After reading all of these decent reports lately, seeing photos of nice coho and hearing from some of my more seasoned angler friends saying the fishing is slow, I thought I'd check things out for myself.
I arrived 2 minutes too late to have the best spot at the head of a decent pool at first light. I saw the two guys that were walking in ahead of us hook at least a dozen fish in the first two hours, the bite was off by 8:30 or 9:00. Of the 5 or so landed, all were either jack springs or springs - pretty green in colour. Didn't see a single coho in this pool. So we moved on.
We got to another pool to see a bunch of long faces. These guys looked like decent fishermen, but none had anything to note. Apparently there were a few chum taken at first light but that's about it. Apart from a guy me and my friend dubbed "jack the ripper", everyone here (about 10 guys) was fishing rather ethically and were respectful to everyone around them. No one landed any fish except for 'jack' who snagged a rather shrimpy looking chum in the tail.
We tried several other spots but no dice. I did come across a school of about 10-15 fish sitting on the bottom of a fairly shallow run but they wouldn't take anything. The way they were behaving led me to believe they were chum anyways. Tried some of the best roe i've ever seen, as well as spinners, jigs - here and throughout the day - but not a touch.
We covered much water from the top of the river to the bottom, stopping for snack breaks at various beek conventions for a good chuckle. We did see many risers throughout the day at the various spots we went to, but 80% of the fish we saw hooked were chinook and the other 20% chum. There really isn't that many coho around yet it seems...
Last two stops of the day we thought we would look at the "problem" areas. Surprisingly there were only 8 or so guys at the train bridge. The canal was packed, there was even a tent set up on the riverbed itself a ways down from KWB
never seen that before but oh well. The legit short floaters weren't hooking anything but each other's lines. Business as usual below the bridge, no coho in sight. But I did piss myself laughing at two guys who both managed to somehow floss the same fish and were fighting over who it would go home with.
Was great seeing the Chilliwack cleanup society cleaning up the river we all love so dearly. It was great seeing parents bringing their kids along to help with the clean up. A cleanup volunteer who passed by us told me and my friend to "make sure we took all of our 'junk' with us"... Cognizant of the fact that he was probably a good guy frustrated with how fishermen leave the river, I smiled, thanked him for volunteering his time, and assured him we would leave nothing behind. Besides, the only 'junk' we had that was not attached to our persons was our rather valuable centre pin setups - we weren't about to leave those behind!
Overall was a beautiful day and I had a lovely afternoon nap on the riverbank. Two very cute and rather curious beagles came out of the bushes and followed me down the trail to my car on my way out. I hope their owner was around as they followed me for quite a ways; beautiful dogs.
I for one won't be coming back until we get some rain, conditions were tough and the short 2 hour time frame one has to hook a fish with relative certainty isn't long enough to justify the drive from Vancouver.
Tight lines
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Topic: Chilliwack River, September 30th 2012 (Read 1064 times)