Fishing Recap 2022 Ucluelet BC - Vancouver Island

As a fishing community, we felt very lucky this past summer. There were are whole lot of factors that made this a very good summer.

With inflation causing a lot of pain, we were really worried about gas prices and how far we would have to run to get to the fish.  Also, new motor costs were up 50% over the past few years. All gear and tackle was up about 50% as well or even higher.

Fortunately for us the Chinook salmon fishing close to the harbour was very good. And the good fishing started in April and just got stronger in May.  Normally there is a drop in Chinook fishing near the end of July close to shore. Not in 2022.

In 20 years of fishing Ucluelet I haven't seen the conditions such that the Chinook salmon preferred to be in close to the rocks and not out on the bank. And we had times of bank like fishing on the beach. Sometimes right outside the harbour.

We also had periods of good coho fishing in close to the rocks like normal and and exceptional summer for lingcod.

But of course you also want to know about the halibut. The halibut biomass in North America is consider stable but low.  This doesn't mean that fishing was bad, that is the science being told to us.

In the waters our experience was good. Most halibut days were successful and if ever there wasn't a successful day we usually had a good next day.

 

The August run of Chinook

Our August run saw over 150K Chinook return to the Stamp River making it the largest in a very long time. We had many good catches though we would have said it was a fairly normal good year--not crazy numbers, but good. The fish were largely 3 year fish so the average size wasn't as high as the past couple years.

The good news is that next year is the 4 year cycle so we should see bigger average Chinook in 2023.

Thanks for everyone who fished with us and we hope to see you on the water in 2023!

The Salmon Eye Crew.

A few pics are below!