2015 Nanoose Bay / French Creek

Fished FC yesterday for a couple hours and released one 55cm fish. Set prawn traps out deep but ended up with almost nothing. Will put in a better effort on Sunday.
 
Put in a better effort Sunday and kept 3 chinook releasing one just undersize. Prawning improved (after we mended a couple holes) and we took home 80-90. It seemed like the other boats were hooking a few fish as well. One of the fish was 16lbs which was a nice surprise. One spoon and one hootchie somewhere near bottom.
 
Took advantage of the calm yesterday & today today to go out to jig herring. Found nothing off Lantzville yesterday & today looked north from Gerald towards Mistaken. Took some time to find them but 30 minutes after slack found massive bait balls from surface to bottom off Dorcas Pt. If calm continues thru tomorrow as fcst will try again & if it goes as well as today, will have a supply of bait set in for the summer as well as a years supply of kippers & rollmops.
 
Rowswell....i may have to take the row boat off a Dorcas and check it out. Boat is in winter project mode. I live right by Nuttal Bay so Dorcas is right there. I'm hoping the herring come right in to the beach here as they have in years past. Usually happens every 2-3 years.
 
image.jpgimage.jpgHey Mike, you don't need a rowboat, give me a call anytime. Went to French Creek for a couple hours with Bushy today and he was great on the net. It was a fifteen pound beauty, on a green and white spoon on bottom. Saw five herring boats out there getting ready and very little bait. What a nice day to fish...........BRS
 
Wow, what a nice looking fish and a beauty day. I gotta stop letting this work thing get in the way of fishing :)
 
Roswell....here are a couple pics from March 2013 when the herring came into Nuttal Bay. Dorcas Point is in the background. Sealions chasing the herring right up onto the beach.
 

Attachments

  • 606.jpg
    606.jpg
    97.9 KB · Views: 541
  • 609.jpg
    609.jpg
    97.5 KB · Views: 543
Medium tide with low coefficient, fished low to high tide today. The odd small bait mark at first then some huge bait balls on the hump but no random marks. Caught a shark bringing up anchovy. Afew boats out but no sign of anyone landing any.
 
Fished the creek yesterday from 11am to 3pm. Huge bait balls ,with fish marked in them but they wanted nothing to do with any of our offerings. Fantastic day flat calm and sunny.
 
Tried the Creek again yesterday, Same result as Saturday. marked lots of bait and fish but no love. The gill netters where fishing not far from the harbour mouth. Lots of sea lion and bird action.
 
Fished Nanaimo yesterday around the bait balls with fish showing and got nothing, moved into 500ft of water with nothing showing on the sounder and landed three springs all at 200ft.
 
Fished Nanaimo yesterday around the bait balls with fish showing and got nothing, moved into 500ft of water with nothing showing on the sounder and landed three springs all at 200ft.
What time did the bite come on off Nanaimo Hot Reels? We fished through the bait balls just north of Neck Pt yesterday morning and managed to boat one keeper 190 feet down in 350 feet of water.
Hot Rods (20' Grady hard top)
 
A fish every hour no real bite time, all fish on one rod 200ft. I was with Bill von B. Stayed out until about 5pm jigging the herring. Out in my boat tomorrow the 17 camp with blue top. Will you be out? Kept this one released the othersbill von 009ed.jpg.
 
Went out from Nanoose to jig herring again y'day PM. Took a while to find any & had to travel North from Schooner Cove to French Creek for that. On the way I passed 7 commercial boats going South & had already seen many going off through the day. Seems from the DFO reports I've been getting the spawn run is coming to an end & there may be no / limited openings from now on. It also seems that more of the catch has been Gill Net with a more limited Seine catch & a lot of that may have been test sets (Not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly, this is based on catch reported vs quota for each)

That said, lots of sign that the spawn had completed / was underway from the Englishman River Estuary to French Creek. I tried off the Englishman Estuary, where I was marking schools offshore, but only got a few. I saw no bait and only limited bird activity & no Sea Lions around Dorcas Pt & north to Mistaken, so there can't have been much spawning there.

Moved north & found lots of signs of spawning from @ the Englishman estuary & active spawning just S of French Creek. 2 Gill netters were still working the area along with hundreds of sea lions & 1000s of birds. Caught a rubbermaid dish container load in 40 minutes before calling it a day. Interesting that all the fish caught were smaller than the ones caught off Dorcas point the week before. Many were only 10-12 Cm long (last weeks were all @ 22 Cm().

Today is rollmop & bait packaging day.
DSC06866.jpgDSC06871.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Prawn Traps Missing Friend set 2 strings yesterday on West side of Mistaken in 300' Had nice long ends, proper weights etc. 1 missing today. Name on Scotchsman "Poirier". Was fairly close to Mistaken inside 2 other strings. If anyone has seen this string let me know. thanks
 
It's no doubt there is a thief involed. I have lost four sets of traps in that area over the winter and I gave up. I know someone else who's traps were gone and he had four traps and two floats. If anyone hears anything please let me know, I would love to catch this guy..........BRS
 
I hate to think there is a thief out here but unless someone ran over the float it is highly unlikely it drifted off. P....ss off for sure. Friends wife not thrilled with new gear gone and no prawns.
 
Back
Top