Herring spawn reports?

SV,

I think it was a pretty decent run this year. It started fairly early, late January/early February, and some of the regulars were still catching some off the Admirals bridge last week. I don't have a boat (don't need bait) so I only went down a few times to fish for enough for a fresh meal, but checked it out regularly and a lot of people seemed to be taking quite a few given that the run is barely recovering. I was shocked when I heard several people had 400 or 500 in their freezers and were still catching them. About three weeks ago one guy told me he already had 450 in his freezer for halibut fishing (how many herring do you need to catch six halibut?) and now was just catching them for fertilizer for his garden -- he was still catching them last Tuesday. I really don't understand why anyone would feel the need to do that, given the still-fragile state of the run.

Anyway, the run has been tailing off the last few weeks and is probably pretty much done now.

Many of the fish were on the small size -- five or six inches -- but there were a few waves of larger herring in the 10 inch to 12 inch range.

There was someone down there doing creel counts fairly regularly, so maybe there will be an estimate published at some point.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if they closed the fishery for a couple of years to see if the run will really rebound.

That is extremely positive news .
 
nice to hear the gorge actually get a decent run - but ya maybe they should just shut it down and let them rebuild.


Andrew, any sign of a run this year in the inlet? I haven't heard anything....

I have not had any confirmed reports.....but DFO has somehow estimated that there is 300t staging there at the moment...

I'll be out there friday to try and finds some (and some prawns).
 
I have not had any confirmed reports.....but DFO has somehow estimated that there is 300t staging there at the moment...

I'll be out there friday to try and finds some (and some prawns).


wow - well I sure hope they are even half right. 300 tons spawning would be a major shot in the arm for the inlet.
 
I truly believe the only people that can stop the carnage are the natives. Hopefully they can do the same on the inside.
 
Dave S, a buddy and I, were out in Saanich Inlet yesterday looking for herring. Although we didn't find any herring, the wildlife has shown up. There was a decent amount of sea lions, porpoise and birds. A guy at the launch said that last weekend there was herring pushed right up to shore in Deep Cove by sea lions....not sure if it was a spawn though.

The highlight of the day was definitely seeing a pod of 15-20 orca casually making their way in the inlet and kept on heading right up towards Gold Stream. We saw at least one calve in tow and were guessing that it was Jpod. Pretty awesome to see them coming in the inlet and hopefully it is a sign of the herring.

Oh yeah, we got a few prawns while at it. Currently sitting in Vancouver enroute Bella Bella to check out the herring spawn in the Great Bear Rainforest. Stoked!

IMG_4561.jpg
 
Well, I ended up having a pretty great birthday and 5 day trip up to Bella Bella to get dragged around by Ian McAllister of Pacificwild.org. It was pretty insane long days and nights of capturing and documenting the spawn in film and video. Before sunrise to after sunset and with the full moon on the 4th there was night time moon shots.

It was certainly a cool time to be up there with the recent victory by the Heiltsuk Nation to halt the gillnet fishery. There was a very pleasant and positive feeling around town when we arrived and that feeling was there on the spawning grounds where the Heiltsuk were harvesting roe on kelp and hemlock. It was quite an experience to witness harvesting of the roe in such a peaceful way with herring literally boiling beneath the boat doing the harvesting. See video below. In most commercial roe harvesting the only boiling is the fish pulled tight in a giant seine net. Humbling to witness.

The spot we chose to spend our time was great and the spawn in that area was good but that was not the case most places on the coast with a lot of traditional spawning grounds going unspawned. The wildlife showed up and the weather was spectacular for 5 days making for great filming conditions with sea lions, eagles, wolves and thousands of birds. Unfortunately I don't have all of the footage back with me, but here are a couple of bits. I will post up some more video and pics when I can. I also met up with a University of Washington scientist and helped gather DNA samples for mapping the genetic diversity of the coast.

All in all I couldn't have imagined a 35th birthday better.

[EyHA2sWofRc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyHA2sWofRc&feature=youtu.be
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Looks like an epic trip! I followed Pacific Wild's coverage and it was impressive. A lot of talented people involved in displaying the region and the threats against it.
 
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