Chinook Zones: Haro and Juan de Fuca Straits

You will have heard that the Fraser River aboriginals asked DFO, as Fraser sockeye are low this year, to shut down sport access to Fraser chinook in Haro and Juan de Fuca straits in May to July, so that they can take them for food and ceremonial purposes, in river.

The sport side of this, as explained by the South Vancouver Island Angler Coalition and the Sport Fishing Institute, is: we have cut down our take 77% since 2010; we only take a few fish due to size limits and hatchery fish retention; and, this is not a conservation reason for taking away our catch, it is simply reassigning fish from one group to another, hence should not occur. 

A rough estimate of our area’s annual revenue is: local licences/all licences X total revenue, in other words: 30,000/300,000 X $500,000,000 = $50 million. When I crunched the entire BC numbers, I came up with a figure of $2.52 Billion for saltwater, sport, commercial, processing and all freshwater fishing. This implies that the rough estimate is probably conservative. In other words, lots of cash is at stake in the decision.

DFO put out a new notice, FN0419, on May 18, that sets out fishing plans for the various sectors:

“In 2016, the Department has identified concerns associated with expected poor returns of Fraser River Spring 5-2 and Summer 5-2 chinook. Management of these stocks is based on an in-season assessment of returns using the cumulative catch per unit effort (CPUE) of chinook caught at the Albion Test Fishery. A three zone management approach is used to identify management actions.”

I asked them what the zones meant and was sent the Integrated Fisheries Management Plan (IFMP), Southern BC, for 2016 and 2017. All stats junkies and need-to-be-informed types can get the document at the link below – only a 400 pager, and vey thorough. If only they would spend this kind of cash on habitat restoration (on Van Isle, for example, log cabling is desperately needed on rivers like the San Juan that are choked with logging-damage gravel from the past century).

Going on, FN 4019 says: “In 2016, the Albion chinook test fishery began operating on April 24. The total catch for the period of this update (May 1 to May 13) was zero (0) chinook. Based on this input, the current predicted return to the mouth of the Fraser for the Fraser River Spring 5-2 and Summer 5-2 chinook aggregates is less than 25,000 fish.” The mesh is 8 inches.

The information on zones begins on p 139, and is in Table 1-10. There are three zones, each of which corresponds to a level of fish, and fishery decisions. At only 25,000 fish, 2016 is in the lowest category, Zone 1. Its upper limit is 45,000 fish, with the expectation of spawner numbers at 30,000 or less, or extremely low spawning populations.

The management actions are: 1. By-catch retention/limited directed First Nations fisheries; 2. Non-retention/closed recreational and commercial chinook fisheries in the Fraser River and tributaries and, 3. Management actions to reduce by-catch or incidental harvest in other recreational and commercial fisheries.

So, what does that mean to the price of beer? Well, the fish number is very low. Only four years of the 34 between 1979 to 2012 had fewer than 30,000 chinook. In other words, for Juan de Fuca (Cadboro Point to Sheringham Point, 19-1 to 19-4, and 20-5.), we are unlikely to get those four-year-old Frasers that are typically longer than 85 centimetres – as indicated below.  

From the IFMP, in DFO’s words:

“March 1 through June 17th, two chinook per day which may be wild or hatchery marked between 45 and 67 cm or hatchery marked greater than 67 cm in Subareas 19-1 to 19-4 and 20-5.

Zone 1:  June 18th through July 15th, two chinook per day which may be wild or hatchery marked between 45 and 85 cm or hatchery marked greater than 85 cm.

Zone 2 and 3:  June 18th through July 15th, two chinook per day of which only one may be greater than 67 cm.  (This measure is to protect Spring 4-2 chinook.)”

The next update will be May 31. Until then we are in Zone 1. On a positive note, the Fall 4-1s -  Harrisons - look to be 75- to 98-thousand fish, so expect something later in the summer.

Notes:

1.      The IFMP document: file: ///C:/Users/TEMP/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/X5FRF5SW/DRAFT%20Salmon%20IFMP%20for%20Southern%20BC%20for%202016_2017%20March%202016.pdf.

2.   

          Of interest, the 4-2, 5-2 stock names we throw around are defined in the document: Spring 4-2: STh Besette Creek, LThom spring age 4; Spring 5-2: LFR springs, LFR Upper Pitt, FR Canyon – Nahatlatch, MFR Springs, UFR Spring, NTh spring age 5; Summer 5-2: LFR Summer, MFR Portage, MFR Summers, STh summer age 5, NTh summer age 5; Summer 4-1, Maria Slough STh summer age 4, Shuswap River summer age 4, Upper Adams River; and, Fraser Fall 4: LFR fall whites. These are further dis-aggregated, starting on p 135 to specific rivers, for example, Bonaparte, Nicola and so on.

Juan de Fuca Chinook

Jeff Betts: When do the summer chinook start returning down Juan de Fuca Strait toward Victoria?

A: These days the first mature chinook heading for their natal rivers start at the end of April. Those destined for high in the Fraser – beyond Prince George and beyond the Shuswap – take a long time to ascend the river and thus the extra time ensures their presence on spawning beds hundreds of kilometres inland – the Fraser is 1,368 km long (though spawning populations don’t reach the upper end).

But the fish that we begin fishing for in May are spring and early summer Fraser chinook. Those are from the interior of the province and include stocks in the Nicola, lower Shuswap, Deadman and Bonaparte rivers. These are the 4-2s and 5-2s we typically fish for.

I have looked at the Kingfisherman contest results from the ‘60s and ’70s – at one time I had protector status for some of Alex Merriman’s scrapbooks and files from his long tenure at the TC as sport fishing writer – and there were literally hundreds of smilies – 20 pounders - and tyee – 30 and above – listed in our local paper. It is sad indeed that these many years later, the runs are scarce.

The SFAB and other historical files from Tom Cole that I am slowly putting out for a wider audience, show that in the mid ‘60s, DFO was of the opinion that chinook and coho would not bite a fishing lure and thus there was no point there being a sport area in Juan de Fuca, but rather a commercial fishery only. It was in this time frame that sport fishers in Victoria began arguing that the commercial fishery would wipe the stocks out, and should be stopped – more than 50 years ago.

Times have changed, and these days most of the summer fishery for chinook is sport in our area, but there are fewer fish. The Columbians of legend are BC fish, rather than Columbia River, Oregon fish that dip into Juan de Fuca. May is the month to move west and intercept them first, as a Victoria area fishery, at Sheringham Point, before they migrate east to local shores and then beyond.

Rollie Rose, guide, Sooke Salmon Charters, has a brilliant photo of client and 50 pound Columbian – short, stubby, fat – taken in May out west: http://www.fishingbc1.com/index.html. Chinook stocks also include those from Puget Sound that are not doing well this year. If you have followed the story, you will know that the natives did not reach a plan for sport numbers, and, at present, there may be no fishery in Washington State. A few of these fish are taken in our area, all the way out to the USA border.

As July progresses, more stocks for the Fraser come up Juan de Fuca from the West. While we think of the Harrison River stock as the ‘white’ chinook because of their genotype pale rather than pink flesh, many other spawning populations can be either/or. Smaller populations below Hope include the Birkenhead, Upper Pitt, Big Silver, Sloquet, Maria Slough and so on. Surprisingly, the Birkenhead can begin in-migrating as early as February.

These fish may be masked by the presence of greater numbers of American chinook for the North and South Nooksack and Samish rivers of Washington, that pass through in March, some down Johnstone Strait and some up Juan de Fuca. I hooked an unlanded fish last week on the Flats that I estimated at 20. As that’s in late April, it was probably a Fraser fish, a smidge after the US chinook.

Note that Saanich Inlet gets some Johnstone Strait divertees in April. They circle the inlet and it takes time to come all the way back out from 18 miles south because instinct keeps telling them to turn around and head deeper into the inlet. This is one reason why Jim Gilbert/Charlie White used to call the Inlet a giant fish trap.

The Chilliwack, aka, the Vedder, has several populations of chinook, the largest contingent being transplanted, and enhanced, Harrisons. The late summer Harrison stock contributes from Port Renfrew all the way through local waters into September. These are typically the big fish of September, some exceeding 40 pounds. Keep your eye on the Island Outfitters ladder board for large, late chinook.

If you want to find out more about the chinook stocks migrating to the Fraser, read the following report from DFO, pages 10 – 14: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/fraser/docs/abor-autoc/2011FrasRvrChkInformDoc.pdf.

One more thing: while our area gets some Cowichan and inside chinook in our winter fishery (although they have been fished commercially in October off Kyuquot Sound), we don’t get many in Victoria. I am guessing that they divert down Johnstone and thus, the September slop over into Saanich Inlet is from the north rather than the south.

Our area gets some of the Sooke River enhancement project fish, as they, like many chinook stocks, spread out beyond their river of origin, and then move back and into the river. I also queried the diversion of some Oregon Columbia River fish two years ago, down Johnstone Strait rather than down Van Isle’s west coast. My reasoning was that that run was so large, that even a 5% diversion, would result in an extra plus 100,000 big springs coming down the inside, rather than outside.

In this case, the fish would present in flood tide back eddies, rather than ebb tide back eddies as they would be moving through our area in the opposite direction to our BC, Fraser fish. While I caught a few in such eddies, I did not catch enough, or hear of others caught in flood eddies, to convince me that such diversion was likely.

Jeff also mentioned the ebb tide eddy, and this is a good way to find big chinook. Look at the charts where you fish, and find the points of land that stick out into the tidal flow. Any place that has a back eddy in the ebb, for example, Church Rock, fish would congregate at. Chinook tend to migrate at 1.5 knots, as in the least amount of energy to use in constant swimming. Thus they would not make it around a point with tide running against them at faster speed. When the flood begins, fish, continuing to swim at the same speed, would be pushed forward naturally.

A Very Hungry Chinook

I received this very interesting picture of a chinook salmon from Ken Street this week:

Here is his story: “Thought you may enjoy this picture taken yesterday of a 12 lb marked Chinook caught drift-jigging in the OB flats, 75 ft of water, using a 6 oz (6 in long) Dart Sandlance lure.  With a very full stomach, it is doubtful the fish was hungry! Or it had poor eyesight.”

Yes, the most striking thing is the huge amount of feed this salmon had in it – and sucked down whole. Almost the size of its head, in its stomach. Stuffed. And such large needlefish. We are used to seeing much smaller sandlance. A month or so from now, the newly hatched fish will be seen in schools among the boats at the Oak Bay Marina, perhaps an inch and a half long.

So, these are big by any standard, and nice to see as mature fish so close to our urban shores. Sandlances grow to eight inches in BC, with these appearing to be about six. These are the feed you pick up on your depthsounder as patches on the bottom. Herring, on the other hand, tend to be mid-water or higher fish. So if the bait is on the bottom, it is needlefish.

Needlefish are the predominate baitfish on the Oak Bay Flats, and are long and slim, compared with herring. That is why, in plastic baits, a squirt is preferred over the larger hootchy in this location. Plastics with lines down their flanks will often outperform those without. The local favourites are the Mint Tulip, J-49, and the Irish Mist, although a Purple Haze should be a back up. 

Think slim spoons as well. Coyote style, as in 4 inches. Also the Coho Killers which are very slim, in Green Splatterback, White Lightning and Gold Nugget - in that order. Do note though that they rust, and you should change hooks to standard saltwater hooks because the ‘diamond’ shaped black hook they come with, rusts faster than the lure. And be careful not to lift a fish by the spoon as they bend.

Fish with a glow flasher, as you are on the bottom, in Ken’s case, 75 feet. Typically, though, the Flats is trolled in the 90- to 130-foot depths, on the bottom, hence why glow properties are useful in the deep, dark water. If things don’t go as planned, come right into the 60 bottom in front of the Great Chain Islets. Halibut are taken on there as well – usually on bait. The Flats fish prefer Tiny Strip or small Anchovies – to match the bait.

Lure size and shape no doubt played a role in Ken’s catch – a six inch Dart. The right silhouette, as is said about flies in fly fishing. It is surprising that the fish, a female, whacked the lure. Perhaps it was still actively feeding and hadn’t registered yet that the stomach was full. Probably the lure action played a role as well. 

All drift fishing lures are made to be lifted slowly and dropped much quicker. The point is not to lift the lure out of the fish’s sight line, and then to let it fall so the crippled bait fish action makes it flutter and dart here and there, with no drag from the rod. A nice, elemental style of fishing. Simple gear, direct connection to fish. And also nice for it to be caught in April, for resident nursing chinook, as we often think of drift fishing as a late summer sport for coho and chinook returning to natal rivers.

One more thing: please go sign the federal Petition e-270 asking the federal government to get fish farms out of our pristine oceans. While it is sponsored in Nova Scotia, it applies to all of Canada: https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-270. And pass the link on to other anglers. Thanks.