Winter Chinook – 2018

The annual fishing calendar has moved into the best time of year to capture a fish and bring it home as the guest of honour for dinner. All the summer chinook bound for spawning have past through, entered their rivers and done the deed.

Winter chinook in our neighbourhood are mostly American. That is because DFO has allowed BC chinook to dwindle over its tenure, while our American friends have done the opposite. Fraser chinook are in short supply, and the main ones remaining for killer whales are the Harrison and Thompson rivers, which are also in decline.

Still, the Cowichan has had a stellar recovery in the past few years, and these fish circle Georgia Strait for a year before migrating offshore. It’s an example of how fish can come back, when given a helping hand. 

Summer fish are higher in the water column and closer to shore within 150 kms from their river. Apparently, they taste the water as a method of helping find their river, and the shallower water is where the river water lies, presumably because freshwater flows out over saltwater, as it is lighter and has lower ionic pressure, mostly, salt, or sodium chloride. I would bet that close to shore also tastes like the shore they are going by.

But winter fish aren’t going anywhere other than to three meals a day. They stay close to the bait, which are usually herring or sandlance. They are deeper than summer fish, and oriented around structure. Herring are midwater fish, while sandlance are substrate fish, so one either fishes at a set level or on the bottom.

In Victoria, Clover Point illustrates a point well. Regardless of other factors, points naturally concentrate fish. Ross Bay is a flat that slowly curves toward Trial Island several miles east. If we assume there are three fish spread out across the flat, it takes some time to find them. However, to move by a point all three fish need to be in the same place, because the point eliminates the area where the three fish were spread out.

So, there is a natural concentrating effect around points, banks and structure. I typically fish about 110 feet deep in the winter, and Clover drops off quickly to 100 feet and then drops to 180. Do catch the outfall pipe on your screen and lift your lower line so it doesn’t hang up. 

Moving west, the Victoria waterfront has several more natural choke points, or bottom structure: the Flag Pole, Harling Point, Brotchie Ledge and the Breakwater, and thence to Macaulay Point. And wherever we fish, the same pattern reveals itself. Otter Point is a more dramatic point than Clover, but it has the same principle. Trial Island is the same (and water drops quickly to 120 feet), as is Ten Mile Point that gives access to the Sidney waters, with Darcy Shoals between.

Even in waters that have almost non-existent tides, the fish are spread out on the side of structure opposite from the direction the tide is flowing. I cut my teeth in Saanich Inlet and found that the Bamberton shore which is pretty much straight had a half dozen hotspots. From the north end, first was the Silos, then two small reefs in front of the dock, then what I called The Slide – it being where concrete had been dumped from trucks to the south of the docks, and was a small depression, there were two more unnamed points where the structure came out from the shore, until a half mile from Sheppard Point, where you began angling off shore following the straying structure and set up for going around the point in deep enough water not to hang up your planer, thence to McCurdy, Stone Steps, and so on. Regular as clock work the fish were found in exactly the same places, but, as stated, on the side opposite from where the tide was coming from, even though you wouldn’t notice it in the boat. On several occasions I told my fishing companion that if we were going to get a fish, it would be right now on the port rod, and was rewarded with a bite. The point is that fish position was precise.

The other factors are lunch and tides. As smaller fish, midwater herring are naturally moved by the tide, one way and then the opposite roughly every six hours. Chinook keep close to them and thus reading bait schools on your depthsounder tells you this is the spot to concentrate your fishing. Sandlance, even smaller, are also moved, but concentrated near the bottom, are moved less so as current rises off bumps creates a vertical eddy, then continues on. The spire off Christopher Point in Sooke is an example of a vertical eddy. To a lesser extent, the Oak Bay Flats has a few of these spots, but it is an area of conflicted tides – tides going in both directions on different sections of the Flats – with the major structural gremlins being Brodie Rock, the Great Chain Islets and Discovery Island.

As it is the case all year round, it makes more sense to fish with the tide rather than against it. You move with the tide, find the bait and fish, and then circle the spot. If the tide is moving quickly, it makes more sense to pick up your lines, move back up stream far enough that your gear is down and working properly before the fish spot. Near shore reference points, it becomes abundantly clear that you are going nowhere when you fish into the tide, as that spot where the fish are can take an hour to crawl back into, and even then, you are pointing the wrong way, as fish typically line up facing the current, and you have to move by them to make a turn and fish through them with the current, another half hour.

One final thing for this week: take a look at your downrigger before winter fishing. That is because more line is out than in the summer, and corroded electrical connections cause more problems in the winter. Clip the cable and replace the swivel above weak line. Check the plug end of the downrigger, sanding with emery paper or light sandpaper to a nice copper finish. Similarly, do the same with the leads that go to and from the battery.

I recently had inconsistent starting when I turned the key, checked for being out of gear, and that the kill switch was on, then did the next thing, which is investigate the battery. These days most batteries are closed and thus you cannot look in the capped spots and fill with distilled water. Instead, I looked sequentially at the leads. On one post there were three and all were corroded. So out came the sandpaper and each was sanded thoroughly, cleaned, the post cleaned and leads put back on.

The second post, had, to my surprise, seven leads. Little wonder it could cause a problem. All seven needed shining – each on both sides – the post sanded and the area around the post cleaned of all the shavings, before putting the leads back down. Things now feel solid. Remember that connections should be inspected at least once a year.

Let’s Take a Global Look at the SRKW Problem

You will recall that I did an article on the SRKW problem. I pointed out that the problem has resulted from DFO, in Ottawa, managing killer whales and wild Pacific salmon into extinction for forty years. Look at the photo in that article to see one chinook catch from the 1960s when there were healthy chinook populations in many rivers: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html. This post has been viewed more than 10,000 times.

I made the point that you can’t save extinction levels of SRKW with extinction levels of Fraser chinook, chiefly those 4-2s and 5-2s. The answer is a dozen netpens, each of 2 million sterilized chinook, around the south coast every year for at least a decade, and money put into freshwater habitat restoration/epigenetic enhancement.

What is DFO doing? Well, it is not doing what is required to give the SRKW a better chance – putting more salmon in the water – and it is not doing much habitat restoration. It is tamping down on sport fishing and trying to feed extinction level SRKW without putting more chinook in the ocean, and the most likely result is that both salmon and SRKW will move to extinction.

You see, DFO, ignoring any other approach, is now requesting sport fishers, guides and so on to offer up more areas of critical habitat for the SRKW to feed. It has increased the current zones it has established by adding Swiftsure Bank and La Perouse Bank and giving us only the option of responding to that suggestion, by Nov 3, 2018. 

The Sport Fishing Institute has done a good post on where we are today, with a new site dedicated to the issue: https://www.srkw.org/. Go look at it as, just as my article did, it cuts to the chase and is a good summary, with the stats. Note that it includes a cull to seals/sea lions, as my article did, and for the same reason: they eat almost half of all coho and chinook smolts in the ocean, particularly Georgia Strait, and their numbers have more than doubled over the years.

Here is the DFO page to see what they have to say: http://registrelep-sararegistry.gc.ca/document/default_e.cfm?documentID=1341. 

Here is what DFO wants your response on, that critical habitat: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/species-risk-public-registry/recovery-strategies/northern-southern-killer-whales-2018-proposed-amended.html#toc11. 

On the issue of critical habitat, let me give you the SFI’s paragraph:

“A technical workshop held in Vancouver last year was well attended by both whale and salmon biologists and managers from OR, WA, AK and BC. The SFI's Martin Paish attended as a representative of the SFAB, SFI and the sport fishing community. The consensus reached at that workshop was that large-scale closures implemented to increase the overall abundance of chinook would NOT be an effective strategy to provide more prey to SRKW’s. Again, DFO needs to listen to its experts and not to strategically manipulated public opinion. Find details and findings of the workshop here and on the SFI website:  http://www.marinemammal.org/wp-content/pdfs/SRKW_Prey_Workshop_Proceedings_2018.pdf. 

The SFI says this is where we are now, and asks you to send a note to DFO, as above:

“Our “consultation” experience for SRKW’s in 2018 created great mistrust between DFO and the fishing community. The DFO Minister of the day chose to bow to political pressure in the form of a threatened lawsuit rather than listen to the advice offered by his own Pacific Region staff and the carefully and thoughtfully gathered community recommendations that incorporated the best available science of the day. This was both demoralizing to staff, insulting to those who took the time to participate in consultation, and downright irresponsible in its purely political rather than scientific justification. The result was a ridiculous farce that permits industrial scale commercial fisheries for the same species in the same areas while low impact recreational fisheries are prohibited. We know that regional staff and the local fishing community are both insulted and demoralized by the outcome, and we are fearful that a similar approach may be taken this time.”

Now, let me take this in another direction: there are more issues out there with DFO that need to be mentioned. I read all sorts of DFO material and have noticed that the many areas don’t have much connection with one another.

On the one hand, we have the Sport Fish Advisory Board, The Pacific Salmon Commission and The Pacific Halibut Commission concerned with: what poundage of fish is out there and how do we divide them among stakeholders.

In addition, loads of money is spent on putting out two fishing management plans, one for northern BC and one for southern BC. These are known as the Integrated Fisheries Management Plans. At 500 pages each, they represent huge expenditure, but only have tangential connection with the various fisheries. I say this, knowing some of the arguments between the SFAB and DFO on stock abundance, and number of fish/species retained. We seldom talk about the IFMPs. Why waste this huge amount of money? Let’s put it into freshwater habitat restoration and epigenetic enhancement.

To take this in another direction, one would think that DFO would have province wide stocks and numbers of all species. But I didn’t find this when looking for it. I found that there are a half dozen documents that looked at parts of the province, but that DFO had not brought them together to have a big picture number of salmon and species and areas of the province. 

So, I spent more than a full week with the various documents, sorted out double-counting, made do with data with holes in it, with methodological problems, with floods in one year requiring helicopter counts, but next year it was on foot, and so on. Trying to come out with a fair estimate, I made assumptions here and there, plugged the holes and felt that before all fisheries that BC has 73 million salmon in the ocean in an average year. Escapement would be about half, or 38 million. Here is a post that gives you the DFO documents I used. See item B toward the bottom:  http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2015_05_01_archive.html. You will note that BC salmon are 99.8% of all salmon in Canada. So where is the cash for their problems?

Let me take this another direction: DFO’s take on Fraser River sockeye subcomponents is filled with wizardry, with gill net and seine net in ocean, in river, and real time DNA testing. The panel reports twice each week for close to five months of the year. A huge amount of money is spent to do this, while wild salmon are declining toward extinction levels in many areas of the province. Why isn’t this money used to put real fish in the water, rather than document their decline?

Let me take this in another direction: the SFI points out that eliminating sport fisheries that take less than commercial fisheries, and are second in line with aboriginal fisheries, will have a large negative effect on towns and businesses on the coast, without positive SRKW result. For the Pacific Salmon Foundation, I put together the take from sport in BC. Including freshwater fisheries, the sport contribution to our economy is $2.52 billion. Here is how I calculated the figure:  http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2015_05_01_archive.html.  

The PSF did a study on Georgia Strait and found that the increased revenue from sport for coho and chinook, once brought back, is $200- $400-million in addition to the figure I calculated, or, being conservative, a total of $2.72 B. (Note that the Freshwater Fisheries Society did its own study of freshwater sport take of $937 million. I added this amount to the over all figure I calculated, so if your interest is simply saltwater sport fishing revenue, take their figure out of my $2.52B).

Whichever way you slice it, eliminating the sport fishery will have a real impact on those 13,000 jobs in the industry, from the BC Stats Report on the fishing sectors, 2012, See the bottom of this post for the BC Stats table: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/09/atlantic-salmon-breed-in-bc-rivers.html. 

Let me take this yet another direction. The laws to do with salmon and fish in Canada/BC have been weakened in many ways over many years. They need to be brought back. See: Laws and Policies to do with Pacific Salmon: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2017/11/laws-and-policies-to-do-with-pacific.html. 

And yet another direction: once you have decent laws, then they need to be enforced. Randy Nelson’s book Poachers, Polluters and Politics points out the moribund nature of Conservation and Protection under DFO. He was director of the branch for years, and it was underfunded and understaffed. So, enforcement needs to be dramatically improved, too. See: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2014/10/poachers-polluters-and-politics-by.html. Read this book for some of the really difficult cases he was on, and DFO’s lack of enforcement presence.

And for another direction: did you know that the BC enhancement budget is put into C&P, where it shouldn’t be? That means that it has been used as a bargaining chip when C&P budgets are haggled over every year before budget time, in Ottawa, and has resulted in BC enhancement budgets being far too low. DFO this is fake news, er, an illegitimate place to put BC enhancement in the over all scheme of DFO budgets. My recollection is that DFO’s budget is about $1.5 billion, and the max $25 million in enhancement is 1.7% of that budget. Surely, we can do better for bringing back 99.8% of all the salmon in Canada.

And yet another direction: The SFI alludes to the environmental organizations gathering up and demanding the end of sport fishing to save the SRKW, along with launching a lawsuit. I sent a long note on the issue of laws to the ED of the Georgia Strait Alliance: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.com/2017/11/laws-and-policies-to-do-with-pacific.html. 

I said that the GSA should start a netpen for chinook. The ED sent back that they didn’t know how to do a netpen. As this is not rocket science, I just shook my head, and also realized that the environmental organizations had little experience with the huge decline in wild salmon over the years and DFO’s intransigence on bringing them back. If they did, they would realize that stopping all sport fishing will not save the SRKW. The answer is putting more fish in the sea and eating seal flippers for dinner a few times. And looking at one another as allies, not enemies.

And in yet another direction: you will recall I pointed out that DFO specifically intended to ruin the research of Dr. John Volpe on the spread of Atlantic salmon into Vancouver Island rivers. After agreeing to give him some Atlantic fry, DFO pulled out of his study two days before he was to start. That’s because DFO is behind farmed salmon more than it is behind wild Pacific salmon. While this is disappointing, you should know that Volpe went on to do his research, while DFO refused to publish an Atlantic coast paper on Atlantic penetration of wild Atlantic stocks and an insider had to leak the paper out. 

The bottom line on Volpe’s work is that of the 40 rivers he swam in search of Atlantic fry and adults, he found them in 97% of the rivers he looked at, nothing short of shocking. Here is one link to get you into that subject: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/03/dfo-fibs-on-farmed-salmon-escapes-bc.html.  

DFO still maintains, er, fibs that Atlantics can’t exist outside of netpens, feed, go up rivers, spawn, have viable progeny and so on. Hmm.

I could go on, but I think I have made the point that there are a whole lot of other big issues that are not being considered at the same time as DFO is only looking for input on two areas of habitat it wants to hive off from the sport fishery, Swiftsure and La Perouse. 

How does one deal with this? I think the solution is to back MLA, Adam Olsen’s Wild Salmon Secretariat of the BC government, and foster habitat restoration by funding the Pacific Salmon Foundation that leverages money 4 to 7 times. And school kids and sport fishers do most of the work, something the ENGOs don’t seem to get. If the sport fishery is curtailed, no one is going to get out and help with freshwater habitat restoration and netpens. And most sport anglers will sell their boats, which in an average year cost about $10,000 to maintain, moored in saltwater.

Let me end with something in last week’s article. The comments Jim Gilbert made decades ago about DFO. The rest is at:  http://saanichinletangling.blogspot.com/2018/09/bc-sport-fishing-hall-of-fame-jim.html. 

“Jim has long been a critic of the top brass in the federal fisheries department. He feels DFO has no flexibility on internal creative thinking to respond to a crisis. Jim has a lot of respect for the many hard-working biologists but says lack of leadership is the problem. Nobody is putting all the knowledge together to come up with a long-range viable plan. Most of the money is spent on a bureaucracy in Ottawa and little filters down to the people in the field who do the most important work.”

Hmm.