Fishing Report January 2020
General Overview:
With the end of January coming to a close, we’ve had quite an interesting start to winter steelhead fishing on local rivers. It has definitely been an unpredictable winter as far as weather and water conditions. With the big dumps of high elevation snow, followed by rapid warm spells and plenty of heavy rainfalls, we’ve seen constant spikes in river levels and murky, low viz water conditions. However, these spikes in the river haven’t been lasting long and seems that the turn around time for a nice steady drop has been happening over the course of 1 to 3 days.
Fishing Tip – Hit the river during those steady drops in water level and your lined up for some good days of fishing. During these almost “flood” conditions, Steelhead will shoot up river and be on the move while taking “rests” or “holding” in calmer, dead water or really tight to the river banks, avoiding heavy flow. You can find these pools or troughs behind features in the river like big boulders, logs in the water, or right along a seam where fast and slow water meet.
The Forecast for the following week here in the lower mainland looks like rain, rain, and more rain. If you’re more of a fair weather angler and don’t want to trek out in these less than favorable conditions, sit tight, once this flash of heavy rain comes in, we should see a lot more fish move up into the local systems. With that being said, Steelhead fishing has been slowly picking up with more hatchery and wild hens being caught in the last 2 weeks. Its just a matter of time before the big feisty bucks start to enter the system.
With the average visibility sitting around 16” or so on the Vedder/Chilliwack River for the month of January, there’s a mass variety of bait and tackle choices you can choose. If you have roe stashed away from Salmon season last year, it’s a good time to pull some out! Don’t be shy either, a quarter size or so doesn’t seem to be spooking these fish off, rather leaving a nice scented trail for them to find your line. Also, the classic 4 to 6” pink worm combos, beads and chartreus wool with a small piece of prawn/shrimp have all been hot ticket set up’s. Steelhead are aggressive against smaller fish that are in the rivers right now and are especially aggressive so tossing some spoons or spinners to trigger one of these fish into an explosive take, is always a good option. GibbsDelta Tackle by far make the most productive spoons for steelhead fishing, the Kit-
A-Mat, Koho or Ironhead series are all productive.
The fish are there, just keep moving and explore different water, once you drop your gear in front of one, its FISH ON!
Sturgeon Fishing Report
Winter sturgeon stacked up waiting for dinner.
Not much going on right now on the river, we have been doing some fishing for juvenile sturgeon as part of the mark recapture study which is ongoing through the volunteer tagging program with FRSCS. We haad some great results tagging lots of smaller fish. Along with those smaller fish we have also been seeing a few nice fish in the 4-6 foot range so if you are in the area and would like to experience this amazing fishery, please feel free to shoot us an e-mail at sts@guidebc.com
Time to book for 2020 – this is the time to book your next adventure on the Fraser. Weekends fill up fast for trips out of Mission and Canyon. We offer 6 & 8 hour days for sturgeon with our next peak fishery in spring beginning in mid March through to mid May. We still have 2 boats available for our April 18 Sturgeon Tournament and we still have a few seats on our April 25 jet boat seminar.
Trade Show season is about to begin, watch for us at your next sportsman shows.
Hope you all have a great week on the water.
Report written by Renee Coghill & Vic Carrao
STS Guiding Service
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