Salmon fishing started pretty strong in April and we expected a really great summer. May rolled around and during the middle part of May the salmon fishing was very slow. During late May the salmon fishing started to pick up. One nice thing is that we were catching Coho offshore in late May and that was unusual. For us it signified a great Coho season coming up and that what happened.
The Chinook seemed to be in close to shore for the first half of the summer--in fact we were fishing in Barclay Sound instead of offshore for much of June and early July which doesn't happen very often. By the time Mid-July rolled around the salmon had started biting well offshore, but on many days we only had to go about 1-5 miles off.
There was a great run of large Chinook that came through in late July and August--much bigger than the year previous--and we had some really great days. The larger Chinook actually stayed until around Sept 15 which is also unusual.
Halibut fishing was good pretty much all summer. We had the odd slow day where we didn't get our limit because we were fishing salmon also, but overall a very good year for halibut.
Thanks so much to those who are reading this!
Sam Vandervalk
www.salmoneye.net
