Fishing Report June 26

River Report

Please take a moment to read the latest DFO Fishery Notices before you make fishing plans for the weekend. Here is the Skeena Watershed Notice. For the Nass Watershed notice press here.

Kitimat River

Thank you to our friends at JigBox for the update:

The Kitimat is full of chinook, water levels are perfect right now. We’ve been getting them on our Black Widow Jig, Cop Car, Black Bear.

Water clarity is perfect, jade green, with great visibility... Again, keep an eye on the forecast and water chart (below hirsh creek). Water levels change quick and the water colours up quick..

Sticking to darker shades for jigs have been working the best for us.

For hot shots we’ve been hitting them on Flat Pink, and Shiny Pink as well as blue/silver scale..

Skeena River

The Skeena River is in excellent shape. Great flow and colour. The water also seems a lot cooler than last year which is good news for the fish. A good number of chinook have been caught downstream of Cedarvale. Bar fishing seems to be pretty productive (try smaller spin n'glows???

Thank you to Blaine and friends for the great photo with Skeena Chinooks! And congrats to Blaine and crew for the one year anniversary of their Brewery - Smithers Brewery. GREAT SPOT TO STOP BY FOR A BEVERAGE!

Bulkley River

The Bulkley is in awesome shape for June 26. A few fish have been spotted at the Rock. We have not heard of too many people catching fish on the Bulkley yet. But the Bulkley / Morice are open to chinook fish (check regs for area closures).

Lake Fishing

Babine Lake has been on fire for char fishing. Use an Apex or an FST. Thank you to Tyler Davidson and Emily Davidson for the great photo.

Ocean Fishing by Lee Mac

With the end of school fast approaching, the kids have been asking when they can get out on the water. Like most of us, they are acutely aware that the end of June is a great time to be out fishing. The weather is slowly getting better and the fish are coming in hot! We've seen great fishing all the way down the north coast over the past couple of weeks. Around Dundas Island, we've seen loads of big chinook rolling through with a mix of coho showing up. We have seen great fishing around Squatatie and Edye Pass and even had reports that its been good around north Tugwell Island. Further south, we've seen good numbers of Kitimat River fish running down the channel. I spoke with one angler on the dock who had caught a 34lb fish only 100m off the end of the warf at MK Bay marina. The Kitimat fish will continue to be in the channel for the next couple of weeks and places like Money Point and South Sue will be hot spots. We hooked our first coho of the year last week so these feisty fish should be showing up in numbers soon.

I love this time of year when you dont know what you've hooked until the fish starts doing cartwheels on the surface or decides it's a submarine and goes deep. Along with my standard gear that I run off the downrigger, I'll run a bucktail fly on the surface to see if I can entice a coho into grabbing it. This can be tons of fun, especially for the kids as we will typically run a little lighter gear with the bucktail.

At Oscars, we just tied up a bunch of krippled anchovy/herring rigs that are ready to fish. These are great for the angler who is short on time before getting out to the water. Each leader board comes with 4 anchovy and 2 herring, half of which are rigged with stinger hooks.

Halibut and Ling fishing has been good over the past couple weeks. We have seen some good weather which helps. Remember to fish those flats on the tide when targeting halibut and Oscars has all the pre-tied hali rigs you'll need to get you on the water.

We will be on the water all next week but will be back with another report as soon as we are on dry land. Hope to see you on the water!

Tight lines....