| SW British Columbia Report 9/27-10/6
Had a great trip to one of my favorite parts of the world the past 12 or so days. Had some meetings with customers and they prefer to meet on the water (sweet). Fished a nice river on the west coast of Vancouver Island not terribly far from Port Alberni for 2.5 days. Some rain helped bring the river up a bit which brought in fresh Springs, Coho and Chums. Spent most of the time chucking spinners and some rabbit jigs and did a bit of fly fishing. The first day (9/27) was pretty hot with 6 or 7 nice ocean bright Coho coming to hand, including a real solid 17 pounder. Also lost a couple and managed 4 Spring from 15 - 30lbs. Chrome/Blue and Firetiger #4 Vibrax seemed to be the ticket. Probably saw 20 bears that day with some real biggun's around.
Day two was slower BUT the fish I did catch were real, real nice. With the low water until this rain, the fish had been hanging in the ocean, darkening up waiting on higher flows. So, most of the Spring's were dark but still in good shape and willing to pull a lot of string. While the day before we had a lot of followers, this day had very few but more were willing to make a commitment on a spinner, jig or spoon. Landed and released my largest salmon ever which took a seal comet on my 8WT. I was a bit undergunned but after 30 minutes I had beached the 43" Spring which weighed 45.5lbs. Not 15 minutes later I hooked and landed a 47" Spring!! on a spoon but that fish didn't have the girth of the 45 pounder. The day ended with 4 more Spring's going 20, 28, 32 and 35lbs plus a couple bright Chum and 4 chrome Coho.
Day 3 was much tougher. The dropping water and bight blue skies slowed the bite. Only fished a 1/2 day but did manage Spring's of 20, 25 and 35lbs plus 2 bright Chum and 2 Coho. Not too shabby. Was driving down the logging road on my way out and got to watch a weasel chase a mouse across the road. Pretty funny.
After then working a 3-day distributor show in Vancouver, I took my wife Strugeon fishing on the Fraser River near Chilliwack. We spent some time first thing catching a few Pink Salmon for bait and while doing so my wife scored a jack Spring on a spinner and I had a 20lb Spring on a pink jig. Nice bonuses. The Sturgeon bite was tough. Plenty of bites but no real commitments so we only swung on one fish and my wife commected. IT was on my Stella 20000 outfit I use for Tuna and some 40 minutes later we had a 8ft 9in (nose to fork) with a girth over 50in. Fish was around 400 - 430lbs. Needless to say she was quite happy.
As I was packing my bags to fly home I got a call from a customer (and buddy). Fresh Coho were piling into a river a couple hours from Vancouver and I needed to change my flight to stay an extra day. DONE, changed the ticket and we floated the river the next day. We crushed the Coho, releasing 30 adult fish with 90% of them being dime bright silver. We must have had another 10-12 Coho jacks as well plus a bonus Steelhead and around 30 Char. The adult Coho were between 6 and 14lbs. No big fish but great fish all the same. Nearly all fish came on #5 Vibrax spinners in various colors as well as a few on my pink rabbit jigs. Never saw another person on the river until we were pulling the raft out. Gotta love that.
So, all in all, it was another fun BC trip. Looking forward to a couple more trips in 2010.
__________________
Best Fishes,
Jeff Pierce
Sales Manager - O. Mustad & Son
| 
Linear Mode
