious where you are going with this... Myself and a number of other anglers have done scale samples and head returns for this fishery. As searun said there is a huge component of "lower" Fraser River fish.

Interestingly today we bonked 6 and all were red hatchery fish. A big difference from the whites seen at this time last year.
 
I always thought the early April / May fish that we get off Nanaimo every year were mostly American fish. But all the Hatchery heads I have returned from that run have came back no pin found.
 
A lot of fish will not have CWT's, most of the one's I turned in last season did not have tags. I've seen the same in the data from Area 17, there were only 11 of 436 fish DNA sampled with CWT's. And to be fair, only 96 of the 436 fish had a clip with 11 of those having CWT, which is 11.5% with CWT tags.

On a side note I pulled some data rather than rely on my poor memory quoting 25% of the Area 17 fish coming from the Harrison/Chilliwack. So to be more precise, 146 of the 436 were Harrison/Chilliwack fish. If my math is correct those Harrison/Chilliwack fish represents 33.5% of the Area 17 catch, or did in 2014 (year I have data for)....so, in my mind this run of fish represents a fairly significant contribution to the local fishery. This being a down year for these rivers according to the forecast could mean little less robust fishing than last year.

Hope that helps frame it better.
 
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Out all afternoon when the wind died down around 1ish.. No fish on the usual tack in 800-900ft from fingers to humps below spoil ground.. Decided to try the 1000 ft mark about 4-5 miles off the fingers, landed 4 just undersized, lost a 6-8lb'er on the surface and lost another that we will never know! Pretty slow altogether. 130ft kitchen sink got all the looks. 145 ft homeland caught about 25 pacific cod, won't run that again!
 
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