Nice report and it brings back memories when we used to fish there at Bold Bluff. We used to jig herring there at this time of year and they were big ones too. Sometimes when pulling up the herring a chinook would grab the struggling herring on the jig and you would land it too. I wonder if the herring are still there.
Of course in the good old days, in the Summer I had terrific fishing in Cowichan Bay too, in the 1950's. That is before the chinook stocks started to become depleted and they started putting in boundaries that keep moving futher out until it became closed all together. Looking back one wonders what caused this run to collapse, I guess it was overfishing by all users or was it the pulp mill at Crofton that drew water from the Cowichan River that also was a major cause. I heard that huge numbers of fry and smolts were sucked in at the intake of the pipe and ended up at the mill, not sure how true that was but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I know they had not heard of global warming in those days to blame it on.
I wish I had written "The Journal" in those days about those great days of mooching for these beautiful fish. My dad also used to bucktail for huge coho in the Fall there, those days are long gone as well.
My grandparents used to tell me how in the early part of the 20 century they went there in the Fall to catch their supply of fish that they would bottle for their yearly supply of fish.
The fish were so thick they made their lures out of tin cans and the fish were willing biters of those crude lures.
It makes one wonder why man in the name of progress and greed have ruined these massive runs of fish in under half a century not only in the Cowichan but in most of our British Columbia's rivers. Of course we continue on this course unabated, led by our governments and we seem to let them do it. Sad.
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Topic: Samsun Narrows (Cowichan Bay), February 7th 2009 (Read 1462 times)