Q and As - February

Q: To give you an idea of the immensity of BC fish stocks in the 1920s, the following poundages come from one trawler working English Bay in Vancouver – today, you might trawl a pop can or two. From Bluebacks and Silver Brights: A Lifetime in the BC Fisheries from Bounty to Plunder, by Norman and Allan Safarik: 

120 lbs of halibut
2,500 lbs soles (only larger kept, smaller shoveled overboard)
800 lbs flounders (only those LESS than 8 lbs, kept)
500 lbs skates wings (cut off and rest thrown away)
100 lbs silver perch
100 lbs rock cod
40 lbs red squid
60 lbs octopus
50 lbs red snapper
1000 lbs of Pacific (grey) cod were pitched over the side to float away on the surface (this on first of 3 "tows")
150 lbs ling cod
5 sockeye salmon
3 large chinook salmon
All this fish was taken in one 30 minute drag near shore; and, 2 tons crabs (150 dozen kept, rest thrown overboard)

There were four trawlers out that day, and the captain hailed the others, asking: “Have any of you guys caught a grey cod? Any soles out there?”

Q: The South Vancouver Island Angler Coalition has a number of issues on its plate. Get your annual membership to help them help our cause: http://anglerscoalition.com/.

Halibut: Martin Paish went to Alaska to the International Pacific Halibut Commission meeting for BC sport fishers and returned with an increased total allowable catch (TAC) for 2016 of 7.3 million pounds an increase from the 2015 sport TAC of 7.03 million pounds. Thank you Martin and our Canadian contingent. What this means in the Victoria area is that we will likely be the last fishers on the water, as was the case last year, and we will probably be fishing halibut to the end of December once again.

Chinook: Our late spring early summer chinook fishery is dependent on those Fraser River 4-2s and 5-2s from the Interior. This is where you find the regs (not yet updated for 2016): http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/season-saison/index-eng.html. Needless to say, the SVIAC is on the ground with suggestions.

Yelloweye, etc.: On the SVIAC plate for 2016 are: how the Species At Risk Act listing of Yelloweye Rockfish will impact our fishery on the north island, as well as on the central and north coast; making sure DFO integrates the new online fishing license catch survey data and that the data is sound; Fraser Chinook in Area 19/20, proposing management changes to improve and stabilize the fishery; angler safety in Areas 19/20 caused by intense commercial crab fishery, contact with lines, pots and floats; and, asking DFO to implement the Recreational Vision Implementation Plan, which would help us immensely by getting designated funds to Pacific DFO to better manage the fishery. 

Chinook Netpen: The Sooke River Chinook Revitalization Initiative is a key project, to place a netpen for chinook on behalf of local Killer Whales with some extra for fishers, too. See: http://www.timescolonist.com/whale-of-a-study-shows-connections-between-salmon-orcas-1.2147765.   

The egg take was scuttled by weather, schools and fish movement in 2015, but the SVIAC looks forward to 500,000 later this year. The pen is $20,000 and any donation you wish to make toward it would be appreciated. See the site.

Derby: the Alpine Group Juan de Fuca Fishing Tournament is slated for June 18 and 19, with the weigh station at Pedder Bay RV Resort and Marina. There are only 500 tickets, so get them early, $200 each, or $150 for SVIAC members (in other words your membership of $40 ends up free if you do the derby).  The plan is to have the prize board exceed $100,000. 

Q: Sport Fish Advisory Board: The vision document is a big item for the SFAB, finally getting it attached to DFO and it actually being implemented, now that we have a new government. For the document, see: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/consultation/smon/sfab-ccps/docs/rec-vision-eng.pdf. Gerry Kristianson is the current chair of the SFAB and you can direct queries to him through the board: http://sfab.ca/about/.

Winter Steelhead Habits

River anglers are now waiting for rivers to drop and winter steelhead to appear in their runs. Wild winters enter on rising tides and anglers get to know their calendars. The Nimpkish peaks in November and December, the Stamp January and February, ditto for the Cowichan, February and March in the Nitinat, January for the Sarita, and the Gold. Hatchery fish also have the same patterns in most rivers.

Summer steelhead are also available. They can enter from May through December, and then over-winter until spawning in the spring, when water temperature rises and flows subside. And both species can move a lot in short periods of time. On the Somass, for instance, two hours after the high tide they can be five miles upstream of saltwater at the confluence of the Stamp and Sproat.

The Campbell is an exception. Its summer run has split into two with most arriving in summer, but more recently, a contingent coming back in January. River anglers need to understand many rivers and their calendars to find the most fish. This takes decades, but if you know two dozen Island rivers, you will be rewarded with fish and knowledge that is its own reward – what can be better than a river, afterall?

There are two kinds of steelhead water: pass-through and holding. The farms on the Somass have a long inside bend where you can see the fish moving up through the slow water, waiting just below where the current is faster, and then moving up into it. In the Fraser, steelhead have been clocked at 24 kms per day upstream. As Island rivers are short, this means they can be anywhere, and this is why some anglers opine that steelhead are where you find them, not necessarily in the same high-percentage spots year in year out.

In pass-through water, you can fish your way down it, then walk back up to fish it again, because in the intervening time, steelhead will be, yes, passing through. Holding water, where steelhead stop and wait, typifies where steelhead will be found for longer periods. They are: heads of pools, tailouts and runs. Runs are 3-to 8-feet straight lines where there is a bottom crease under swirling water above, moving at walking speed.

Steelhead are associated with rock rather than wood. In runs, the bottom rocks create back eddies in the current where steelhead will sit without having to put out as much energy staying in one place, for example, one foot above bottom. Stand on a bridge some time and watch your river. If you spot a steelhead, it will invariably be close to rock, and swimming slowly, meaning where it is there is less current.

Fishers look for first water to find the bityest fish and so they are constantly on the move. They move from one hot run to another. If on the water with boats, that is when you pick up fish that are not necessarily in the best runs, as in, they are where they are. After catching a fish, come back in summer and look at the bottom. Winter flows create runs that in summer don’t look like much, but higher water means faster flows and those minor dips become holding water. Think of current as a wall. Steelhead don’t waste energy and so they are seldom found in current.

Another thing, in winter, there are deep pools where steelhead spend time on the bottom in torpor. River temperatures are often colder than the ocean and thus cold-blooded fish aestivate in cold weather. An example is the pools in the Ash River.

Summers tend to spawn earlier than winters, thus keeping the two species apart and not blended together. Both types of steelhead tend to move back into tailouts as the season progresses; these are slow water, and the fine gravel is well aerated and thus some tailouts are spawning spots. But do get to know your river well. You will find spawning water that you would not predict unless you had seen fish in it digging redds.

You will also catch more fish if you know your river. Our logging-gravel-choked rivers change their bottoms in high winter flows, moving thousands of tons of gravel and silt, eliminating and creating runs every year. In one of mine, I had caught many fish at a certain spot where they came up through a fast riffle and then stopped in deeper slower water to rest before moving on. In the winter in question, the run had been eliminated by gravel pushed directly below it that breached the surface, and a channel had been gouged on the other side of the river, where there had been none.

As I had caught steelhead in the spot, which was simply a backwater now – a place steelhead seldom will sit as they favour oxygen-enriched water, I made a few casts into water that was less than knee deep, clear, slow and an awkward spot for a fish, clearly in view of predators. Steelhead will not sit where they feel threatened.

As luck would have it, I got a sharp bite and the fish moved directly across into the current and then downstream, me glumphing along trying to keep up. Six hundred yards later, having crossed the river three times trying to stay with the fish, I was on my knees in the shallow water, looking down at the water trembling the fish.

When I tried to lift the steelhead, I had to stretch my arm way out to my fingertips, and the tail in my other hand was more than half way across my chest. I held the fish in the current until it was ready and pushed my hand aside to serpentine downstream. On my knees, it came to me that it was my first winter steelhead exceeding 20 pounds, a stellar member of any river on the planet’s gene pool. And it was caught in a spot no other angler who didn’t know the river well, would have wasted a cast.

One more thing: getting first water is more than being the first to fish a good run early in the morning. Steelhead can bite, or not bite, or be spooked by an angler that preceded you, or have moved up or down. But the important fact is this: steelhead come back on the bite later or at different times in the day. You may be an hour behind the last angler who received no bite, and catch a steelhead yourself. Steelhead are bity fish and it is good there are laws protecting them as they are bold beyond good sense. And that is a good thing, for us anglers, giving first water all day long, the better you know your river.

Have a nice Christmas.

D

A nice summer steelhead. Compare its size with the rod. The cork is a foot long, the reel is four inches across. That’s how big the doe is, and another good story for another time, the rod being a six weight, and the usual, almost drowning.