2019 Nanaimo Reports

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Fished five finger all morning from 7-noon landed 8, 7 springs biggest in the low teens 1 wild coho. Lost around 7 before they got to the boat. Losts of action out there! Most of them on spoons 50-70 feet.
 
Nice fish!
Thanks Unreel for keeping us entertained and up to date this spring. I am sure many others, just like myself, were following the treads but had not much to add.
In a few days, this should change!
My boat and all my tackles are ready for Monday. The winds should die down by mid-day so it is looking good so far!
Thanks, its been a very tough year for us charter guys and all the recreational fishing community. Its seriously depressing seeing how few boats are out there on beautiful calm days. Even the weekends the boat launch isnt even close to full. To boot its the best fishing ive ever seen in the area :rolleyes: What boat are you in? I'll be out all day tomorrow for 2 trips, feel free to call on the radio ch 6 Unreel, winds look great.:)
 
Thanks, its been a very tough year for us charter guys and all the recreational fishing community. Its seriously depressing seeing how few boats are out there on beautiful calm days. Even the weekends the boat launch isnt even close to full. To boot its the best fishing ive ever seen in the area :rolleyes: What boat are you in? I'll be out all day tomorrow for 2 trips, feel free to call on the radio ch 6 Unreel, winds look great.:)
Yep I am planning to be fishing tomorrow. I am finalizing my crew.
Charters must be booked solid from now on. I hope you will recover some of the lost business.
See you out there.
 
Hope you are all getting out there now it is open. I just wanted to give a bump to the Chinook and Coho diet monitoring we are doing out of UVic. For folks fishing Nanaimo you can drop off your stomachs at Harbour Chandler... there is a tote in the left hand bait freezer. The store should have bags and data cards but we can also mail supplies. Key info to record is species, date, length, catch location, and hatchery/wild. In the absence of our fancy waterproof datacards pencil on scrap paper is fine. Include your email address and each stomach is one entry in a draw for an MR2LA courtesy of Islander Reels.
Check out the story on our program in the July issue of Island Fisherman Magazine and follow us on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/Southern-BC-Adult-Salmon-Diet-Program-493763831003993/
Questions to juaneslabmanger@gmail.com

Tight lines

Will
 
Hope everyone that could get out did on such a beauty day. Some killer fish out there! Loving this slot limit!!!!! Not! Had one at 89 and one at 92 released. Ended with 4 in the box, an 80, 79.5, 75 and 71. Lost at least half dozen other screemers. The 80 was 16.5lbs, 79 was 14lbs, some fat fish! Bite slowed towards the tide change close to noon and current was ripping with the big tides in the afternoon. Most fish we got down 165+ on hootch. Never seen fishing this good in the area ever, let alone in July. Better than a lot of west coast fishing. Nice to see all the boats out that I haven’t seen since last year. Hope everyone else had a good day out there!
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Great weather and calm ocean for bathtub racing.
I went out on Friday and we only had 2 bites, a shaker and another one that did not stick.
Anyone had better luck since then?
 
Went out to polier sat hooked a few undersize and released . One keeper spring. Down 80' and 67'. Hoochies and lighthouse spoons. Bit rough at thrasher so had to troll down wind. Beauty day today bud didn't get to fish. Might try in the mornin.
 
Bit of a late report.. Fishing in Nanaimo has been outstanding since opening day. The 16th was slow for trolling but managed some nice fish jigging with the Shimano butterfly jigs. Haven't returned to jigging yet as trolling has been incredible. Thursday rivalled some of the best ever days I've had on the West Coast, with 4 double headers and multiple single hookups in only a few hours, all fish the fish were oversize, successfully tailed and released. We did manage to sift through the bigger ones and bonked a few right on or under 80. Green Splatterback tied at 30" and Harbour Chandlers "Killy McGee" tied 50/50 for the action. Enough with the talking...

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Got a 9 and 16 (79 cm) on Sunday AM between fingers and neck, 225 feet down, army truck UV cuttlefish. Also released 2 others about the same size as the 9 pounder, and released a bunch of under size plus a wild Coho. Only fished for about 3 hours.

Fish had 2 8 inch hake in its guts, saw some really deep bait on the sounder, might be lots of hake out there at the moment, probably would be worth running some big plugs down deep.
 
we were out for the weekend. had our boat moored from Friday until sunday night as we were a escort boat for the bath tub race.

I think fishing is all about timing right now.

Friday after work we fished for a few hours at the fingers 4:30-6:30 and only caught a couple unders before we met up with a few tubbers to take them out for practice. Saturday we decided to hang out at home until about 3:30pm as we wanted to fish till sunset and then catch the fire works. we burned out to entrance and got off to a quick start with 2 unders and a wild coho before I could even get my 2nd rod down. then things slowed down a bit but we were still getting the odd under sized fish here and there. The amount of bait was crazy so we just kept circling the area. at about 6:30 things started picking up! We hit a 95cm fish and a 87 cm fish before we got our keepers 67,69,76 and 79 cm also I broke off a big boy at the side of the boat when I tried to tail him when it wasn't quite ready and it exploded and left me holding the flasher... Some where in all this madness and multiple double headers we hooked and landed my biggest fish to date a 33lber that I netted and weighed in my catch and release net before sending back to swim another day! I'm supper proud of my 6 year old boy as he ran the port side of the boat for all the double headers and reeled in 3 of our keepers while standing on a cooler and cranking them in with the rod in the holder, I just had to remind him a few times to keep his hand off the reel when they were running.

Sunday was race day and what a nice day it was to be out on the water! After the race we headed back out to entrance but only managed to find a couple under sized fish. we decided to call it a day around 4 pm and finished it off with a swim before heading back in.

All fish were caught on irish cream and cop car spoons from 77' to 137'
 
Definitely some nice fish out there! Congrats @ExFlyGuy on the tyee and what sounds like a pretty awesome day! Think i saw the new rig out there on saturday. Sounds exactly like the day we had there too. We got into that same bite right around dinner time. No bites for 3 hours before that! And the bite is very selective right now im finding too, can come on and off like a switch. On saturday i got 3 fish in the first 10 minutes then nothing for 3 hours. Kept on the bait and in the last half hour bite came on and got a 91, 78,76, lost a few more good ones and released a few low 60's. Fingers has been pretty slow lately, not much bait compared to few weeks ago. Fish there seem to be 200' plus deep. Not sure if hes on here but was chatting with a guy at the boat launch and he said hes been doing awesome lately off fingers, fishing 300' on the rigger!
 
Yes I agree the fish seem to be deeper these days. I got a 72 cm and a hatch coho down 220 on the rigger. All before 7:30am at Fingers. The spring was on anchovies and the coho on a big eye spoon.
Then, I mainly burned fuel as I had only about 5 shakers until 4pm, at Entrance and Trasher. There was one little exception. I had one screamer and it cut the 40lbs mono leader without problem. It was an exciting 5 minutes!
If we could predict when the bite switch will be turned on or off...
 
Yesterday, I was jigging at Entrance on a friend’s boat. At about 20:45 we had a double header and landed a 16lbs (80 cm dead on) and a 12 lbs.
It was really cool to play the fish without a flasher. You can feel every move.
We were in 100 to 150 of water using Lil’ Nib jig lures. Quite fun.
 
Well, I finally made it over to the other side of the local pond and got to Thrasher at about 9:00 Thursday morning (low 7:00 high 13:15). Water was awesone - UBC to Thasher 40 minutes.
Saw a few boats in the area and spent about 15 minutes observing what they were doing. No Action, so decided to motor slowly north-west at about 10mph to see if anything appeared on the sonar. About 1/4 of the way to the Silva entrance I was seeing 'fish' and 65' and 80' so we set gear down and worked that area.

Had a 3.5" white glow hoochie on a green & silver flasher with 60' of rigger out, and a TrapShack Needle G behind an Army Truck flasher at 90' on the other. (I figure that if I have 90' of rigger out on a 45 degree angle, the weight is really only down about 64').

Soon had a 35cm Pink on the Skinny G and then it was fish-on about every half hour after that. Would have been more but still getting used to the whole landing/measuring/re-setting gear process. Over an hour of nothing on the white hoochie I changed it to a 3-1/2 green splatter-back hoochie with anchovie scent on it. Then put rigger counter down to 120 and 145. In about 15 minutes had a 12lb 72 in the boat. Over the next couple of hours we boxed another 2 Pinks on the splatter-back and an undersize on the G. Also put back a nice 65cm Chinook from the splatterback. Two of the pinks and the Chinook each had 4" anchovies (tail first) in their stomach. Water depth varied amongst the catches.

Take-aways from the day.....
- sounder only ever displayed fish at 65' and 80' but all catches were deeper than that.
- although the fish had larger food in their gut, they hit on way smaller, different coloured bait
- contrary to "head-first science" the fish had eaten anchovies tail first

Summary: use whatever works
my 2-cents
 
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