Spent the last three days hunting for them infamous spring jacks and hatchery coho that are quietly moving through the estuary Fraser while people are still recovering from the battle further upstream.
Fishing methods include barfishing with roe sacs and spin fishing with spoons and spinners. Water clarity has gone down since last week, but still pretty good.
August 27thItosh and I fished the afternoon incoming tide. Not many risers at all. We barfished the entire time, with roe sacs because there are still thousands of coarse fish milling about. These tiny critters will chew up your roe within seconds so the mesh is used to protect your precious roe. Size 1/0 hook, 1 foot leader with a 1oz weight trailing 0.5 feet below the hook.
Pretty quiet until Itosh requested for a roe sac so I had to tie it up for him.
This meant I had my back against the rod so I had to turn around once awhile to check the rod. While tying it up, I turned around at one point and the rod was kicking and bending down to the holder!
I quickly dropped what I was doing and reached for the rod but it was long gone by the time I touched it.
The roe sac was still intact when I reeled it in, so out it went again. Back to tying roe sacs, and turned around 20 seconds into it and the rod was doing the same thing again!
Reached for the rod, fish long gone....
Either a coho, spring jack or dolly.
That was it for the day.
August 28thFished with Chrome Mykiss, not a whole lot happened. We basically spent the entire outing sitting and chatting while the rod tips bounced away as pikeminnows and sculpins chewed on the bait. We did see some spectacular jumping action. One fish, looked like a sockeye or pink, leaped and glided on the water surface six times as it went upstream. We also saw several jacks jumping close to the shore.
August 29thI really wanted my spring jack... Went back again for the incoming tide. This time I started out with spinning. I spent an hour casting and retrieving one of my homemade spinners with no result. One jack actually rolled two feet in front of me, go figure...
LukeYVR soon joined me after that and we decided to barfish for the rest of the evening. One other fellow was fishing a bit further up from us and finally got into a fish. I quickly grabbed my net and offered my assistance. He accepted but was still reeling his fish in furiously. He then scooped up the spring jack (roughly 3 to 4lb) with one hand and cradled it up the rock pile. The fish wiggled a bit, unhooked itself, slipped out of his hand and tumbled twice before landing in the water and swam away slowly on the surface....
Always use a net folks!
That was the only action of the day, unless you count the gigantic sturgeon (6 feet+) that leaped out of the water three times in front of us....
The last rise wasn't even a leap, it basically popped its head up long enough for us to take a good look.
That's all folks!
Author
Topic: Lower Fraser August 27th - 29th (Read 5466 times)