2017 Nanaimo Reports

Sounds like really good fishing guys! I am headed out tomorrow myself and just curious as to whether the morning bite or the afternoon/evening bite is better? For me it is more dependent on wind as I am in a 16 ft centre console. Good luck out there guys!
 
Fished in tight to the fingers from about 2 - 4:30 this afternoon. Got a couple around 10 lbs and a couple unders. All fish were released unharmed and caught Rollin chovies at 137 on the rigger in 190-300 feet of water. Irish cream spoon and AP spoon never even got a sniff.

Heading out tomorrow at 5 am to catch the sunrise and hopefully some lings.
 
Morn was dead for us picked up limit on the minor this afternoon, irishcream at 130' 600' of water. Nothing over 12lbs
 
Left the docks at just after 5 am this morning in search of a couple lings. missed a couple big hits first thing in the morning and then we put these two nice ones in the boat. We were trolling for salmon by just after 7 am and it was slow... We managed 4 hits in 4 hours of trolling and landed two small guys. The algae was horrible out by the fingers and off neck point. My buddy ended up braking a rod at the tip by reeling to hard with a big ball of algae on the top guide and we also lost a down rigger ball. It hit the bottom one time and the snubber broke right in the middle ( WTF i have seen those snubbers stretch to over double there size). Tuff day of salmon fishing!

Any body from the forum fishing in the serauxmen derby next weekend?


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Me with a nice ling.
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Damn sounds like the algae is back in a big way then cause it was clearing up last week, especially closer in towards neck. Ive been hearing the morning bite has been very slow but the afternoon tide change has been way better.
 
That algae has been crazy bad! We did manage 5 Friday night between 6:30-8pm but scunked sat and 1 Sunday. Ended up losing some gear after getting tangled in a prawn trap that had a small foam float that I couldn't see until I was on it, but all in all a pretty good weekend, hopefully we get some flat water and sunshine for the derby next weekend!
 
The algae/plankton was horrific Sunday
Basically unfishable at Fingers.
Took 2 hours at the dock to cleanup and re- tie all the gear and DR cables.
Total mess
Think I'll wait a week and hopefully it dissipates.
 
It was a very slow day for fishing on Monday morning. I couldn't stand the algae at 5 fingers, so I tried Entrance Island. Maybe a little better. Landed 4 keeper springs, but only kept one. Bonus was catching the rock cod, who was eaten by the sea wolf and wouldn't let go....Oh well his loss my gain! The spring weighed in at 15lbs, and the ling was 36" long, (I didn't weigh him)
It seemed like I kept one rod fishing and the other was being cleaned, then repeat back and forth. 2017-05-22 07.59.38.jpg
 
Left the docks at just after 5 am this morning in search of a couple lings. missed a couple big hits first thing in the morning and then we put these two nice ones in the boat. We were trolling for salmon by just after 7 am and it was slow... We managed 4 hits in 4 hours of trolling and landed two small guys. The algae was horrible out by the fingers and off neck point. My buddy ended up braking a rod at the tip by reeling to hard with a big ball of algae on the top guide and we also lost a down rigger ball. It hit the bottom one time and the snubber broke right in the middle ( WTF i have seen those snubbers stretch to over double there size). Tuff day of salmon fishing!

Any body from the forum fishing in the serauxmen derby next weekend?


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Me with a nice ling.
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We will be running over from vancouver to fish that derby. Did it last year it was well done. Gonna stay tge weekend at new Castle island. Saw you at entrance on Sunday, I was the green hulled trophy
 
Any reports?

Last I was out was on Monday, we ran to Winchelsea to escape the algae and found clean water, but not much activity. Released a barely legal and boxed a 12 pounder in an entire tide with no other hits.

Any word on the algae? It was so bad around Fingers and Thrasher last Friday I quit fishing both locations.

Looking forward to the derby this weekend
 
Beauty night last night despite not finding a salmon of any description. Got our lings and watched some whales circle entrance while the sea lions complained.
 
IMG_6887.JPG Day 2 of the Seraixmen fishing derby.

I went down to see how it was going as I'm working today and they said about 70 salmon were brought in yesterday.

1st 24.2
2nd 18.04
3rd 17.60

Today not many on the scale yet with the biggest so far 11.80
 
Ventured out past the finger this morning for a quick fish with the kids from 8-1030 and not a sniff! All the usual gear and depths. Saw one small one boated near us, and the 4 guys I talked to at the ramp had zip as well...

Lots of chatter about "yesterday was way better"

Oh well, still a beauty day out there with the kids.
 
Heres my break down of the derby weekend. Launched the boat Friday night at 8:30pm and moored up at new castle for the night. 4:40 am we swung by the derby tent for our swag and shirts. We fished the fingers for the first 1.5 hours and never even got a bite so we headed out to entrance island nothing again( on the way to entrance I smoked a log going 27 knots and luckily there was no damage to the boat as we just jumped right over it). Moved down to the water fall halfway down gabriola notta. Made the run to thrasher around noon, fished for 2 more hours nothing( we did manage to loose a cannon ball and snubber on a prawn trap rope). Heard some guys got some down by neck point so made the run back to nanaimo managed to land 4 fish but they were all unders. We dropped a buddy off at the dock around 5:30 and headed back out to see if we could get a night bite but once again nothing. Back to new castle to Moore up for the night.

Sunday morning we were back at it and we started at neck point we had 12 fish on between 5:30 am and 7 am we landed one 7 lbs keeper and lost 3 one of which broke a rod tip off and teaser head when it wrapped itself around a down rigger ball ( that's 2 broken rods, 2 cannon ball and 2 snubbers in 2 weekends, fishing is expensive)... After 7 am it shut off like a light switch. We made a run down to winchelsy island and found nothing there either. We didn't bother taking our one keeper to the weigh in, but instead spent the afternoon swimming and floating around down by Lantzville.

It was a great weekend to be out on the water and we couldn't have asked for better weather! Thanks again to the guys from serauxmen for putting this derby on. And the weekend wasn't a total right off as we did manage a couple lings and one of them was this beast!

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