Salmon in clear water & lots of fishermen

[Okanagan]

Checked a local river today to see if Chinooks were in and they are.  Pics off a bridge.  Vedder Canal, which is the lower part of the Chilliwack River in BC.  I love fishing this time of year.



Guy in the foreground is fighting a Chinook, which he lost after about 8 minutes.




Dead pink salmon on a sand bar, and a few live ones in the clear water.  Right now there are pinks, Chinook, Coho and maybe a late sockeye and some early chum salmon in this river at the same time.



Zoomed in on a crowd down the river a bit.  I found lots of river with nobody and may take a fly rod out in the morning for my so-far-fruitless quest to land a Chinook with a fly rod.  Have hooked and lost a good few, usually in much swifter smaller water than this big wide place.  Never have hooked a Chinook in  this wide slow water.

[FinsnFur]

I cant believe all the dead ones laying around. You'd think the birds and stuff would be snarfing those up.

What's your weather like up there? Still humming around the 50's? I see a guy in the pics wearing what appears to be shorts, while everyone else is wrapped in jackets. 

[Okanagan]

Morning, Jim.  Hope you are into some bass by now.  I'm just heading out the door as it starts to get light.  Should be on the river casting already but I slept in.   54 degrees now with overcast and off and on light rain.  The sun yesterday afternoon brought out the crowds but by dark it was overcast and raining again.

Birds, bears and bobcats among other critters pig out on the dead salmon, though bears prefer to catch fresher ones.    Up the river 100 yards from this spot a big flock of gulls was working on fish with a big flock of ravens a little farther up.  There are more fish than the birds can consume, miles of shoreline lined with dead fish, and there were enough people crossing this sandbar that the birds had moved off a ways to eat fish somewhere else.

Official uniform of Seattle & rain country people:  shorts, sandals with socks, Goretex rain jacket over a fleece top.  Isn't that what everybody wears to Starbucks and the mall? 

[FinsnFur]

I never thought of them being so thick nature cant keep up. Thats kinda too bad...but thats nature.

Official uniform of Seattle & rain country people:  shorts, sandals with socks, Goretex rain jacket over a fleece top.  Isn't that what everybody wears to Starbucks and the mall? 

We dont have a Starbucks, and we dont have a mall...so I'm just going to take your word on that

[Okanagan]

Some pics from the same bridge.  It started raining Monday, and by Tuesday morning the river had come up a foot and by Tuesday evening it was up between two and three feet from the morning before, with visibility down to about 16 inches.

Here is a pic from the same angle of the same "sandbar" shown above that had all the dead fish on it, now under muddy water.  The original pic pasted again below it.  (Don't know how to paste them side by side in smaller size.)





Another before and after:  Below is a pic taken late afternoon today from the same spot looking downriver where so many people were fishing the other day in one of the photos above.  Now the river is muddy and too high to wade in most places, only two fishermen.  On Monday afternoon (a holiday) I spoke with a Fisheries creel census guy (fish and fishermen counter) who told me he he had counted 188 fishermen between us and the bridge farther down river.  24 hours later there are two.




Jim asked about birds feeding on the fish.  This pic below taken this afternoon.  It is zoomed in on a small patch of river through a gap in bridge railings across the road from me.  In a section of river nearly a quarter mile long sea gulls were going after live spawned out fish, fresher meat, but not by much.  It is 300 yards upriver from the sandbar that had dead fish on it the other day.



I drove upriver five miles to check on fish and fishermen.  Shot of that below, braided natural river rather than channeled.  The small channel in the middle had spawning pink salmon zipping up and down it in splashy runs.  On the far right edge of the photo are two men across the river (one in blue jacket) who had just landed a 30 lb. Chinook before I got my camera out.




Closer photo of a spawner splashing in the shallow swift channel.  Sorry about the blur.

[HaMeR]

Oh what a difference a day can make. Cool pics & Thanks for sharing again!! 

[Hidehunter]

WOW!!  Now thats alot of fisherman in one spot.  I have never seen anything like it.  Awesome pics, thanks for sharing.

[FinsnFur]

Very interesting photos thats for sure.