British Columbia Fishing Blog

The month of April always keeps me restless. Fishing licences are renewed, the weather is warmer, the days are longer so suddenly a number of exciting fisheries in the Lower Mainland emerge and conflict with each other. The problem is definitely not a lack of fish but overly abundant opportunities to take advantage of. Too many options, too little time, so I have to pick and choose what I want to fish for. Last April I invested most days on steelhead fishing and this year I decided to target anadromous cutthroat trout in the Lower Fraser River.

Going fishing for anadromous cutthroat trout doesn’t simply mean going out and catching them. To “successfully” catch these cutthroat trout, 99.9% of the time involves trying to find them. This means visiting all the spots where (you think) they might be, sitting and waiting for signs of fish, casting and retrieving to see if anyone is home. Cutthroat trout anglers often come home without touching a fish, record down the findings in the fishing journal and repeat the same routine in the next outing. Sooner or later, a school of feeding fish will appear in front of you. The elation being felt when that happens can almost equate to winning the lottery jackpot.

Coastal cutthroat trout, or anadromous cutthroat trout, are present in the Lower Fraser River and tributaries throughout the winter months. Larger, mature fish spawn, while smaller, younger fish feed. In spring, they become especially active when salmon fry begin their downstream migration. Feeders, and larger fish that have recovered from spawning, take advantage of this time by feeding on these juvenile salmon.

While this feeding goes on until early summer, the window of angling opportunities is limited to the first part of April because of freshet. Once freshet begins in mid April, it becomes almost impossible to target them with artificial lures and flies in the murky water. For now, water clarity remains excellent so I have been taking advantage of this by spending a few hours per day looking for them.

While fish have not been too difficult to find, having the right presentation has not been easy. During a trip last week, I discovered that the spoons I had were too big for their preference. On the following day, I returned with a fly fishing rod and some flies which imitate salmon fry, only to find fish feeding outside of my casting distance.

This week I decided to pack the spinning rod along and carried a box of smaller lures. The timing was pretty well done. The evening incoming tide has brought some active fish into a slough where unsuspecting salmon fry were milling about. Fish could be seen thrashing on the surface. Salmon fry were being pushed out of the water like sea lions being hunted by killer whales. The smaller lures did not fail me. Several healthy fish were brought in, but the much bigger ones were harder to trick. Overall, the results were satisfactory but I will once again tempt these fish with a fly fishing rod next time.

I have also been spending more time lately to capture good underwater photographs. Here are a couple from this week and you can expect to see more in the future! In the meantime, be sure to get out and give the Lower Fraser River cutthroat trout fishery a try.

After exactly four months and three days since I last fished (three days before the baby arrived), I decided to come out of hibernation and visit one of my favourite fisheries. Kawkawa Lake opens on March 1st each year for its kokanee fishery. Originally I had intended to go on opening day so I could bring my father along during his visit, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. A week after opening, the weather was finally giving us a break so I wasted no time to get the boat ready after Nick provided an encouraging report.

We arrived at the lake at 9:30am and it was flat calm. With the sun beaming down and the view of the big snowy mountain in the background, this was starting out very nicely. By 10:00am I had the boat loaded up while Nick and Fred from Chilliwack Dart and Tackle were already anchored and anticipating for the first bite. Just as I cruised past them, Nick reeled in the first kokanee of the day.

There were the odd risers on the surface, but most fish were swimming right on the bottom at 45ft as they always do when it is calm and sunny. We were fishing with krill and a variety of other bait. While bait fishing seems easy, there are lots of uncertainties when fishing at 45ft of depth. The fish could be anywhere. If the bait is suspended a few feet away from the school, then chances are you will be staring at a motionless rod all day.

As soon as I dropped anchors, the sounder showed a big school of fish directly below me. The beeps kept on coming and I thought that it was broken because I’ve never seen it that active before. Immediately the rod tip started moving and I managed to miss all three chances in the first ten minutes.

I decided to anchor 100 feet away from Nick. Seeing that we were anchoring at the same depth, I didn’t think the fishing results would be very different. Once again I was completely wrong. While I couldn’t trigger another bite, Nick managed to haul in one fish after another on each drop.

“Come on closer!”, he yelled. I hesitated and re-anchored at 50 feet away from him.

“Closer! No fish there!”

I pulled up anchors once again after another 30 minutes of no fish. Meanwhile, Nick and Fred had already reached their limit of four fish each in the cooler.

I re-anchored at 5 feet away from Nick and I reached the conclusion that spots do not always make a difference. While I was still trying to trick a fish to bite, Nick continued to pull them up from the deep like a commercial long-liner!

Finally, after 15 minutes of fiddling around, I detected a soft bite on the rod tip. Perhaps I am simply too rusty after many fishless months, I don’t seem to remember kokanee bites to be that light. I missed the first hit, but it managed to hook itself after I left the rod alone for a few more minutes. The first fish was finally in the boat, a fat silver kokanee measured at 13 inches long.

Just as I was getting excited about the non-stop action, the bites stopped for everyone! “Time to move.”, Nick announced, “We are going to target cutthroat trout now.”

I decided to stick to the same spot and hope the school would return for another feeding frenzy. The southwesterly breeze picked up gradually as I waited. A trout must have sympathized my poor performance and ran itself into the line. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful for a couple of hours.

Eventually there were some surface activities. While the sun was still out, the chop on the water provided a good cover for fish. I pulled out the float rod and adjusted the depth to around 5 feet. It took no time for the little orange dot to disappear. Finally I was in the zone. The bites could not be stopped. Each cast was followed by a bite a minute after. I managed to bring in both kokanee and landlocked coho salmon in a variety of sizes.

The last hour of the trip definitely saved the day, because I was sure that no fish other than the lonely one was coming home. In the end I brought four healthy looking kokanee back and enjoyed them very much by lightly seasoning and baking them in the oven. This is why fishing can be so exciting, every trip is an unique experience with plenty of lessons to learn.

Watch the video feature “Spring Kokanee”

Chilliwack Vedder River Cleanup Society has finalized this year’s river clean-up dates with the City of Chilliwack and Fraser Valley Regional District. They are:

• April 20th at the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve
• July 20th at the Great blue Heron Nature Reserve
• September 29th at the Chilliwack Fish and Games Club

This will be the twelfth year since we started the group. In 2012, participants racked up 2,464 volunteer hours, collecting 5.72 metric tonnes of garbage from the Chilliwack River. This shows the importance of having these clean-ups. Not only are we maintaining the Chilliwack River valley so it is a pristine recreational corridor for all to enjoy, we are also minimizing garbage from being washed into the Pacific Ocean. Please support these three clean-ups once again in 2013.

Fishing with Rod reached a milestone today. Thanks to your support by watching our videos, subscribing to the channel and providing us with your feedbacks, Fishing with Rod is now the first Canadian fishing YouTube channel to reach 10,000 subscribers!

We started producing online video content in 2006 when YouTube first hit the internet. Our videos in the first few years were done on what was then a rather expensive DV camera. Since then, our videos have evolved to 1080p HD that can be viewed on your large screen television. Our goal has been to share our experience in fisheries that are family friendly, which you can also enjoy later on.

Many thanks to our commercial supporters last year, including Shimano Fishing, Islander Reels, Pautzke Bait, Yakima Bait and Freshwater Fisheries Society of BC. Without their support, our video content could not have grown and improved.

This year, we will once again be producing long video blog episodes to show you different places to fish in British Columbia. There will be instructional videos as requested by many viewers.

To celebrate our milestone, we will be running some contest give-aways in the next several weeks, so please check our contest section often.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be part of a rather fun, or dirty, project on the Alouette River. Students from BCIT were learning the process of collecting chum salmon eggs and milt for the Seymour Salmon Hatchery, and I was invited to document it.

As mentioned in an earlier article, 2012′s Fraser River chum salmon run has been better than average so far. 3 to 3.5 million fish are estimated to make their way into the system by the end of the year. Just the Alouette River alone can see up to 250,000 spawning fish returning. I was blown away by the amount of fish that have reached the counting fence at the hatchery.

Each year, Seymour Salmon Hatchery collects eggs and milt from the Alouette River to boost Seymour River’s chum salmon stock. The run has been poor for many usual reasons, including the existing dam, urbanization and poaching. By transplanting more fish, the hope is to rebuild this run to possibly what it once was.

Here are some photographs. Stay tuned for the video feature!