The 2014 Winter Harbour Salmon fishing season was off the chart for the most part! My first trip to Winter Harbour to set up the camps was June 10th, and of course we had to test out the waters for a couple days before getting everything set up for the season.

It was excellent on all offshore areas from Solander to Cape Scott with a lot of nice early season Chinook ranging from 15-20 lbs. A week or so later (mid-June) the fish continued in strong numbers on the outside, but a steady stream of fish were continually racing into Kains Island (which is only 3 minutes from Oli’s Fishing Charters main float camp) to feed on the over abundance of needle fish.

You really did not need to go past Kains to find your fish until the end of July. August was a little different, usually being the best time of the year, this year the fish were a little harder to find. We were still able to find them as most were lurking around the Brooks Bay area.

This lasted up until about the 3rd week of August when the floodgates opened up and the Coho started piling up in HUGE numbers!

Anywhere from Lawn Point to Solander Island was stuffed with Coho. Most days we could not even get our lines deep enough to fish for Chinook salmon as our gear was hit by Coho on the way down every time! There were many days where we caught well over 75 coho.

This went on until about the 3rd week of September with numbers and sizes just increasing as the season progressed. The Coho started out on a 7-12 lbs average and by the 1st week of September sizes were averaging between 15-20 lbs with our biggest being 22.5 pounds!

All in all the Winter Harbour Fishing season was outstanding. Even though Chinook numbers were down a bit in August, the epic Coho fishing made up for it!

Our next blog post coming in a couple weeks: Winter Harbour Halibut Fishing Report 2014