Winter Harbour BC Fishing Report

By Greg Vance, The Outpost at Winter Harbour | Last updated: July 18th, 2016

For the better part of the last five years or so, the bulk of the body of Salmon have arrived progressively earlier and earlier in the season. Last year, there was a decent commercial opening in MAY... and the sport Chinook fishing in late June and into mid July was unbelievably good.... which turned out to be the best fishing of the year. Things tailed off meaningfully into the latter half of August.

If you talk to the old timers, they will tell you that the historically best fishing here has been the latter half of July... into the end of August... where it wasnt unusual to have really good fishing well into the first couple of weeks of September as the large Northern Coho's showed up in big numbers and there were a lot of larger Chinooks around as well. The last few years have seen the big body of fish show up at least a month earlier.

Well so far this year has been different .... and it sounds like we are seeing the same kinda thing thats being experienced by the rest of the West Coast. For the better part of the last month...there have been fish ( Salmon ) around, but nowhere near what we have become used to based on our experience of the last few years. Fortunately this week we have seen what looks like a change in the pattern, as a fairly big body of larger Chinook have moved in shore.... Some very large Chinook have been caught in the near shore waters off Lippy Point and off Cains Island. The Halibut fishing has been exceptional all around... but its certainly helps when there are nicer Springs coming in. And while we really haven't seen any meaningful quantities of Coho show up yet, its great to finally see some big Springs.

There has been a lot of chatter about an expectation about a fairly large amount of 5 yr old returning fish showing up this year.... based on the amount of fish we have seen in the low to mid thirties in the last few days... we are all hopeful this is the beginning of a great month ahead !

WE do have some moorage, campsites and accommodation still available if you want to come and see what all the fuss is about in historic Winter Harbour.

Greg Vance
The Outpost at Winter Harbour
Email: winterharbour@telus.net
Phone: 250-969-4333
@OutpostWH on Twitter