Tales From The Tyee Pool........2017...

Thanks for another season of the trials and tribulations ( and a few disappointments) of the Tyee Pool. As every one has said, this is a must read thread and many thanks for that Dave. It is awesome to see the lucky anglers and their prizes as they are so deservedly paraded at the weigh in station. For all the anglers that don't get a chance to fish in the tyee pool, this is the next best thing.

Oly
 
Thanks again Dave for your" play by play" reports from the Tyee Pool.Entertaining as always and a pleasure to read.Some nice fish come out of there this year and here's hoping the trend continues.Take care until next year my friend!
 
Great read every year Dave. You take us on an adventure in time travel, back to a time when the fishing and the camaraderie were equally important.
 
Yes Dave, Great read every year. I am hoping one year to do the Tyee fishing for sure. Thanks again for the great posts.
 
Well done Dave thank you. Would the fish caught this year be four year or five year fish ?

As a guess I'd say mostly four year fish given only the one was over 40 pounds.

The heads are collected and sent to DFO for analysis and I believe they check ages then so I could be wrong and these were five year fish with poor pasture conditions from 2013 on due to the "Blob" and an El Nino phase that has happened since 2013.

Safest answer is probably "yet to be ascertained." LOL

Thanks to all for the kind words and hopefully we'll do this again next year.

Pounding down rain as I type this which makes me hope we'll see some water in our creeks soon as coho and chum are soon to arrive.

Hydro will start pulsing water in the Campbell tomorrow to imitate the rainfalls of Autumn and induce Chinook to enter the river to spawn.

Still some jumping around in the pool today I noticed as we retrieved my boat and there have been a couple of power-boaters trolling the pool the last two days as fishing doesn't close there until the end of the month, but it's pretty well over from here.

Best to you all.


Take care.
 
Thanks Dave, for the most entertaining, positive and hope inspiring read of all the forums I read. All the "next year plans" are what keeps us going...
 
You rock Dave. My long distance relatives check the Tyee "Catch Record" AND Sportfishing BC for Dave's thread. Thank-you, and next year!
 
Thanks for your entertaining writing all year. This is one of a few threads I follow almost every day. I need to get up there sometime and give it a shot myself.
 
Just to add to the awesome writing by Dave, by another rower.

Tyee Club Season 2017
by Jeremy Maynard
As usual since 1924, the Tyee Club of BC annual season closed down at dark this past September 15th. Based in Campbell River, with its clubhouse situated on the aptly named Tyee Spit overlooking Tyee Pool, the club must be the angling organization with the longest running continuous history in the province.

And as always in this now unique fishery participants are looking back at what took place this past summer, this time with a considerable sense of satisfaction. First of all the total count of registered tyee’s, chinook salmon over 30 pounds caught under club rules, reached 44 fish, greater than the past three seasons combined. Notably, 21 of those fish qualified the angler as a new member of the club. Secondly, the amount of action enjoyed by anglers, mostly with fish that weighed less than the qualifying weight. I suspect that there were many rowers like me that landed ten or more “undersize” chinooks for each fish over thirty pounds boated in a rowboat during the 2017 season. We won’t know for sure for several months but it looks like the return will be similar to last year’s count of 8,000+ fish.

Quite apart from numbers of fish is the issue of where they were holding after arriving from their north coast feeding grounds and this year they wanted to be in Tyee Pool, where most of the rowing activity takes place. Last year the majority of the return held along the downtown waterfront until almost the end of the club season and a wholly disproportionate number of the registered tyee’s landed in 2016 were caught by the relatively few rowboat anglers who fished there.

What accounts for the changing behavior of the fish between years is a mystery but over the past couple of decades there’s been a growing trend for the returning chinooks to spend their last few weeks in the ocean further southeast away from the river mouth itself. Frenchman’s Pool on the northwest side of the estuary, covering from the end of McDonald Road up to Orange Point, used to be a highly productive place to fish until the mid 1990’s since when it has become essentially deserted. Why, no one knows and is all the more puzzling considering the environment there is far healthier than it used to be.

The largest tyee landed under club rules in 2017 was 40.5 pounds, caught by Terri Sambrook and guided by Mark Thulin. Both are veterans of this fishery, who literally grew up taking part from the time they were old enough to hold a rod – congratulation to them both. Not unusually as these things play out Terri finds herself the recipient of several club awards, not only becoming Tyee Man 2017 but getting the Lillian J. Sparrow trophy for the largest fish caught by a female angler and the Gavin Chisholm trophy for the biggest fish on a single action reel.

Several rowers had especially productive seasons, topped by Mike Mackie who rowed five tyees, an impressive feat in this day and age, for which he will receive the Dr. Julien E. Benjamin trophy. I won’t go further into notable catches, all of which can be reviewed in the catch record section of the Tyee Club website (www.tyeeclub.org), other than to say that congratulations are due to all those who participate in this fishery which is so much a part of the culture of the town on Campbell River.

And some final thanks to a special couple who didn’t go fishing but contributed so much once again to the success of the season, Judy and Bob Goodwin. Bob is the club weigh master, a title that encompasses responsibilities far beyond actually weighing the fish brought to the scale. The couples’ skill and patience at dealing with an endless stream of visitors for two months non-stop and their upkeep of the grounds deserves special mention – thank you both!

The big jump up in the number of tyee class fish in 2017 is due primarily I think to improved marine survival for the offspring of the 2012 broodyear which went to sea in 2013. Other notable success stories from that sea entry year were the enormous return of pink salmon to the Campbell/Quinsam in 2014 and the very large return of predominantly four-year old chum salmon all around the BC inner south coast in 2016. There were a lot of four-year old chinooks in the return to the Campbell/Quinsam watershed last fall, fish in the 15-25 pound range for the most part.

Given the multi-age at maturity characteristic of chinook salmon, it seemed probable there would likely be more age-5 around this year, tyee’s or close to it, and so it proved to be. If the six-year old gene still exists in the Campbell River chinook stock there could be a few real whoppers in the return next season. As well, given the number of high teens to low twenties weight fish around this season, mostly four-year old fish, it’s likely we may see a repeat of a strong tyee return next year, something to get excited about!

One interesting development in the fishery has been the use of split cane rods by a few anglers. This has come about because George Deagle of Quadra Island took up building these rods as a hobby in his retirement. He became curious about the fishery and found out there was a standardized rod built for it known as a “3/6”. These numbers relate to the strands of linen line used, 3 at approximately 6lbs. breaking strain each and hence the power of the rod, and 6, the weight in ounces and length in feet of the tip section from the handle onwards. Several years ago he built one and donated it to the Tyee Club, where it hangs on the wall for display. Since then several have gone into circulation within the rowing community and this year one tyee was successfully landed using one – thank you George for reconnecting the club with an important piece of its history!

Blair-Howell-37-lbs-Sep-8-2017-1-1024x766.jpg


This fish was my contribution to the 2017 tyee count - as an adipose fin-clipped chinook it had additional meaning for me as it almost certainly originates from the Quinsam hatchery so I likely had something to do with its early life during my seasonal work there
 
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