Coho Beaches and Rivers

Now is the time that shore anglers can get in on the annual coho runs that migrate through our area, as well as those that move into local rivers. Vancouver Island has 123 different watersheds, many of which support coho.

At this time of year, you can find coho milling the marine markers waiting for the trigger for them to move into fresh water: rain. The best time to fish for coho is the crack of dawn, followed by a flood from the ebb. The moving water brings the fish into the estuarial end of rivers and their beaches.

The closest fishery is in Sooke Basin, with Billings Spit and Whiffen Spit being good places to try. Spinners are the lure of choice for gear guys, with flies with tinsel or other metallic flash material for fly guys. In this and other mixed fisheries, it makes sense for fly guys to practice back and out casting, and thus you can stand beside gear guys and get in on the action.

Back and out casting has as its first step, laying some of the fly line directly out in front of you, and using the water’s grip to load the rod during your back cast. Then coming forward, the line you have managed in your stripping hand is released and you are fishing comfortably with gear guys. One of the reasons is that most beaches have shallow slopes, and thus reaching the fish zone is far quicker and easier than in a pool of, say, 15 feet deep. The other thing that allows both gear types to get along is that false casting, with all of its line waving around everyone, is eliminated.

Both spots on the Basin can accommodate both kinds of gear. Out in Port Renfrew, which reaches its peak the third week in September, as in this week, the pool is so large, and distances so great, that fly fishing does not work well with gear.

Lures of choice for beach gear fishing include spinners such as Bolos, and Blue Fox, in sizes 4 and 5, as well as spoons, such as the extensive line from Gibbs - Illusion, Ironhead, Kit-A-Mat and so on, which are high weight to volume lures that help casting distance in wide open areas. And, of course, the crusty Buzz Bomb, Perk and Perkins lures will also work. 

On the Pacheedaht side is the deep crease where chinook hold, near the bottom. The heavier lures are more useful for plumbing the depths and I have seen many 30 pounders pulled from the water. Do make a point of asking local aboriginals if they mind you fishing on their side of the pool.

Do note that you are more likely to keep a coho in saltwater, as its rules, generally, offer broader retention. The boundary between salt and fresh is usually arbitrary, the bridge in Renfrew being the designated line, even though the tide goes a good mile beyond. In Sooke, the tide goes up from the boundary – the bridge – almost two miles, but freshwater rules apply.

And other places that saltwater rules apply on Highway 14 to Renfrew include: Muir Creek, Tugwell Creek, Point No Point, and Loss Creek. Once coho are at the estuaries, the biggest push into freshwater happens on the first huge rain of autumn. The San Juan is the best close by example of this. Watch the weather, know your river, and when the monsoon comes, make a date to float from the Harris/San Juan confluence, or from the Harris Bridge, to the pool that is at the end of the track which is the last right turn before the Harris Bridge.

In that fishery, expect blown water. It is not a fly fishery during this deluge. Bring out your biggest spoons and gold ones that transmit better in water clarity that is less than three feet. You will have to cast more frequently at the deep, soft water spots and where you see coho touching the surface. The San Juan has the largest coho on the island, so there is a real possibility of catching a 20 pounder. Set your drag tight, as the coho do the coho roll thing and you are just not landing them if your drag is set at steelhead range. 

The other obvious fishery is the Stamp. It receives early coho that start arriving in the first week in September. So it can be a blue sky day. The best spot for those who do not know the river well is the Gun Club run. Stop in at Gone Fishin, http://gonefishinshop.com/, the local tackle shop, buy something, then ask directions. It is out Beaver Creek Road, and you are looking for the left turn that takes you down to the Range.

You will be asked to sign-in to park your car. The trail to the left of the Club will take you up river. The Bucket back to the Club is almost a mile and has some good water in this stretch as well as a major pool right beside the Club. From there learn the other good coho access points, while you pay your dues to understand the river. (Note that the trail continues up stream from the Bucket, should you want to look at other water).

It takes a decade to understand any river, and thus you should look at putting in this time on many rivers to come to know them. On the east side, try the beaches of the Big and Little Q. Salmon Point for the Oyster, and the Campbell River. The last has the virtue of being a controlled flow river because of its dam, and thus low water is seldom a problem.

The Campbell also has all three fishing types, uncommon for a river on the Island: gear, artificial fly and fly fishing only, so it gives access to all. Many rivers north of there also have coho runs and are worth learning when you are on a several day trip – try the Fisherboy at Sayward Junction for a hotel. 

The Salmon has a pool right beside the highway where you can catch coho. The other accesses are worth getting a guide for, to learn the ropes. Just don’t lit him see you hit a waypoint on your GPS, something you do at the access point and at the river – the two can be some distance apart.

Many rivers lie north from Sayward, and you should gain some knowledge on the Nimpkish, our largest river, the beaches at the Cluxewe, Keogh and finally at the Quatse estuary in Port Hardy. There are many more rivers on Vancouver Island to try, and they are out there just waiting for you to find them.

Fly Casting Tips

I went fly fishing with a friend last week and noticed he had some habits that were preventing him from casting well, as in distance, as the most important, making placement of fly a distant second. Part of the etiquette of fly fishing is that you don’t comment on anyone’s casting, unless they ask for some. He asked.

First I told him to stand below me and cast first, as I wanted him to catch fish, and because I could cast further than he could, meaning I could catch fish that he couldn’t reach. In addition, I said to take a step after every cast, and followed up by continually moving downstream and forcing him to move. This is a very important point when you fish for steelhead because they will come from much farther away than 10 feet, so you are always moving. 

Second, I was surprised to see that he did not use the second finger of his rod hand to strip line over. The problem is that there is nothing to anchor the line between strips, meaning it could actually be moving backwards out the line guides between strips. It also makes it more difficult to grab the line with your stripping hand as the line can move around without the anchor of the rod hand, and also that water current could move the stripped line, resulting in missed strips, not to mention missing fish if a bite occurs when no hand is holding the line.

I also gave him a stripping finger ‘glove’. I make several dozen from time to time out of spandex. Measure the circumference of your stripping finger, add a quarter inch, fold the spandex in half and run a seam an eighth of an inch from the joined edges, (meaning you have used up that quarter inch). Turn the glove inside out, and voila, you have a stripping glove.

And then I made him start stripping over the rod finger. The glove’s purpose is two fold: it is far more sensitive than your skin, and you pick up bites quicker and thus successfully hook more fish; and, a wet, ungloved finger gets that wrinkled-from-being-in-a-bathtub-for-a-very-long-time skin, and thus it impedes line and you register this as a strike and strike the rod, taking it out of the fishing zone, when no fish has actually struck.

The next thing was that he fished with his rod tip in the air. It is very important in both gear and fly fishing (but not mended mono to a rod tip for float fishing) to put your rod tip in the water in front of you. You have full room to strike a fish, and thus you hook more fish.

Once he had a fish on the line, he turned sideways, putting his rod parallel to the water. It is better technique to learn to always have the rod tip in the air allowing the rod to fight the fish. (If you disagree with this, do the opposite, which is point the rod at the fish, and see how many you lose). Once the basic technique is mastered, the occasional horizontal approach becomes useful for turning a fish in fast water, something of much use in fishing steelhead.

The other issue is that once a fish was on the line, he had trouble getting it in, which lead to the sideways turn, rather than stripping while turning the reel rim to lift stripped line in the water, so as to get the fish on the reel as soon as possible. You have to do both things at the same time, and it takes awhile to get this down.

He also had the habit of dropping stripped line in the water in front of him. The alternative, something that took me more than a year to get down, is managing line. Based on how much line you have cast, you strip it back in sequentially shorter loops, hanging the longest loop on your pinky finger, the next longest on your third finger and so on.

When it comes time to cast, you have lifted all that line out of water’s grip, and thus immediately can cast further, as you are not making the cast line pull the line from the water, something that becomes very obvious in fast flowing water, that takes the line downstream and further grips the line. You teach yourself to point your fingers at the departing line on your forward cast. The purpose is to let the line move freely and, most importantly, don’t end up with a loop over a finger and a failed cast.

An example of the line management loop length is: 12 strips, first loop; 10 strips, second loop; 8 strips, third loop. The purpose of different length loops is so they will not tangle, and will shoot out. Do remember that if you get tangled loops, they are loop within loop, and thus, technically not a knot, you just slowly pull a loop through the ‘knot’ to solve the problem. Don’t tug on the line, as it will make the ‘knot’ tighter.

Finally, he was casting by slowly feeding line into the cast with a half dozen false casts and ending up with a 40-foot cast. I judged that teaching him to double haul was still a bit much to take in on the same day as line management. But, the basics are: lift the rod tip from the water in increasing speed, and stop at 12 o’clock. At the same time, you pull or haul on the line with your stripping hand, with the hand coming back to the rod as the line unfurls behind you. Then your rod tip drifts back to 2 PM. 

For the forward cast, bring the rod tip forward and haul the line with your stripping hand, bringing it back to the rod. Then stop the rod tip on the forward cast. The closer you can make the tip stop to 12 o’clock, the tighter the bullet you are putting into the line, as it casts out in front of you. Finally, let the rod tip drift forward, and then down to the water. 

Double hauling is easy to write in a couple of paragraphs, but mastering it takes years, and there are days when the best caster flounders, but typically, good casters can analyze what they are doing wrong, and correct it over the day’s casting.

At a deep pool where we ended, he was catching some big fish right in front of him. The reason was that his tip had more sink in it, and the large fish were indeed holding in deep water right in front of him. My tip had less sink, and so it was hard to reach the deeper fish. So he caught a lot of fish and improved his casting in the same day, something that seldom happens.

And here is a nice image of a cutthroat he caught, fly line, fly and finger glove:

 

 

Cutthroat Trout Time

In the last couple of weeks before the rains begin, you might consider getting out to fly fish for cutthroat. Typically, our island rivers receive a large push of searun trout in the last couple of weeks of August. They come in before the salmon, in systems that are short of water.

Pink salmon can rise up in four inches of water, while chinook, the largest, need more than ten inches to torpedo up. Late in the summer season, many Island rivers have sections of only two inches, enough water for cutts, dollies, and, if there are any, searun browns.

The trout come in because they follow the salmon to spawning and the feed on salmon eggs is their largest, single-source feed in the year. A good fat belly is a fine thing to have as winter sets in. On your thinking of going after them, do note that many south Van Isle rivers are closed to fishing at this time, in this dry year. You need to check the regs for the river you wish to fish. The Stamp is open, for example.

We are indeed fortunate that we fish in rivers mostly for anadromous fish, meaning ones that live in saltwater and come into freshwater for feeding and/or breeding. It should be remembered that when trout, and steelhead are trout, too, come into freshwater, they do not know what food looks like for a couple of weeks before they make the transition from food found only in saltwater, and food found only in freshwater. That is why we most often use attractor patterns. 

We have very few resident fish – most of these are on systems with lakes in them – that want a strict regimen of flies that look like the hatches. The rest of BC, and most of Canada, has to tie good representations of nymphs, Caddis, Mayflies and so on, while, here, catching the attention of an anadromous fish that may well be hungry, something very visible and generic does the deed.

For example, my favourite fly for steelhead is a Size 2 black salmon hook, with the wire bent around to form an elegant up-turned eye, with gold bead eyes (silver for winter) along with red over orange over yellow marabou. Very easy to see, and because there are contrasting colours (my favourite bunny fly for instance is a garish, red over chartreuse over black bunny, with chartreuse or gold eyes), the ‘segmentation’ is simply there to make it easy for the fish to see the fly.

Your best bet is a nymph pattern in black with wriggly legs, with a gold, cyclops, bead eye, or any of the stonefly variations in colour and pattern. The latter fly does not do well in very shallow water, less than knee deep, as it is heavy and sinks to the bottom – this late in the year, you may be picking algae off your fly on almost every cast, which is annoying, and slow. Another caveat is that smaller fish sometimes miss stoneflies, and flies with legs/wings beyond the curve and point of the fly.

Variations on Doc Spratleys, usually in black with dark red, and much fatter than usual nymphs find good use. Cast them as far across as you can, aiming to be within a foot of the opposite bank. One of my fishing beliefs (meaning superstitions) is that cutthroat like to see a fly go across in front of both eyes – for binocular vision reasons – and as they key in on vegetation and woody debris, that is mostly on the other side of our rivers. 

So, do use a flyline cleaner before you go out as, without doubt, it allows you to make longer casts. And at this time of year, rivers are at their lowest, slowest and smallest, which means you are more likely to reach the other side than in any other season. Aim to be within one foot of where you are casting. It pays to be bold in the year or so it takes to get your distance down, because, if you don’t, you will never be able to do so. You just need to waste a few flies along the way.

It makes sense to carry two reels, one with a sink tip and one with a full float line. Add some new leader of ten feet, so that it is a quick reel-change on the river. The full float comes in handy in shallow water, and when putting on a dry fly. The sink tip allows you to penetrate deeper water, and to try different levels in large pools.

Where there are large numbers of cutthroat, cuttbows and steelhead smolts are passing out (these can reach 14 inches, and so be realistic targets, in, for example, the Stamp, when July is the peak of their egress), some trout will be rising, and some inhabiting different levels. For example, use that full float to run through the pool first time, with a nymph, with a dry fly on the second (provided you see some fish). Then follow up with the sink tip line and nymph. On your fourth pass through a big pool – say 15 feet deep – count that tip go down a full thirty seconds before stripping.

At this time of year, water is very slow, so counting down is a real possibility. If your water is not so slow, consider a heavier tip, or add one of those poly-tips out in front for added sink. You will find that in a pool with lots of anadromous trout, that they do segregate out so that you may find as many as four different fish zones.

Also do a run-through with those gaudy summer steelhead popsicle flies because fish that have not bitten on, say, a nymph, may well be looking for a different silhouette in the fly, or a different level of visibility. The marabou fly I have described vaguely resembles a standard Mickey Finn, and that may be why it works, as the Finn doesn’t look like natural food whatsoever.

I suggest putting this amount of work into only one pool of the day. When you have found lots of fish, it makes sense to work it well with all the alternatives. If you catch only a fish or two, move on. But, for example, if after you have walked through with one fly type and depth, you still see fish jumping or swirling, it tells you there are fish there that will still bite.

Typically, once you have pricked or caught a fish, it is unlikely you will catch that one again. This means that swirlers, jumpers and flashers, have not yet bitten on your fly, for whatever reason, but it makes sense to run through again with a different type of fly/fly line configuration.

Also, this time of year, with low/slow water, you will find it the easiest of times to wade and cover ground. Gravel beds will be exposed, and you will have less need to bushwhack, something that also makes this amble a worthwhile thing to do.

It also makes sense to have fished your river many times, so that you know very well the stretches you may want to fish. Thus you can estimate the number of good possibilities in the distance you may want to cover. For example, if there are three really good spots, but a mile between each of them, it may be better to consider another part of your river to fish. Finally, if time is a problem, fish your way down to the bottom and walk the entire distance back to the car, rather than plumb the same waters again. Also finally, it makes sense to target those areas that are closer to saltwater, as trout that come in for a salmon egg feed are more likely to stop and wait for salmon than migrate all the way up to distant spawning beds.

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Please go to the Fin Donnelly, NDP, Petition e-463 and sign it. He is going to introduce a bill to get fish farms out of the water and put them on land, and every salmon fisher – and all his/her friends – should sign: https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-463.