hey.
I wouldn't recommend buying a downrigger. If you are fishing shallower than 100 feet, you can still fish productively and catch fish. If you are fishing West Vancouver, you DO NOT need downriggers..but they are nice to have. Anchovies work well, and they are very popular because of the small bait size, and that they last a long time because they hold up well with faster trolling, otherwise, herring works just as well--sometimes. As a matter of fact, if you want to catch Coho at Ambleside, just use an 8 or 10 oz weight, strip out 10 to 30 pulls, with a Coyote Spoon on, or a small cut plug herring in the 5 inch size, and you should have no problem hooking a couple when the fish are around, which is your limit anyways. If there are fish around, look out as Springs will inhale that bait!
As for where to launch at Ambleside, if you are coming down Marine Drive headed WEST, hang a left at 13th Street, cross the train tracks, and hang an immediate right, and the launch is next to the 15th Street Pier, which is IDEAL for fishing with your rig. You can launch, park your vehicle, and then basically start trolling right off the dock. Or run 100 feet out, then get your lures in the water.
On with my fishing report for today. Was at AMBLESIDE, and watching a few boats with binoculars for about a half hour, and the water was nice and flat. High Tide. I counted 10 boats from Fisheries to Lions Gate, and NO ONE seemed to have anything going on. There was ONE guide boat, and I did see his flashers in the air once, but I didn't see him use a net for anything. Otherwise, the boats were spread out, and no one was tending to their gear or anything that I could see. I wasn't on the water, but I can tell you this, in previous years, on a day like today, there should have been 40 boats along that shore.
Peering through the binoculars, I could see that there were 2 boats fishing the Point Grey Bell Buoy.
Was at the hatchery too, and the cable pool was empty, and I have no idea why people where drifting their floats through there as you could see that anything was in there was like grilse size. At the hatchery, in the ladders, there were lots of Coho, but few were decent size, many were very lean indeed, with little girth. If those fish in the ladders are any indicator of what is in that river, I don't think too many people should be getting hot and bothered.
Thanks for the report!