Cowichan River

We can thank Honey Bee and the ministry for there creel survey in 2005-06 when alot of us were reporting that we weren't retaining hatchery steelhead. They were doing fly overs with helicopters to see were guys were fishing and waiting at the pull outs for reports. Myself and a few others on this site have been saying this for years that removing enhancement from the Cowichan was a big mistake. Like Winepart said the Salmon returns have been good and its not too late to bring back the steelhead numbers with a little help.
 
eroyd said:
I think my silex was on a 1262 (fenwick) brown blank, hand built by a good friend. Great glass rods for center pins. That's where I first learned to swing it. Now after 30 years, hundreds of fish, branches, snags it sits retired with all it's scars and fatigue marks.

Last year kind of sucked but 2018 was pretty "good" given todays standards. I fly fished only and average a fish an outing. I think back in the 80's, a couple of fish a day shore fishing was pretty normal. I think there's still hope. The fish can do it if we let them.
Click to expand...
I'v got a 10'6" 1262 fenwick as well hand tied by the guy that tied rods for Fred's, tied for a level wind with a trigger fuji grip. What a great Coho rod, but I used it lot's on the Vedder for Ironheads. Fenwick made two 10'6" blanks, the 1262 and the 1264, 1264 was a faster action. Mine was graphite, Sage and Fenwick were some of the first graphite blanks that you could buy, still a great rod, love it on smaller water.
 
Yes, the 2005-2006 creel survey was flawed.
I was running a drift boat on the Cowichan at that time. The only time I ever got checked for creel results was when we were putting the boat in at Stoltz. I hit a lot of Steel Head that year and my journal advises that I kept 10 hatchery fish and released 8 Hatchery Fish. The rest were all wild and got released. That info never made it to the survey.
I knew a lot of other guys who were running boats and very few ever got checked. The problem was that they rarely showed up at the pull outs and hence had no realistic idea of what was being caught.
At that time Hooten Was in charge of the ministry and was near retirement. Mr. Hooten was not a fan of hatcheries.
 
Ripperoflips said:
I'v got a 10'6" 1262 fenwick as well hand tied by the guy that tied rods for Fred's, tied for a level wind with a trigger fuji grip. What a great Coho rod, but I used it lot's on the Vedder for Ironheads. Fenwick made two 10'6" blanks, the 1262 and the 1264, 1264 was a faster action. Mine was graphite, Sage and Fenwick were some of the first graphite blanks that you could buy, still a great rod, love it on smaller water.
Click to expand...

I'm still fishing my Fenwich graphite 1264 and the next model up was a 1326 ..still my favorite rods for my silex's :) of course old school cork floats, split shot :)
 
Last edited:
Hatchery steelhead programs are definetly an answer however taking wilds from declining populations is not something we should be helping. We should be taking hatchery fish from hatchery steelhead. Washington takes their brood from hatchery fish on some of their rivers. Obviously that is not an option for the Cowie anymore. We have a couple rivers in the LM where certain timing of the runs has almost been wiped because of brood stocking. Vedder early run steelhead is in big trouble after decades of taking the early upper river fish. Our late season runs seems to be doing ok as the brood is done by the time they show up. On another system we take 30 wilds from a run that is completely collapsed in terms of wild fish. Our stocks seem to be in pretty big trouble, there is a huge component of ocean conditions that we can’t help right now. But why not act on the things we can change.

Would also be nice to see some $ for habitat restoration....but I am dreaming
 
Last edited:
The hatchery program as it was being run was a disaster in terms of returning %. That being said, the options were, scrap the program or try and make it better. The govt took the easy way out and scrapped it. Washington state, the stamp and vedder are all heavily invested in hatchery programs. All are having historically low returns this year. It is not as simple as installing a hatchery program to fix our steelhead problems, I wish it was.
 
The Cowichan River Steel Head enhancement program had some problems. They had historic water supply problems with the Hatchery. The drew water of a local aquifer that had sediment problems in high water conditions and high metal counts in low water times, such as summer drought times. Ironically, the brood facility for Marine Harvest drew their water from the same aquifer and had an egg hatch rate of 97% and a fry survival rate of 98%. The difference was that they had an incredibly sophisticated filtration system. This same type of system is apparently in use at the DFO hatchery on the Quinsam River.
Additionally they took their brood stock over a short period in the middle of the run which impacted stock diversity. The bulk of their fry were released in the mid river and homed on that area to reproduce.
As a result, there were years where returning hatchery fish were somewhat stunted and weak due to the impact of bad water in the rearing tanks. They tended to enter the river over a short window of time and moved straight up to the mid river.
I don't blame the hatchery staff for this situation. I feel that DFO did not provide adequate oversight to the hatchery. Without getting into the usual Hatchery/Wild argument, hatchery practices have come a long way in the last decade and a half. A lot of these issues are easily mitigated.
The Cowichan river stocks face more problems now than they did in the nineties and early two thousands. Summer flow rates are reduced as a result of longer hotter summers and development on the river has created problems with land owners drawing off river waters to water flower and vegetable gardens during spring and summer.
We end up with low warm water every summer that impacts on the survival of fry , insect life and invertebrates. Walk the clay banks area in the summer time and you won't see birds taking chironomids but you will see lots of dead crayfish.
There are a lot of problems facing the river, but they aren't insolvable .
My big concern is the lack of public awareness of the issues and the lack of political will to change bad decisions. It would be a tragedy to see a Heritage River die due to ignorance and polotics.
 
I think you pretty much nailed the water quality issue. This also impacted all the other rivers whose brood stock were raised on the inferior water supply. That was what I meant about having the option to either fix the problem or scrap it. Unfortunately the govt is spending as little as possible on all fish these days so I think the chances of getting hatchery augmentation going again on the cowie is slim to none. About the only thing that can be done is do a better job of protecting the fish and habitat that we have left. Hopefully the proposed work on the weir system will improve the summer flow problems.
 
Pretty **** poor video, as soon I was see anybody involved or associated with the David Suzuki foundation they lose all credibility.

As for the **** Boxing Day numbers for the “hero derby” there is a bunch of factors. Most of our brood over the last 20 years or more has come from the early stock in the upper river. Most years we were not allowed to brood up top past mid February as we had already taken most of the brood. Taking away the early wild component of the run year after year to replace it with hatchery fish that get killed and people wonder why it’s dead lol. When you are down to maybe 60 early stock wilds and you take half that it’s not hard to figure out where these fish went.

Our ways have to change with the **** ocean conditions. The factors that we can help with we should be doing.
- no lifting wild fish out of the water
- Take brood from hatchery fish. Set up tubes in the lower river meat holes for hatchery fish where people can get their picture taken or a prize for donating the hatchery fish for brood. I am sure that Fred’s would fully back this. The Vedder river steelhead fishing seems to be more about getting your face on multimedia with a steelhead rather than being out fishing..lol.Have a few of the brood guys fish limit and around the hatchery and tube the hatchery fish that are up there. It would be easy to get the 80 hatchery fish if we did these things.
- More closures on rivers to protect upper river spawning fish rather than having the wilds get continually beat on by anglers. On the hatchery rivers have the brood guys fish these areas to clean out the hatchery fish so no interspawning happens. The Vedder as well as a handful of other rivers should have closures in certain areas after March 1 to protect spawning steelhead.

Lastly we need to get more money for habitat restoration...guess I am dreaming again.
 
ChinookExerciser said:
This is the best idea I have seen posted on here and facebook.
Click to expand...
Historically, the Province has, correctly, been against using hatchery fish as brood stock on the Vedder, but as whitebuck states, the early returning fish to this system, the ones used for brood, are declining rapidly. Myself and a friend have counted spawners in the upper river for the past 9 years; the decline in numbers in 2 cycles is shocking. I believe the counts this spring will be the lowest yet.

Time to re think the hatchery procedures on this system.
 
Dave said:
Historically, the Province has, correctly, been against using hatchery fish as brood stock on the Vedder, but as whitebuck states, the early returning fish to this system, the ones used for brood, are declining rapidly. Myself and a friend have counted spawners in the upper river for the past 9 years; the decline in numbers in 2 cycles is shocking. I believe the counts this spring will be the lowest yet.

Time to re think the hatchery procedures on this system.
Click to expand...

That is the ideal method when ocean conditions are good and the stock is replacing itself or increasing. What happens in a declining population when the brood is not replacing itself? 1000 spawn, 4 years later 750 return 4 years later 500 return. When you are taking X number of wilds from this equation you cause the decline to happen faster and the hatchery is not providing any advantages, expect maybe for the fishermen but certainly not for the wild population.

The alternative is to take from the hatchery population, Now I understand that there has been a bunch of studies that show reduced fitness and interbreed concerns. Can these be mitigated on the C/V system and have these been an issue for the Coho wild stocks on the C/V system?

The alternative in a declining population is to just shut down the fishery correct and stop the removal of wilds?
 
There does seem to be separation of early run wild and hatchery fish; on our counts we are often close enough to see adipose fins and we have never seen an unclipped spawner. Good question re coho .. I suspect there has been a lot of interbreeding between wild and hatchery coho on the Chilliwack, but every year I see unclipped spawning coho doing just what wild salmon do anywhere else. The inbreeding is no doubt there, but the fish don't know it.

Yeah, there really is only one option for this river that is so close and accessible to so many ... using hatchery stock but using techniques and procedures that will do the least harm to the remaining few wild fish. I think that could be done.
 
Hatchery steelhead have been spawning with wilds for years. Every season I will get atleast a handful of hatchery kelts . There is hatchery steelhead that go all the way up to the lake.

Same with the hatchery coho. Lots spawn past the hatchery with wilds. We take our hatchery coho from hatchery brood.

No reason whatsoever why we can't do this for steelhead.
 
Last edited:
The Cowichan had a nice balance of hatchery fish. From my recollections, maybe 1 fish in 8/10 was a hatchery. When I fished the Somass/Stamp in the early winter, all fish were hatchery. Those Stamp fish were duds as far as fighting quality went.
From what I've been told by a couple of old timers (now passed), steelhead where not "common" back in the day. One still had to work for them. 10 fish days were not the norm 50 yeas ago, as they weren't for shore anglers in the 80's. Off coarse if you had a drift boat, 10 fish for the boat was pretty normal.
What I do see, and find kind of disgusting, is anglers casting at steelhead that are clearly on their redds late March and into April. Including guided people! That late in the season I would have no problem with some regulation protecting spawning fish in the upper Cowichan.
 
I agree completely.
I have watched too many fishers chasing spawning pairs. I think it shouldn't just be restricted to the upper river as I've seen spawners in all areas of the river. But it would probably come down to either a total closure or ramped up enforcement,which hasn't happened for 20 years
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Derby
Subject: Cowichan River closure- a portion of the river
Replies
37
Views
5K
Fins -n- Skins
F
the force
Freezer space rental in Nanaimo?
Replies
2
Views
398
the force
the force
Sharphooks
DEAN RIVER EXPEDITION
Replies
7
Views
1K
Sharphooks
Sharphooks
IronNoggin
Petition to the House of Commons
Replies
22
Views
1K
G Gordon
G Gordon
H
Northeast Island Rivers
Replies
2
Views
855
onefish
O
Back
Top