While there is a lot of focus on Chilliwack River's seemingly good salmon fishing, there are currently many other salmon fishing opportunies available. If you are looking for a change of pace, Fraser River may just be your ticket.
The tidal portion of the Fraser River is fishing pretty well right now. The last couple of days, we have seen large schools of chum salmon entering during the incoming tide. This is unusually late because we typically see these fish starting around late September. In some way, it has been a good thing, because it allowed us to fish for coho and pink salmon with lighter gear without by-catching these larger dogs. Chum salmon are easy to spot. The rolls on the surface are similar to what pink salmon produce, but they are larger swirls. The rolls are often quite slow, which give you enough time to see the fish's body.
Coho salmon fishing has also been good since opening last Saturday. After some success earlier this week, we gave it another go in the evening once again. Mark, Vince, Luke, I and a few other members on this forum (Obi Wan, Pierboy, TtotheE...) fished from 5:00pm until dark to catch the incoming tide rush. Having this fishery every October really is fantastic. Where else can you get world class salmon fishing after a day at the office?
The outing started with a bang. Raf was into a very large chum salmon on a small spinner right away. The fish came in with ease after a few hard runs because he was using pretty heavy gear. It was a big female fish, a rather fresh one too. Although we are fishing so close to the ocean, most of the chum salmon are already coloured in this section of the river because the freshwater from the Fraser River extends pretty far out into Georgia Strait.
Raf kept his prized catch. Luke later volunteered to clean his fish for the roe.
We all know where Luke will be utilizing his reward next week.
After missing a few taps, I had a good feeling that we were going to get into some nice fish. It didn't take long before Mark hooked up a coho salmon. It was only about 5lb, so it came into the net pretty fast. A wild fish, so I quickly popped the hook in the net and away it swam. Most of the coho salmon caught are wild. In fact, so far all of the coho salmon that we have caught or seen caught were wild. Wild coho salmon, with the adipose fin present, are required to be released. The best way to do so is to make sure you have a catch and release net so the fish is scooped up easily and kept in the water while unhooked.
A few minutes later, I hooked coho #15 of the season. It took less than five seconds for the fish to swam away freely.
This catch and release technique has been rather effective lately.
There were no more hook-ups after that except one foul-hooked chum salmon because we only had one hour of fishing period. The next couple of weeks should fish very well so take advantage of these opportunities. For more information on the hatchery fall salmon fishery in the tidal portion of the Fraser River, take a look at this page:
http://www.fishingwithrod.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=16028.0Water clarity is improving very fast and will continue if this dry weather trend keeps up.
Good luck.
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Topic: Tidal Fraser River October 11th, 2007 (Read 1801 times)