2016 Summer Salmon Fishing Season Review

[Prairie Locked]

Since the summer fishing season is starting to wind down now as we move towards the fall, I thought it would be interesting to get an overall perspective of your individual experience(s) fishing from say early June until now. If you are willing and able, maybe provide a review of where you were, when you were fishing, what you were targeting and what you were catching and maybe even, what you found worked this year. Then provide an individual opinion if you felt it was below average, average, or above average. Or, put something together that you think would reflect your views.

I've been hearing quite the mixed bag of reviews and that overall, numbers were down significantly with some good production in a few locations. I'll leave it at that as I don't want to provide any bias.

 

[Prairie Locked]

Wow Prairie Locked, what a great idea for a thread! Lol

I'll keep this one short.

I only managed to fish June 27th - July 25th in our time in the Comox Valley. Fished primarily out of Bates Beach, out at the Kitty Coleman hump. Spent most of my time on the inside of the hump, usually by a good margin. I found for some reason there was a lot of bait, but no fish around the bait. Where I marked and caught fish, not marking bait.

Overall, I found productivity to be lower this year compared to previous years. Chinook and Pinks were down I'd say 60% and 90% respectively. The plus side is coho productivity was up I'd say 33%, especially hatchery marked fish. Sounds like the pinks were around but were out deep past the shipping lanes this year. I found the best numbers and size for springs was the first week and a half that we were there. The last decent spring I caught was July 6th at 18lb's. Prior to that, 10 lbs to low teenagers. Lots of just under the 63 cm mark but not a lot of shakers. Many days on the water getting skunked, which usually isn't the case.

I found that they were on average 30 feet off bottom in 160-200 fow with not much caught on bottom this year. Usually spoons and sometimes hootchies in past years seemed to be the hot ticket but this year it was plugs and hootchies. Blue/purple splatter back P-Line hootchie and glow tomic plug best producing.

From talking to local guys through the spring and summer, sounds like I'm not alone there and if anything, my numbers on average were better then most. Despite being a disappointing season overall, I can take some comfort that I seemed to do well comparatively.

 

[scott craven]

It was a tough year on the south coast for Springs.
We had some fish in April/May and then it shut off.
pretty crappy overall.
Hopefully next year will be better.

 

[advTHXance]

My season was outstanding January-April... May onward is another story, however. Really had to work for just about every fish I put on deck. A lot of early mornings, long days, long boat rides and long car rides. Lots of meat in my freezer though so I cant complain too much, and I still had fun out there.

Btw the fish are still coming, theyre just late. and offshore. In fact theyve decided to spawn at sea this year; they just never bothered to notify us.

 

[Joe]

lol they are late!

Overall season sucked. Fished about 15 times locally. Caught springs most times out but nothing Big, and no real numbers. I cant think of one day that was " on". Fished nootka end of july and had good weather and did well. Felt every lucky considering. Fished Hardy and it was also very good end of July.

 

[Aces]

Fishing out of Tofino was very good. We had our best July in 10 years for Chinooks as they held to the west of town for about 6 weeks into early August on some massive bait schools. The rest of August and early September they were more towards Long Beach.
Good sized Halibut were holding to the west as well.

 

[ericl]

Fished Hippa Island twice. Well below "normal" expectations. Fish were really full bodied with good oil content & fought extra-hard for their size. Westport off the WA coast only caught 50% of their Chinook quota. Bonneville dam counts show Spring, Summer, & Fall chinook counts to be above 10 year average but a little below last year. Sounds to me like at least for the Columbia, there are/were plenty of Chinook, just nowhere we were fishing. Looks like the northern Troll fleet under-caught their quota as well.

Here is a paste from DFO:

AREA F TROLL UPDATE

CHINOOK
The total validated catch of chinook from the June and July fishery is 124,921
pieces. The chinook fishery reopened on August 25 (FN0861) with a total season
TAC of 207,000 pieces. An additional 15,000 pieces were added to the
commercial Area F Troll TAC as the total season chinook catch in the Area 1-2
recreational fishery is forecasted to be approximately 15,000 pieces below the
preseason expected use of 56,000. Approximately 70 vessels participated in the
troll opening with an average CPUE of 38 chinook per vessel per day over the
first 4 days of the fishery. Estimated catch of chinook from August 25 - 29 is
11,800 pieces.

Stock proportions of troll catch from DNA samples are as follows:

Sample #1
- from 351 fish (23 vessel landings) caught between June 21st and June 25th
- 45.7% Upper Columbia Summer/fall, 20.6% North & Central Oregon, 19.5% South
Thompson, 7.0% Snake River, 1.4% WCVI, 1.4% Skeena and 0.0% Nass

Sample #2
- from 466 fish (49 vessel landings) caught between June 25th and July 9th
- 37.1% Upper Columbia Summer/fall, 23.5% North & Central Oregon, 19.0% South
Thompson, 6.3% Coastal Washington, 1.1% WCVI, 0.7% Skeena and 0.0% Nass

Sample #3
- from 176 fish (23 vessel landings) caught between July 6th and 15th
- 32.0% South Thompson, 18.1% Upper Columbia Summer/Fall, 13.0% North & Central
Oregon, 7.1% Coastal Washington, 4.9% WCVI, 2.5% Skeena and 0.0% Nass

Sample #4
- from 694 fish (33 vessel landings) caught between July 10th and August 1st
- 31.4% Upper Columbia Summer/Fall, 23.6% South Thompson, 9.7% North & Central
Oregon, 9.0% Coastal Washington, 3.5% WCVI, 0.9% Skeena and 0.2% Nass

The total number of WCVI chinook caught in the troll fishery between June 21st
and August 1st was 2,636.

 

[terrin]

It looks like the Alaska fishery cleaned out the WCVI and Coastal Washington fish. There needs to be some focus on addressing this otherwise the resident orca's will die out. Don't hear much about the baby boom either, I wonder how they are making out?

 

[Ringo]

I had good success from late January - early May fishing for Chinooks in the Vancouver harbor area but then from June - September it was a completely different story. Had 18 outings during the summer and fished the usual spots with below average catch rate. Most outings, I had to work really hard and try different techniques and gear. I had a week in Browns Bay area in mid August and had a few large fish to the boat. On the plus side, we had a good number of Chinook jacks and juvenile fish this summer along with the abundance of bait fish in most areas.
The Fraser Chinook run this year is definitely no where close to what we got last year. I also fished the west van line for Cap cohos in August-September with only a few fish to the boat. Until a few years ago,there used to be coho jumping everywhere in the west van area from mid August until late September but that has definitely changed for the last couple of years or so. Overall, I'm looking at this trend and am finding it hard to justify more investment in larger boats and gear to fish in the straight of G. As others said, we have to drive longer and spend more time and $$ for longer boat rides to get to productive(ish) spots. Maybe I should be looking at the bright side of this (like the last year's Fraser Chinook run) but then again my empty freezer gives me a different look.

 

[The Jackel]

Renfrew was slower than usual, has to work harder for your fish and the seals seemed to enjoy them while you had them hooked. I think FishT caught all the fish that were supposed to come our way

 

[brutus]

Renfrew was slower than usual, has to work harder for your fish and the seals seemed to enjoy them while you had them hooked. I think FishT caught all the fish that were supposed to come our way

it was onFIREEEEEEEE,one day i seen 10 plus fish come out of east point lmfao

 

[TheBigGuy]

I live in Vancouver. The fishing has been trying here for sure this season. The one bright spot was that the Coho numbers and size was much better than last year. The spring fishing this summer for Fraser River fish has been nowhere near what it was last season, and with no Pinks or Sockeye it has meant a lot of trolling hours per fish compared to other years.

I read all the area reports from Vancouver Island very carefully all summer trying to decide if it was even worth a trip over to the Island. Most areas on the Island weren't sounding very good. The one area that sounded at least promising was Barkley Sound. So, I went to the Sound the week before Latour Day. Best decision I've made all year. The fishing was very good and there weren't a lot of boats at most locations. Never even had to resort to bait, hoochies were catching the springs with little time or effort involved. Probably overall some of the easiest fishing I've had in many years fishing the sound. Sure there wasn't the size of fish there were in the old days, but the ease of fishing made up for it. The only real downside to the trip was the weather kept me from fishing for Hali offshore. Overall I was very pleasantly surprised with the fishing inside the Sound, and glad I made the decision to go there instead of Port Renfrew or other spots I like on the Island.

Guys who live on the Island have no idea how lucky they are to fish there. Even this year when the fishing was tough by all accounts from most locations on the Island, the fishing was still far better than the fishing around Vancouver this season.

I'm hoping the run of fall white springs show up in good numbers to offset the low numbers of Fraser reds this year. It would be nice to finish the season off on a high note.

 

[cohochinook]

It wasn't a stellar year, but I did have some very good fishing. Locally the fishing for me in April to mid-June was very productive fishing off Bowen, Howe Sound and up by Secret Cove. Lots of bait around, especially anchovies. I found you had to try different tricks with the change in feed. Didn't fish locally in July until late August, but did 2 trips to the Island. Had fantastic fishing off Esperenza in early July and in early August off Tofino. Been out 3 times in last 3 weeks off the Fraser. Had 1 day in double digits and 2 days of getting into 4 to 5 Chinook. I would rate it a 7.5 out of 10 year.

 

[terrin]

Apparently they came up with the Alaska numbers for 2016 based on 2915 returns. Could not find any info on how many over or under they were on their 350,000 chinooks. It would be interesting to see the breakdown on origin for their catch.http://www.alaskafishradio.com/2016-southeast-ak-chinook-salmon-quota-and-allocations/

 

[terrin]

By comparison in 2013 Alaska was given 175,000 chinooks. http://www.alaskafishradio.com/southeast-alaska-2013-chinook-salmon-quota-way-down/

 

[spring fever]

Started fishing WCVI may 1 at Off-shore Nootka- exemplary ground fish-really limited quite quickly and tried for salmon for 2 days- Nada. I wasn't really that concerned as it was early although I have done well on those dates before. Nootka followed a pattern for me-good to excellent bottom fish but a struggle for salmon. I didn't like the brown water so early off Nootka and there was no consistency to the fish. If you had fish located the night before-they were gone in the morning. Nothing showed at the monument, Wash or dollys by the usual time frame-fish patterns were very different this year. Getting off-shore guaranteed nothing-some days good others-Nada. Inside-boats were up and fish for most people were down.Granted there was the odd guy who did well but quite often you would find he had been there for 6 days and was pleased he'd limited. Had enough of Nootka and went to Winter Harbour-again excellent Hali' lings etc. Springs were scarce-if you hit it right you were ok-if not you had to grind it out. I have a bit of an inside track in that I usually Know where to start because of guide contacts. They were pushing bottom fish because of lack of Springs. So overall I made 12 WCVI multi-day trips from Winter Harbour, Esperanza, Nootka and Bam town plus local trips out at Kitty and Campbell river and in terms of other years I would rate it as one of the worst I have seen as far as salmon goes and one of the best for Ground fish. There were pockets of fish and some good days for sure but you could count on nothing. I am relieved by the Nootka (hatchery) returns and the decent fishing off Ukie but the Winter Harbour returns have me seriously concerned.

 

[happy hooker]

Hardy 8 days early July- fishing good, not crazy good. Coho were big and plentiful, springs were harder to find but we did ok to 18lbs.Did great on Lings/ Snapper, got some chicken halis, nothing big. Port Renfrew 8 days mid July- beach fishing was non existent, went to Swiftsure everyday. Limited or close to it on springs every day( 4 guys in boat). Not a lot of Coho. Springs were very plentiful but small, 10-15 lbs. Again got halis but nothing big, chickens. Bamfield last week of August- Springs were good just about limits to 23, cohos were very plentiful and big, 10-15 lbs. Did very well on Lings, no Halis though, we didn't go far enough I guess. Overall for my boat it was an above average year for quantity, size was below average for springs. Oh I almost forgot, Sockeye fishing on fire for 3lbers in Osoyoos Lake in August lol, my home waters......nothing like cold beer and good tunes in 35 degrees in the boat reeling in salmon on the lake with your buds, better than nothing for us interior guys.

 

[profisher]

Springs were well below average in numbers for the most part with a bit of an upturn the last part of August. Coho is a different story they have started to run in better numbers earlier than normal and most I'm seeing are much larger than most years. My largest last year just nudged at 10 pounds...have already released many in the 12-13 pound size and kept a 15 pound hatch. Hopefully Coho keep coming and the fall fishery closes the season on a positive note.

 

[tubber]

Ukee July 6 Got a 28lb white at Lighthouse Bk, lost another decent one. solo
July 7 smalls and a coho too windy. solo
July 8 too windy went jigging for whatevers. solo
Alberni July 10-11 sockeye in PA- we sucked and may not ever go back. 3 guys
Ukee July 23, 24 easy limits on springs at Hyson with a few released. trolled up a decent hali. solo
July 26 easy limits on springs and a few coho, with quite a few of each released. 2 guys
Ukee August 13 went to SWC big swell and wind awful fishing should have went to Wya. 3 guys
August 14 went to Wya, but so did everyone else. Got some but not a boat limit. 3 guys
Ukee August 20 Awesome fishing for springs at Swale. solo
August 21 Awesome fishing for springs and coho at Swale. solo
August 22 Awesome fishing for springs right on the bottom at SWC, but I was trolling for hali. solo
Awesome fishing for springs and coho at Hyson, all released, no hali. solo
August 23 Awesome fishing for springs and coho at Swale, all released. solo
All in all a pretty good year with one terrible day and three pretty bad days out of 14.
Did not go to Big Bank this year.

 

[Sculpin]

We have some salmon in the freezer from earlier in the year. We didn't really focus on them again this year.

I hope the rivers get some good numbers.

It was a different year for sure. It isn't over yet either .

I heard today some good news from a fellow at the PBS. He said a lot of that published funding for DFO earlier this year is going towards hatcheries. I have seen a few on the project sheets and I think it is a start to something good .