Winter Chinook Structure

I want to say more on structure and winter chinook fishing. As everyone knows, winter chinook cruise around typically at 100- to 180-feet deep staying in contact with lunch, which is also deeper in winter than summer.

Last week I made the point that a point of land concentrates fish. The reason is simple: a bay that is an inside curve, and with little in the way of bumps or rocks spreads the fish out. I made the case that Ross Bay in Victoria is just such a place. Most of it is 60 feet or less, and as you move south it slowly gets deeper to 110 feet and on a curve between Clover and Trial, a distance of several miles.

When you come to structure on both ends (yes, there are several bumps just west of Trial, but the point remains), both Trial and Clover stick out south into the water, perpendicular to land. And both drop off to 100- to 120-feet quickly. In the inside, shallow curve the fish are spread out over several miles and finding them is pretty much luck. And to reach the 110-foot mark in Ross Bay, you will be more than a mile off shore.

Not so at either end. Both Trial and Clover reach 110 feet within 100 yards of shore. So, for a simply passive reason, all the fish in the inside curve will bunch together when they go by either point. They have no choice, and this is worthwhile remembering: always fish structure for winter chinook, and only fish wide, flat, shallow bays when you are sure the fish are not at the point/structure.

The same principle applies everywhere: Otter Point in Sooke, drops off on both sides, although on the west, the flat for Muir Creek is also like Ross Bay. However, Otter Point on the west side has a ‘trench’ and is a good spot for both summer and winter chinook even though the fish are there for different reasons.

On the east side of Otter Point, the water is also fairly deep near shore and thus is worth a cruise in setting up your winter fishing. Other bumps and structure include Secretary Island (its correct name is Donaldson Island), then to the Trap Shack and Beechey Head which is once again a major piece of structure that sticks out from shore.

Once the winter fish mosey inside the bay, Aldridge and Creyke points, along with the Bedfords and Church Rock are also fishy because they also stick out from shore.

Similarly, the same principle is used on the beaches for pink salmon fishing at all the estuaries from Nanaimo north all the way to Port hardy. Points are better fishing than inside curves, for the passive reason I have mentioned. The fish have no choice but to bunch together to swim around the point.

In winter fishing, there is another point to, er, points: tidal flow. On the flood, the bait and fish are pushed to the east in the Victoria/Sooke area. The ebb moves them west. In each case a back eddy is set up on the east side on the flood, west side on the ebb. A back eddy is where flowing water moves in a circle, first past the point, then turning toward shore, then following the shoreline back to the point, and so on.

This is what makes the west side of Otter good on the ebb in the summer for big fish. Once when the traffic was too high at the point, I simply motored directly west in the ebb tideline, with the intention of swinging back into the trench leading back to Otter Point. In the tideline, half mile off Muir, I was rewarded with a 30-pound summer spring, which of course I wasn’t expecting because it wasn’t lined up with the on-shore theory we all use in the summer. I didn’t refuse its willingness to swim into my net.

Another example of a peak rising from the bottom, the spire off Christopher Point, just west of the Race, rises to 47 feet below the surface, and quickly drops off to 75 feet and then deeper. On several occasions on the ebb, I have put the first rod down 45 feet, moving west, and before I could get the second rod out, had a fish on the first rod, powerful proof that fish are on the downstream side of the rock on either prevailing tidal flow.

Constance Bank has a number of similar structural features that concentrate fish. The shallowest part is 60 feet deep, and the north side edge, running east/west, can be a good spot for fish right on the edge, at 100 to 115-feet before it drops to water as much as 300 feet deep. Similarly, the 140-foot lip on the west side is worth fishing around as it, too, then drops off to far deeper water. If you mosey a half mile south, then find the several bumps that project up from bottom on the west side, you will find, that they, too concentrate chinook. 

One last thing. Do make a point of fishing across a point of land, rather than lifting lines, motoring across and setting up in the back eddy. As odd as it may seem, I can’t count the number of times I have got a fish absolutely off a point of land, even though the current should move the fish to the down-current side into its back eddy. 

This phenomenon occurs in the very slow water Saanich Inlet as well, where you would think  the fish could easily swim around the points. For example, I have taken many chinook directly off McCurdy Point, as well as Mackenzie Bay ‘point’ heading to the Boulder, Yellow House Point and so on. In summary: structure = chinook.