Quick trip ...3 hours....picked up a gorgeous winter spring and a nice bucket of prawns.  :arms:

John

That's awesome John, nice catch!

Well done!  yes the east coast of VI has seemed pretty good this year. I was out Tuesday for a bit for 3 hours and 2 hours were Dead Sea and then it was on fire for about 40 minutes. Did you just do the 3-4 soak on the prawns or had you left the traps out the night before?

Just dropped 2 traps on the way to fish. Not bad for a 3 hour soak.

Biggest winter spring I've ever caught. Just a pristine fish.

J

Very nice John

Very Nice!! :applause:

Sweet! Well done :applause: So jealous you can keep unmarked chinooks! Always so painful to release those beauties

Nice fish I bet it was lots of fun on that islander
Tom

Islanders are sweet. So much fun.

John

DBhazjack: regarding keeping fish with adipose fin..this fish may still likely be a hatchery fish. Many small hatcheries do not have the resources to do fin clipping which is expensive/ time consuming for small operations. There is a hatchery 15 minutes from my that has stocked coho and chinook for 20 years and then do not clip very often if at all. I know one year the fin clipping was increasing mortality with coho so they stopped that year.  So just a bit of background. On the east cost of VI there are many small hatcheries like this. Also most of my fishing friends in this area we refer to the fish as clipped or unclipped...since it is more correct in this region than saying the fish is wild or hatchery as it is not that black and white.   I always send in the head for the salmon head program and that give some interesting background as to where fish are from. cheers

 

From what I've heard BC hatchery chinook aren't clipped unless they are tagged or RF tagged. Most of the clipped Chinook were catching are just reporting to foreign port before returning to the US. If they are smuggling beer and/or whiskey you can bonk them.

Awesome!

Joe

Wow. Looks big....and you're not even stretching your arms out toward the camera.  :bowdown:

NeilD:  that is incorrect. Fin clipping is time consuming and expensive, but the ID chips that they put in the heads of some hatchery salmon are very expensive. In speaking with one of the DFO personal involved with the program only about 1 in 15 or 20 chinook that are fin clipped have the tag. I turned in quite a few fin clipped heads over the years and get a letter in the mail later in the year usually saying there was no chip in that fishes head. Once in a while I'll get a letter saying which brood year and hatchery..but actually quite rare. I had a DFO guy email me all the hatchery chip information on a spread sheet file about 2 years ago for the areas I fish on the east coast of Vancouver Island and was amazing info. This is just off the top of my head but I went through the data very thorough...but for example in a 1 years period they may have got about 60-100 heads a year. (again in only 1 or 2 regions)  In that info  it showed that almost all fish were from Vancouver Island hatcheries Quinsom, Campbell River, Big and Little Qualicum,  and 2 Fraser hatcheries: Harrison, Veddar hatcheries. Also in that info in a span of about 5 years I only saw about 5- 6 fish total from Seattle area hatcheries.  For years old times told me when someone  got a good size fish..it was Columbia River fish. Once I saw this actual DFO data...it actually showed zero Columbia river fish...and almost no USA fish at all on the EC of Vancouver Island.  I think most Columbia fish must go outside Vancouver Island. Just thought others might find this info kind of interesting.

We live in a beautiful place.

J.

Very Good! Absolute beauty!  Yes that is a beautiful looking area to live, and that water is so calm.

Congratulations John........at first glance all I saw was that beautiful clean boat.  Then that huge fish jumped out and then that grin!

Sweet!!

Thanks for the data Salmon Hobo, I had been told by a few of the charter guys that the US river fish come round the bottom of VI towards the Fraser and southern gulf island on their way South. It would be really neat to see the numbers from that area and see if they show evidence of this. This is my main stomping ground. I also didn't mean to imply that all clipped fish were RF'd.

A few years ago I was helping out at the Seymour hatchery a little bit. They clipped their Steelies and Coho to identify for retention, and help them identify returning fish for broodstock, as you mentioned financial/volunteer resources came into play for clipping. They also reared chum and pinks to fry that are too small to clip. They didn't spawn Chinooks.