Don't panic.... Don't panic... Water clarity is poor, but not the worst I've caught pink salmon and other species in. It'll take more casts to entice one, but with so many fish expected to come in, it shouldn't make such a big difference.
For sure.
My buddy Steve and I tried the rising tide yesterday after an epic skunking last weekend. We fished Garry Point until the tide turned and did not see one fish rise. With the lower tide swing the water clarity was also very poor.
We decided to "chase" the high tide eastward, stopping at various points to look for risers, but saw none and no real fishers other than the older gents fishing for coarse fish.
We stopped at a very popular spot to see it basically abandoned except for the COs. We headed over and chatted for awhile, trying to gather some useful intel but they hadn't seen ANY fish caught in the lower fraser this year. Their advice was to fish back eddys (thanks).
They checked our hooks and licenses and left. Their last words were that you really need to know where to go to catch fish in the mainstream Fraser.
Like others I thought that the water clarity was pretty bad and that I would pretty much have to put my pink croc right in front of their noses.
10 casts later I felt the line tighten on my retrieve. It didn't hammer the spoon, but I could feel the head shakes. It didn't run but continued to head shake and I told Steve that I had a "fish" on but wasn't sure what it was.
A few seconds later it broke the surface and I was expecting to see a pikeminnow. Imagine my shock to see a chrome bullet of a fish. I hollered "it's a salmon but it looks too long to be a pink".
I don't know why but my first thought was Coho! and that it would be very difficult to land and carefully release a fish from my current position. The structure around me also meant that there was nowhere for me to go, so we would have to make do.
It finally woke up and took several decent runs, and I managed to get a better look at it as it came closer to shore. Forked tail, light oval spots on tail and back - wow, what a chrome Pink doe.
Certainly it's early but they are coming. We never saw one fish jump in the 4 hours we were out.