2025 Victoria and Oak Bay Reports

[Randy M]

The only fish we can seem to find are sub legal shakers, 2-3 lbs.
Not much bait showing either.

The only fish we can seem to find are sub legal shakers, 2-3 lbs.
Not much bait showing either.

We fished for 2 hours monday and had one shaker and one good bite but lost it. no bait showing but a few fish were showing on the sounder on OB flats.

 

[Rayvon]

Fished with a friend Sunday,great weather and a few fish around.Kept a 6 & 8 lb. and lost a good size one. Lots of undersize too,all caught close to bottom with spoons.Crabbing was good too.

 

[Randy M]

Fished with a friend Sunday,great weather and a few fish around.Kept a 6 & 8 lb. and lost a good size one. Lots of undersize too,all caught close to bottom with spoons.Crabbing was good too.

were you were on OB flats ?

 

[King Crab]

Lots of small chinooks off Constance yesterday (Tuesday). Nothing worth keeping. I heard the waterfront was slow as well.

 

[Rayvon]

were you were on OB flats ?

No,we trolled from Saxe Point east to Clover Point ,action was between Brochy and flag pole.

 

[Original]

Got out Sunday 8-1. And stayed off the waterfront. Got a few shakers early then around 10:30 we had back to back double headders of barely legals for the next hr. We did manage to get a 60cm that met the tub and on our last tach back to our traps off Sax I lost our biggest hit of the day. Traps were ok with a few keepers. Conditions were pretty good and most of the bait marked and fish caught were on spoons out where the freighters would be anchored in 100ft of water.

 

[kaelc]

Got out for a quick feeding of dog fish before the swells got a little big and they started to white cap. Trolled in front of Pedder and had one immediately almost measurable released in the water than nothing. Buddy had a bunch of new toys on his boat and wanted some anchor practise so good to skip work.

 

[kaelc]

Got out for a quick Hali fish, left the dock at 1:45pm dropped a crab trap and then enjoyed skipping over the waves on shockwave seats out to boarder bank to the first spot I ever caught a rec halibut. Let my buddy set the anchor himself and we were enjoying a break in the rain and a dog fest pretty quickly.

He had fresh salmon bellies and nicely salted herring on board. We had a double header of dogs on my side and his rod goes off, with a purple haze skirt.

A really nice Hali, difficult to measure in the water but looked too big and dam hooks were to deep in its mouth. Brought on board realizing it might not have been a keeper back in the 120-133 days and used pliers to extract one of the hooks, other I didn’t see so hopefully snapped off when it was thrashing. Got it back in the water pretty quick and it gave us a big splash and headed back to the deep.

Pulled the plug pretty shortly after, skunked again for crabs and made it back to the dock at nightfall.

 

[tubber]

Surplus Herby's in Vernon had a few decent salty deals last week.

 

[SeaSaw]

Got out with my mother and daughter to enjoy the brief window of sunshine from 11 to 2 today. One half decent hit that the 8 year old exhausted herself on, only to see it pop off 30ft behind the boat on an AP herring spoon at 130ft in 140ft of water. No other hits. Did manage a handful of crabs. Great day.

 

[Doug]

I fished with a friend on sat. Started out at Whirl Bay and fished for 1.5 hrs and nothing on the screen and no bites. Moved back to the Pedder bay can buoy and fished for 1.5 hrs and got three. Let the first fish (57cm) go and kept two 65cm. Fish were on bottom and all caught on bait, nothing on spoons or hootchies. There were four boats fishing the area. Good to hear Kaelc got to use the salmon bellies.

Fished halibut at the mud hole Sunday, perfect tide flow, calms seas, no rain. Just 25 X 3 ft dog fish and used up a lot of salmon bellies, herring and hook sets.

I feels for Kaelc for having to let go his nice halibut.

-As of Dec 1st we have only used 75% of the halibut TAC for this year.
-We cannot carry over any % numbers of the under TAC allotment to the next year.
-If we go over the TAC allotment, any over TAC % numbers are taken away (reduced) from the following year TAC numbers.
-If we are over the TAC allotment in Sept, DFO shuts us down with an email post.
-If DFO knows we are leaving 25% of the TAC still in the water, why not open up Dec to one halibut any size to use up this year's TAC. DFO could do it with an email post the same way they shut us down.

Sorry about the rant, but reducing the halibut size screwed us fisherman with leaving TAC in the water, keeping only smaller halibut and to top things off, they kept halibut fishing in area 19/20 closed in the spring when it is usually open..

 

[Aces]

I fished with a friend on sat. Started out at Whirl Bay and fished for 1.5 hrs and nothing on the screen and no bites. Moved back to the Pedder bay can buoy and fished for 1.5 hrs and got three. Let the first fish (57cm) go and kept two 65cm. Fish were on bottom and all caught on bait, nothing on spoons or hootchies. There were four boats fishing the area. Good to hear Kaelc got to use the salmon bellies.

Fished halibut at the mud hole Sunday, perfect tide flow, calms seas, no rain. Just 25 X 3 ft dog fish and used up a lot of salmon bellies, herring and hook sets.

I feels for Kaelc for having to let go his nice halibut.

-As of Dec 1st we have only used 75% of the halibut TAC for this year.
-We cannot carry over any % numbers of the under TAC allotment to the next year.
-If we go over the TAC allotment, any over TAC % numbers are taken away (reduced) from the following year TAC numbers.
-If we are over the TAC allotment in Sept, DFO shuts us down with an email post.
-If DFO knows we are leaving 25% of the TAC still in the water, why not open up Dec to one halibut any size to use up this year's TAC. DFO could do it with an email post the same way they shut us down.

Sorry about the rant, but reducing the halibut size screwed us fisherman with leaving TAC in the water, keeping only smaller halibut and to top things off, they kept halibut fishing in area 19/20 closed in the spring when it is usually open..

I gave up halibut fishing cuz I’m not interested in killing babies

 

[MRW]

K

I fished with a friend on sat. Started out at Whirl Bay and fished for 1.5 hrs and nothing on the screen and no bites. Moved back to the Pedder bay can buoy and fished for 1.5 hrs and got three. Let the first fish (57cm) go and kept two 65cm. Fish were on bottom and all caught on bait, nothing on spoons or hootchies. There were four boats fishing the area. Good to hear Kaelc got to use the salmon bellies.

Fished halibut at the mud hole Sunday, perfect tide flow, calms seas, no rain. Just 25 X 3 ft dog fish and used up a lot of salmon bellies, herring and hook sets.

I feels for Kaelc for having to let go his nice halibut.

-As of Dec 1st we have only used 75% of the halibut TAC for this year.
-We cannot carry over any % numbers of the under TAC allotment to the next year.
-If we go over the TAC allotment, any over TAC % numbers are taken away (reduced) from the following year TAC numbers.
-If we are over the TAC allotment in Sept, DFO shuts us down with an email post.
-If DFO knows we are leaving 25% of the TAC still in the water, why not open up Dec to one halibut any size to use up this year's TAC. DFO could do it with an email post the same way they shut us down.

Sorry about the rant, but reducing the halibut size screwed us fisherman with leaving TAC in the water, keeping only smaller halibut and to top things off, they kept halibut fishing in area 19/20 closed in the spring when it is usually open..

I agree although I am confused on what a fishing yr is. Is it a license year or a calendar yr?
Some yrs they seem to reopen in feb after we got our quota and other yrs they wait till the new licence is available.

 

[eroyd]

Launched at Flemming around noon. Started fishing near Brotchie. 5 minutes in and got a 12lb. Circled back around and released another about 8. In pretty tight in 80'.
Checked further east towards Clover but nothing. Couple of boats fishing clover to trial. Only another small spring at McAuley.
Some good reports locally near shore.

 

[SeaSaw]

Launched out of Esquimalt Anglers at 800 this morning with a rookie friend and his son. Was pretty quiet at 120ft with a couple shakers - so went out to ~160ft and had some great action with three in the boat around 65cm - all clipped white hatchery springs which are my family's favorite -- heads saved for the box. Bloody nose with an AP herring was the hot ticket, but the black flasher with a sandlance got one of the three - even had a few double headers in the meyhem. Very few shakers, and a few 50-ish cm fish released in the water. The kid's arms were cooked, but lots of smiles on a sunny calm winter day. Had a few really nice dungies in one of the four traps set out, with the others filled with red rock. Off the water at 1.