It is time for those who do not have boats to get
their big chinook. All they have to do is amble down to a river that has a good
number of chinook and fish away. The downside this year, and a long-term
climate change problem, is that we have had no appreciable rain and it is early
October, which is very late.
Chinook need almost a foot of water to torpedo their
way upstream. A river like the Stamp is big enough not to have impassable
riffles. But others, like the Campbell, where the river is controlled flow, and
thus enough, but the Quinsam, where most chinook are bound, is a soft, little
stream, not passable. The Nitinat is another. Chinook cannot rise above the
tidal end near the lake.
With the Hobitan Main severely decommissioned a few
years ago, a several-mile walk from the Red Rock Pool/Campus Creek stretch is
required to get to the fish, and no one wants to drag a 30-pounder, three miles
back to the car. Alternatively, one can launch a boat near the hatchery
operations on the lake and row across to the river. That means a return trip
through the Nitinat wind later in the day, and it rips 30 mph on an average
day.
Wherever you go, three methods take chinook in freshwater.
First, spinners and spoons will take a few new fish, but unless there are lots
of fish – because the percentage of biters is very low – better bring some back
up gear. Chinook have the endearing trait that if your let you lure drop to the
bottom a fish may go down and pick it off the bottom (a trait shared only with
the occasional chum).
On the other hand, if you are using spinners, sizes 4
and 5, any coho in the school of larger fish will typically beat chinook to the
shiny surfaced lure. So, even if it looks like there are no coho around, you
may just catch a few. Note that they are lighter than chinook, so dragging them
back to your car is less effort.
The second method is the gear angler’s bread and
butter technique: dink float fishing. The float is threaded onto the mainline,
with the line circling the float once for friction, and then slid up the line.
A three-way swivel is Palomared to the line end, and pencil weight added to the
resultant tag end. To the swivel, a two- to three-foot leader is attached with
wool or fabric ‘egg’ to a 2/0 to 5/0 hook.
The line is cast above the fish, and then, rod tip in
the air and mending line, the float runs downstream. At the fish level, the egg
is presented at nose level and passes through the school. Chinook behaviour
includes their opening their mouths, mouthing something that comes at them,
then releasing it after a few seconds. This is called a passive bite. The fish
does not strike and run as a coho or trout would. It simply holds its station,
holds the wool, then lets it go.
The angler sees the float stop, or pass under the
water. That is the time to strike to drive the hook into the chinook’s bony
mouth and the fight is on. Note that allowing the float to free spool down
stream is the correct method of chinook fishing. Any other method that has a
weighted hook and lure cast across the chinook school, and then reeled back,
typically results in snagged fish. This is bad form and you should avoid it.
The same can happen with a spoon or spinner, and if you snag more fish than biters,
you should switch to the dink float setup that uses chinook behaviour to take
them fairly. Snagged fish must be released.
The third method of chinook fishing, is fly fishing
for them. You want a big school, slow water speed and shallower water that
allows your fly to sink to mouth level and pass downstream just as one would do
with a dink float setup. You need a sink tip line and a handful of detached
tips in a pouch that can be added to the sink tip until you have achieved the
right amount of sink.
It is important to have short leaders of two- to four-feet
so the fly is at the level of the tip and not floating above it. In a school of
1,500 or more chinook, there will always be some fish that don’t see the fly
just in front of the tip, and so you will receive a bite, which again, is a
stop, and then a let go.
You will feel your line rasp as it passes over backs,
flanks and fins, but that is not a bite. A bite is when the fly stops,
something that will only happen in moving water, when something stops it.
Pinks, like chinook also just stop a fly, as in without moving up, down, forward
or back, the fly just stops for a few seconds. If you don’t strike it, the fly
is then let go, and it continues passing down with the current.
Note that with all methods of chinook angling, circle
hooks will markedly reduce the snag potential. Circle hooks should be
considered mandatory when chum fishing, as these fish school so closely and in
such large numbers. A local spot for these is the Sooke River. Above the Basin
is fly only.
Check Van Isle freshwater, salmon retention regulations
here: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/fresh-douce/region1-eng.html.
Excellent article!
ReplyDelete