2024 Bamfield and Barkley Sound Reports

Headed up next week for 3 nights - steaming up from sooke - looking forward to checking out bamfield area - and hopefully catching a few fish. If you see me up that way give a wave. Cheers
 

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Heading up for a day trip tomorrow, any reports? Will post a report when back. Debating between crew/austin vs pachena/keeha…
 
Just got back from a few days fishing out of Bamfield. Fishing seemed really good for this time of year. Our first day was our only full day fishing, starting at Beale without luck then over to Cree where we got a teener Chinook and three coho. Headed off to rats nose and got our limits of Hali pretty quick on anchor, all smalls though. The next day we fished cree for a couple ours and got a couple Chinook and couple coho. We then headed out of the sound a bit for lings. Now I know ling fishing is meant to be the easiest fishing, ‘they’re everywhere’, but I have never had much luck finding them when I’ve looked. This time was different, starting right away w a nice 20 pounder, then 15 and a couple more 10s. Then something crazy happened, some beast took my hook and started peeling line and thrashing head, I pushed my squall 40 to max drag and couped the spool with my thumb, I managed to get it stopped and take 6 cranks up before it decided it pull again. It completely buckled my rod and took line before breaking off. I had 80 lb broad and a short 55lb mono leader, which I sure regret, would have loved to see what that fish was. Couldn’t have been bottom bc of the head thrashing and give and take of line, and I think a seal would have peeled line way faster. Huge ling, Hali? Anyway, final day we fished another couple hours at Cree, for our limit of coho and a couple teener Chinook. then went back out for Lings, getting skunked at a few new spots we tried, then picked up two more from the same spot we had luck the day before.White hoochie consistent outperformed spoons for salmon, fishing 45-65 on the rigger. Pipe jig was the performer for Lings and rockfish.
Where is rats nose?
 
Well, another good year in Bamfield. We ran the boat from Bellingham on Thursday AM and headed home yesterday. The fishing was good! We had consistently good fishing at Cree. Most fish came on anchovies rigged with purple haze, bloody nose and chartreuse heads. They all produced equally. We fished hootchies but found that a white micro-hootchie did best. SMALL bait out there so we even threw down a 2.5" Kingfisher spoon in the herring aide pattern and had a fish in the boat in short order. We tried to stay as close to the outside as possible and found that we saw some bigger fish. Most of our fish were in the 16-18lb range. TIght lines!
 
Yeah we found the fishing better on outside edges of sound as well. We were out there on Saturday/Sunday. In my opinion it has slowed a bit than previous weekend. The weekend before was just nuts.

I didn't run any bait on my boat with all the shakers around. Just standard white hootchies and 2.0/3.0 spoons. All of our fish were in the teens.

Found a few on lower stretch at Kirby on Sunday as we were heading back.
 
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I have been trying to find out for sure, is there a maximum size restriction in area 23 and 123 right now?
Thanks in advance if someone let me know
 
Max size offshore seaward of boundary in 123 so 1 chinook a day up to 80 cm. It was dead out there today. Anyone having any luck managed to scrape up some very small legal and tons of shakers at Cree today planning for there tomorrow and hope to find some bigger class of fish. Bait has been tiny herring so wee gees have been working.
 
Yeah we found the fishing better on outside edges of sound as well. We were out there on Saturday/Sunday. In my opinion it has slowed a bit than previous weekend. The weekend before was just nuts.

I didn't run any bait on my boat with all the shakers around. Just standard white hootchies and 2.0/3.0 spoons. All of our fish were in the teens.

Found a few on lower stretch at Kirby on Sunday as we were heading back.
Any word on Beale, Keeha or Pachena?
 
Max size offshore seaward of boundary in 123 so 1 chinook a day up to 80 cm. It was dead out there today. Anyone having any luck managed to scrape up some very small legal and tons of shakers at Cree today planning for there tomorrow and hope to find some bigger class of fish. Bait has been tiny herring so wee gees have been working.
does that also include area 23?
 
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