It's Tyee Time!!

It's that time of year when we see a lot of big mature Chinook in Georgia Strait, and better still, we can retain them. There have been some absolute monster Chinook around French Creek, Entrance Island and now Five Finger Island. Entrance has been the place to be for months, but that may be changing. It's still good, but after the rain last week I'm seeing a lot more fish in closer to shore around Neck Point and Five Finger Island. Five Fingers was slow for a long time, but it started lighting up in the last week. This is late for our area, as we usually start seeing big fish there in August.

In all locations, bigger spoons like 5" Party Girl, or plugs like 5" glow T-Rex are working well. Army Truck hoochies have also been taking a lot of fish. The best flashers have been Green Orange Phantom flashers and the new purple Barbie's Revenge. Purple and gold flashers always work well at the end of the season.

I also saw an interesting photo said to be from the Porlier Pass area, showing a large catch of Pacific Horse (aka Jack) Mackerel. If anyone can confirm seeing this type of fish around here, I'd love to hear from them.

I had a little bit of vacation time last week and had a chance to get out to Entrance with my son with Captain Joe of Fisherman's Life Charters, and we had a blast. We ran 5" Tomic 185G plugs deep (260 ft) and tight to the bottom and got some very nice Chinook. It was interesting to see how subtle the bites are on deep-water plugs with no flasher. Just a tap tap on the line as a big Chinook takes the plug and then just swims with it. Joe was spotting them, but it took me a bit to clue in. You definitely have to watch your rod tips!

I also got to try out the new R3EF Hi-Speed reels and they made all the difference when fishing so deep. My son had no trouble hauling in his first big Chinook from 260 ft down. And I appreciated them too after a few fish.

Joe set up his plugs with 5/0 hooks to conform to the new regulations, and we had no trouble hooking and landing fish.