Harvesting Salmon for Broodstock

And now for something completely different from sport fishing:

Here are some videos and images of salmon when they come home to their rivers, in this case the Nitinat. For those who don't know, the bar on the outside in the ocean can be spectacular for fishing in the summer (accessed from Port Renfrew and Bamfield, with a few hardy souls launching in the lake, zipping through, fishing and zipping back) but is someplace that you need to arrive early, fish and then leave, because the afternoon winds, particularly with an outflow from the lake against an inflow tide, create huge, ugly, dangerous seas.

The Nitinat Lake is 20 kms long, tidal and the river of the same name flows into the lake at its farthest point from open ocean. The bottom of the river is tidal and somedays adds a foot of water to the bottom end - Gary's and Sturgeon pools - which you notice as a wet line on the opposite shore once the tide has ebbed.

This video shows a school of 50, 20- to 30-pound, chinook under the Little Nitinat Bridge, near the hatchery. It is about 2pm in early September, hence why it is in clear sun, me directly above, shooting down 20 feet to the water, and the water is about 12 feet deep.

(Please excuse the camera pops, and shaky video. I was trying to learn Movie Maker at the same time as uploading these, and found it was too difficult to do both things in the time I had; hence, I uploaded the raw video).

You can blow these videos and images up to full screen size to view.

Typically, when fishing in a river, you would target a school of several thousand fish because there is only a small percentage that will bite. The fish are beyond feeding, and thus you must target them with different tactics. Larger schools of chinook are black, in ruffled water or in shade and, of course, always on the other side of the river.

This next video is harvesting chinook broodstock in Red Rock Pool. At the boat launch, the hatchery boat is launched and it tows a net in a circle, ending back at the boat launch, and thus both ends of the net are in one place, fish inside the net. Then the net is slowly pulled onto shore, shrinking the water and concentrating the fish. Once the fish are easier to grab, they are picked out, deposited in bags that are then uploaded into a truck with water tanks and oxygen. Once full of fish, the truck zips to the hatchery, a five minute drive, where the fish are unloaded into a raceway. As they have several trucks, one pulls in as another leaves, and so on, speeding up the operation at both ends.

I chose this video of the half dozen I took because of how many times the staff are given the old face wash by the fish, something that happens far too frequently to me in the fall, fishing for salmon.

                      Here are a few images of loading at Red Rock, to put the video in context.

Dumping the bag into the metal tank on the truck.

Netting piled on shore after pulling it in to cinch the knot around the fish. You'll notice that the Diet Coke were running at the same time as the Chinook.

                                                    
                                                            Heave ho to the next truck.

                                                   ... and grabbing the bag full of fish.

Now some photos of loading chum at Nitinat Lake near Ditidaht. A net surrounds the fish, it is put in a structure, and the net is slowly made smaller. At the top end, a screw of six feet in diameter slowly turns. There are fins in the screw and all the way up the 3.5 foot diameter pipe. At the top, the fish plop into a conveyor belt that moves them down to where they plop into a tank on the back of a truck.

The covered structure, showing the conveyor belt on the left, and the top end of the screw on the  right.

Taken from the structure in the lake, with its net that is slowly made smaller by hooking it over the iron railings on the sides and end. Looking back to the screw in the water, and the pipe that takes the fish up into the structure in the first photo.

The top end of the screw where the fish plop into the conveyor belt.

A shot of the conveyor belt and the tank into which it drops the fish, in this case handsome 10- to 15-pound chum.

A bucket of fish eyes looking at the camera.

 

This is the context for the screw seining. The residents of Ditidaht were doing a lake net-fishery for chum, at the same time.

A couple of shots of chum, moving into the screw as the net area is made smaller. Very handsome, good sized fish in these.

Copyright DC Reid.

Winter Chinook In the CRD

Strategy for winter chinook in the CRD and other areas is the same because fish behaviour is the same. And, chinook are the only species in our waters 12 months of the year, so anglers should concentrate on understanding them to catch more fish. Other species are caught in the two months of the summer when they pass through.

It used to be the case coho were found as pan-sized bluebacks in January and February, Saanich Inlet, for instance, and in April – June in mid-island waters, for example, the Winchelseas, as three- to five- pound fish prior to migrating to open ocean. They were, and hopefully will once again be found (with anticipated success of the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s Salish Sea project), in surface waters in tide lines caused by restrictions in land structure below and above the water.

Both migrating adult chinook and nursing chinook are alike in their behaviour: they are relentlessly structure related for their entire lives. In winter, though, these fish are deeper, and far more commonly found related to bait. Adult fish, on the other hand, bite reflex waning, are not as commonly found with bait, other than when both come to reside in ebb tide back eddies. Their location is related only to the tide pattern, not feeding.

Summer chinook are moving relentlessly toward their natal rivers. In contrast, winter chinook are nursing, putting on weight, and not migrating anywhere; so winters are not found tight to shallow rock shores, nor are they going anywhere. They are staying close to lunch. Consequently, reading bait schools becomes far more important in winter, and staying close to them through the tidal change that moves them about.

Winter fishing is more reliable than summer, but for smaller fish. It makes less sense to fish back eddies tight to shore because bait, commonly herring, is found in mid-water depths, not related to shore. This winter bait pattern also includes herring staging to ripen before spawning. This is why we fish offshore of the 115 foot mark off Ogden Point where bottom falls away, and in the open water to the west that contains the bait.

The same pattern applies to other Island waters. For example, the mouth of Bamfield harbour typically turns white with herring milt in January to early March. Prior to this, herring stage in Rainy and Vernon bays in deep water. The same can be said for the Deep Bay, Fanny Bay, Denman Island waters with herring coming on to shoreline kelp in March.

In many areas the alternative bait fish is needlefish – pilchards and anchovies are more commonly found in summer and at west coast fishing spots. Change in bait species can result in changes in the hot lures in water only a few miles apart. For example, Clover Point to the Breakwater typically has herring (sometimes you read needlefish, the difference being they are almost always on the bottom, so reading bait on the bottom, think needlefish, not herring – often read right over the outfall pipe at 110 feet.).

Clover Point is a hootchy spot, but Oak Bay, a huge flat on the other side of Trial Island, is needlefish water and thus squirts catch far more fish. Last week, the Cloverleaf, Purple Haze and Glo-Below hootchies prevailed on the Waterfront, but in Oak Bay, Pickle Green, J-79 and Jellyfish squirts were the trick.

If you troll the long flat from Clover to Trial – you are scratching a fish, and it takes 45 minutes, so picking up lines and moving makes more sense than fishing through – you will be changing to squirts just after you pass directly south of Trial at 120 feet.

For the Victoria Waterfront, the Angel Wing, and Army truck patterns are good back-ups, while the Irish Mist and Mint Tulip are go-to back-up squirts in Oak Bay.

Similarly, Sidney is predominantly a needlefish area, and squirts rule. Add the Electric Chair to the Oak Bay squirts and you have a place to start. Also, needlefish presence, makes small anchovy and small strip the baits of choice, whereas in herring areas, medium anchovy is best.

This includes waters west of Victoria. Teasers of choice are the Bloody Nose and Glo- Green, although my favourite is the Pearl, a cream/glo/602 pattern that is highly visible in the deep. From Pedder Bay to Otter Point, the larger baits and same teaser colours, as well as the Purple Haze, a colour that fishes better in Sooke than waters east.

The other lure of choice in winter is spoons. They are more effective on winter chinook than summer chinook. Partly this is because winter water is clearer than in summer, thus smaller lures with high reflection make sense, along with some UV/Glow properties. Note that these two properties are different. UV means light waves that we can’t see, but that fish can, and they show up as Dayglo in the deep, dark winter waters – look at one under a black light and you will agree.

Glow properties refer to emitting light from the lure so that it is visible, in the same way a fluorescent light is. The best example are some Radiant spoons that literally glow all day. I once left one on my night table and it boomed out visible light all night long. Oh, and all glow lures should have a flashlight shone on them before being consigned to the deep. The non-Radiant surfaces hold light for only 15 to 20 minutes, and thus need recharging, whereas longer lasting glow does not. The difference becomes a strategy consideration.

In addition, spoons as we all know are the best, most reliable lure for continuing to fish without having to be checked. There is no bait to slip on its wire, no fronds to get caught on one another, or plastic skirt to slide up the leader after a whack that pulls it forward, but does not trip the release clip. Note that you want a kirbed hook on a spoon.

Spoons have the added advantage in clear winter water because they need not be paired with a flasher – you can use a dummy flasher attached to the downrigger line if you wish – and thus any fish you catch gives you the satisfaction of fighting only the fish, not the flasher and its sideways shear. Some west waters top spoons include Irish Cream and No Bananas, along with Cop Car, which is called a glow with gold between the scales. In Victoria to Sidney waters, try glow colours and the half glow/half green spoon we call a Coyote spoon.

Finally, before going out, do check the Island Outfitters web site for the most recent hot lures in your area:  http://fishingvictoria.com/fishing-report/. For waters from Cowichan North, try the Island Anglers site for current tackle hotties: http://www.islandangler.net/. Do patronize our local tackle shops before hitting the water.