Hunting Salmon

It is time to take your 6-weight fly rod and fish the beaches for salmon. The closest place to Victoria to catch pinks is Cherry Point – after crossing the Malahat driving north, turn right off the highway at the Rona lumber/hardware store and make your way down to the beach.

And there are dozens of beaches that have pink salmon on them all the way up Vancouver Island. Well known fisheries include Nile Creek, Oyster River, Campbell River, Eve River, Cluxewe River and the Quatse River. But there are many more volunteer projects and the end of July is high season for the earliest salmon returnees. (Sockeye are usually the first, but there are few on Van Isle’s east coast). The north end of the Island is an even year run predominant area, thus 2018 should be a peak year.

If you are lucky, and there aren’t too many fly fishers beside you, you can get in on the highest quality fishery, where you hunt the fish, ones that you can see. The variables are tide, wind, waves and current. Also add angle of the sun relative to where you are standing.

The best beach for this is the Cluxewe. To the north side of the bermed opening of the river – a choke point is always fishy because it bunches the fish together, rather than them being spread out – the beach is dead flat for hundreds of yards north, as well as to the east. This gives you the opportunity to spot fish touching the surface, track them down, and place a fly in front of them. Surprisingly, while salmonids easily spot what is above water, they seldom spook from seeing your legs and feet under the water.

It goes without saying that you should use your highest percentage fly, either from past use and your log books, or what is your best fly on the day you are fishing. Typically, pink salmon flies are pink, but blue, green and more recently purple should be in your fly box. If someone else is catching more fish than you, sidle up and ask to see the fly, or at least, ask what the colour is. Also buy some of the generic ones at River Sportsman in Campbell River as you pass through, as they work, having had the kinks worked out by proving them in the Campbell. Note that their well-trimmed pink Muddlers, size 8 can be good, as well as in blue, for Dolly Varden.

On calm days, do remember that you should have a leader of at least 10 feet. That is because if you have ever stripped in a fly that is less than six feet from the line, the fly line is obvious in clear water on a calm day. In fact, hope for some wind that ruffles the surface, so the fish drop their guard and are more bity. The rejoinder to what I have just said is: the longer your leader, the less likely the fly will be at the same depth as the fly line. Keep both in mind. And thirdly, the higher the current, the shorter leader you can get away with because the fly moves past the fishes eyes so quickly it must make an immediate decision, and thus does not see the fly line behind.

The higher the wind, and this is an every day occurrence on Johnstone Strait, the higher the waves. This means that you will be jumping straight up every wave that comes at you. Make sure to time them right so you don’t take a wader’s full of cold and wet. Or get pulled off the edge into deeper water.

On the right days, with the sun behind or beside you, you may witness one of the wonders of the animal world. Pinks coming on shore, have a tendency to jag onto their sides then straighten out every few seconds. What this looks like is flashes of silver, as though cameras are flashing all over the place in the water in front of you. These are turned on fish, and you are going to catch some provided you do several things.

Your fly line, with or without a sink tip, must be in the zone, meaning at eye level to the fish, presenting your fly at the same depth. If you are not catching fish, change your set up. I carry a second reel so I have both full float and sink tip, along with two pouches of the many slime line and other sink tips I have acquired over the years.

In the tide department, hunting fish is usually more successful on a rising tide. That means the fish will be stimulated, and moving by you, into the estuary. If you can inspect the spot on a lower tide, do so, and get to know where the pinks stage before following the tide into the river. Station yourself between where they stage and where they must go.

If you find, say, a hump of land that has edges that drop off to the deep, you have good structure to work with. The fish will hang on the edge thus you will have a naturally occurring structure that bunches the fish together. (The alternative is where wind, wave, tide and current create a seam or tide line, that is also structure, even though it is just water, and fish will mosey up beside the quickest water, or stop on either side). When the fish begin to move in, and you are in less than waist deep water, when you see the flashes, plant your fly up-current of the fish and count it down, trying to see your fly line as it descends to time being in the zone. 

One tip here: you can get more sink out of your line, by throwing extra line into the cast after the line has settled on the surface. This looks sloppy to another fly fisher, one who does not know that doing what it takes to catch fish is more important than casting to look pretty. Your line and fly will present lower in the water column, and if you hook a fish, keep on throwing in extra line after each cast. This means the fly has been floating longer without being under connection to the rod tip, so it is technically, drag ‘free’ and thus drops, rather than a swung fly, under connection and thus higher in the water column.

What you do is make the same distance cast every time and then throw in 3- to 6-feet extra. Then on the next cast account for that extra, by reeling it in at the end of the cast, or holding it over a finger, so you are always making the same distance cast, and throwing in the same amount of extra, hence, the fly is always presenting at the same spot, just shallower or deeper. You can plumb the water beside your intended target, by casting a shorter cast, or a longer one, and also throw in the same extra.

Current has two components: tide and river output. When a river flows out into the ocean, a rising tide will make higher waves where the two meet. This is even more pronounced on a windy day. Timing your jumps becomes very important, particularly when fish have been staging where the rising tide is coming from. Having that natural structure of a bar in front of you accentuates the same phenomenon, giving you fish bunched closer together than where there is no edge of structure.

The Cluxewe beach bottom substrate is so flat there is no edge, other than the river berms, and so the fish can be spread out across the bay until they move right to the mouth. So, keep an eye open for fish action on the surface, for several hundred yards around you. The slightest action, in the context of wind, waves and current, is a shiver on the water, caused by fish right under the surface, but not breaking it. That is the most common pink indicator, while jumping, porpoising, dorsal fins breaking the surface, and on occasion, jaws and eyes of pink salmon, are less common behaviour. And remember the old saying: jumpers are not biters, they just show you where the fish are.

Being in the zone usually refers to a person who is catching fish. On many beaches, one or two will be catching more than others. Pay attention to what these people are doing, and along with their fly, figure out what kind of fly line they are using, leader length, and the position they have placed themselves with respect to the tide, 3-D structure of the beach and the natural migration path of the incoming fish. You will learn something, and then repeat what you have learned. For example, the next day, at the same level of tide put yourself in the spot before it happens and then do what you can to be in the zone that the person did the previous day.

DFO, Salmon and Killer Whales

The Sport Fishing Institute sent around a note – link at bottom – this past week asking for sport fishers to send a letter to DFO on the closing of sport fishing to put more chinook in the tummies of Southern Resident Killer whales. So, I wrote a letter to Dominic LeBlanc and also put it on one of my sites: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html. Please write your own.

It is a cut to the chase piece that notes the problem is long term intransigence by DFO for both salmon habitat restoration and protecting killer whales. It is below. Immediately below is my second note to LeBlanc:

Hi Dominic (Letter also sent to Justin Trudeau, Andrew Weaver, Elizabeth May, Adam Olsen, Martin Paish, Chris Bos, Rebecca Reid, Sport Fishing Institute).

I sent a letter to you this past week noting that the chinook/killer whale problem is not going to be solved by closing sport fishing in selected areas. I have written on fisheries policy for 25 years, and the answer is: significantly increasing habitat restoration funding and netpens for chinook.

In the past four days, since posting the letter to my Fish Farm News and Science site, it has had an unprecedented response: 8,500 pageviews so far, virtually all from Canada. I used to write letters for ministers in the BC government, and know lists of issues are kept, and preparing responses is a meticulous, time consuming and costly activity. 

If 8,500 responses had been received, it would have shut down the branch preparing them for months. That is how big a response BC has to your ill-conceived plan that will solve nothing, other than make British Columbians angry. My plan will solve the problem. Please read it again.

After buying the Kinder Morgan pipeline with BC taxpayer money, you need a significant win in BC or you will be shut out in the next election. You will recall that BC was the balance of power in the last election.

DC Reid

Here is the first letter:

Hi Dominic et al

I want to tell you that it is greatly disappointing that after 40 years of DFO managing BC salmon into extinction, here we are today, with you eliminating recreational fishing in areas of the Salish Sea/Juan de Fuca Strait for killer whale food, when the real solution is for DFO to have been doing freshwater habitat restoration and hatchery epigenetics work at a rate that would have seen salmon stocks stay at the same level as in the 1960s.

What you are doing now is with almost extinction levels of Fraser chinook, feeding almost extinct killer whales that DFO has not been doing enough for over the decades, and finally, when it won’t save the whales, eliminating a sport fishery, and they will likely become extinct, anyway. Note that from the east all we hear from DFO is how 500 right whales are on the brink. Note that 76 BC orcas are only 15.2% of your eastern right whales.

Note the attached shot of a 1960’s morning’s sport catch from the Nahmint River, a small drainage in the Alberni Inlet. Where are the Nahmint and dozens of other chinook runs today, DFO?

Two things are required immediately: far greater money spent on freshwater habitat restoration, and netpens of chinook.

Freshwater Habitat Restoration

I think $100 million needs to be invested each year for the next 10 years to catch up. If you look at what $1.5 million did to the Clay Bank on the Cowichan River, it shows that money doesn’t go very far. I suggest you give the money to the Pacific Salmon Foundation because it leverages money 4 to 7 times, and the public, particularly students and sport fishers do most projects.

I spent more than a week’s time figuring out from DFO’s patchwork of data/reports (because DFO doesn’t have a final number) that there were, before escapement, 73 million salmon in the ocean. In perspective, this is 99.8% of all the salmon in Canada. Your eastern Atlantic salmon are a measly .2-to .4-million, or .2%.

In my estimation, there are four major problems that have lead to the downward spiral of wild BC salmon: lack of freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, in-ocean fish farms and climate change. We can change every major problem except climate change. 

Netpens

I recommend an immediate establishment of a dozen netpens of 2 million chinook fry each. Use Robertson Creek and the Nitinat hatcheries for Juan de Fuca Strait, and Cowichan – a river that has had a large turnaround in the past few years – for Strait of Georgia. That means 24 million fry each year for the next ten years. The point is that it has to be done quickly to save the killer whales, and though it is 4 years to adults, if we wait, it is those years plus 4 years to adults. 

Pay attention to the issue of triploiding for netpens and epigenetics for an increased Salmon Enhancement Program in the specific rivers. And pay attention to the work done by the South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition, Sooke netpen operation using Nitinat stock, now releasing its second crop. Funding comes from members, mostly anglers. And a seal cull would help.

Finally, after buying out Kinder Morgan, you liberals are in deep trouble in BC, on two major issues. You need to do something major quickly, and a recent poll shows that BC holds salmon as dear as Quebec does French.

Thanks

DC Reid

See: https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/important-note-from-sfi-bc-sviac-re-fishing-regs.70431/.

Stonefly Patterns

I now own 21 fly boxes. Not that I need another, but I bought a good number of stonefly flies at Nile Creek Fly Shop and got another box in the process – they display so nicely. Stonefly flies have become popular in the past five years because they catch a great number of Vancouver Island salmonids.

We are fortunate to live in an area where we have both resident and anadromous salmonids. The former spend their entire lives in freshwater, the latter spend time in both salt- and fresh-water. Resident fish key in on the actual food and thus prefer a fly that mimics those insects. People all across the country know only resident fish and know well that such fish can be extremely fussy, preferring, for example, only one species of Mayfly nymph, and if you don’t have the pattern, you will not catch fish. The problem can be even more difficult for dry flies that mimic adults, particularly their size.

Anadromous fish on the other hand, feed on ocean feed for part of their lives, feed that may not have any freshwater look alike, and then feed in freshwater on what they find. The important point is that they are less selective about what they will glom; that is the reason we use attractor patterns for steelhead. They feed aggressively, and that colourful chunk of ‘food’ swinging quickly across their vision stimulates an instinctive feeding/aggression - we don’t care which - whack at the fly. The speed with which the patterns move also makes the fish make an immediate decision to bite, rather than leisurely picking off a tumbling bug, some of which they may miss anyway.

And that is where stonefly patterns come in. There are stoneflies in the water, along with Mayflies, Damsel flies, Caddis flies and so on. And specific nymph patterns are all for wet fly fishing rather than dry fly fishing, an important distinction. The technical form of nymph fishing is sometimes called: high stick nymphing. On Van Isle there are many rivers where you can do this in the late spring, the Elk being a well-known example, but only one of a number of such fisheries. Get out there and look for others.

While you can buy stoneflies of any size, or make even smaller flies, actual stoneflies are often larger. I use size 2 to 8 hooks (and mostly 4 and 6) and simply pick up a bunch of different colours, with or without carapaces, and wriggly legs, based on past success. Technically they are called searching patterns, but one that mimics a lot of food in the water, and targets fish that feed on a variety of food sources in the ocean and rivers. 

So, stoneflies will catch cutthroat, Dolly Varden and steelhead along with some resident fish. I think the larger size works better for fish that have max a second or two to see the fly and attack it. Large is better in the swing. Technically nymphs don’t ‘swing’ but any kind of volitional food swims, and thus swing/strip is the action of a living thing. 

Stoneflies are used in the warm months. Look at the rocks at your feet. You want algae, that slippery stuff – but not didymo – and to find nymphs eating their way across the rocks. Most rivers will have nymphs from May to September. Once you see there are no more nymphs, it is time to move to a different fly. Also, when salmon come in, they push other salmonids aside, and make them switch to target salmon eggs. It is quite distinct when the season’s nymphs are all hatched that anadromous fish stop biting on stonefly flies, and it is time to switch to attractors that prevail through the winter until May when you once again see the new season’s nymphs on the rocks. And switch to dry flies only when you see fish on the surface.

Also note that in canyon rivers, ones that receive melted snowpack, and infertile ones, you will find that attractor patterns out-fish nymph patterns. Part of the issue is the extra water, flash floods, and no algae for nymphs to eat. Extra water has these effects: there is more volume and thus the concentration of fish is lower; the water is moving faster and prevents fly penetration; and, it erases choke points that are key for catching fish. Fish are on the downstream side of a choke point (or in the tailout above), and in most rivers, other than canyon ones, these can be as much as a half mile apart. Get to know your river, get to know it’s hotspots. And make haste between them. 

Note also that higher water means the danger of being swept away is greater. In addition, fewer spots allow you to cross. And because river beds change over the winter, you need to make sure each spring that where you want to cross still is a crossable spot, and not another foot or two deeper. And, if you can only cross a river here and there, take account of that fact in planning your day. It may be better/safer to bushwhack into a spot, come back to the trail, and bushwhack into the next spot. 

Finally, choice of fly line is important. Full sink for winter rivers, with their deeper, faster water. Use a long sink tip fly- and sinking running- line for the crossover months, and finally, a floating line with a lighter sink tip for lowest water. Take along a second reel with your choice of a second fly line. It is very annoying to find yourself hitting bottom with a line with too much sink, and breaking off flies, as well as leaders and attached sink tips. The stretch of fly line – as much as 20 feet – that results from being stuck on something that won’t give way, can ruin it. 

Here is a link to find stonefly patterns, life cycle info and background text: https://www.bing.com/search?q=stonefly+patterns&pc=MOZD&form=MOZLBR