Kicking it off

With the advent of a spring we thought would never come, I got news last week that the first coho has been caught in the BC Mainland’s Capilano River. Granted, the fish barely tipped the scales at a pound and a half, but it was, without question an inriver fish. Size-wise, that’s typical of these early run fish that storm upstream through April and May ahead of the low water conditions that develop come June when they cinch down the flow over the Cleveland Dam eight kilometres upstream. Because these fish come in so early, they miss out on five months of feeding and growing through the summer months.

Ok, now while I’m honour bound not to reveal the run where the fish hit, I can tell you it was somewhere below the Upper Levels Highway bridge. I can also divulge that it stole three ghost shrimp off the angler’s hook before he actually twigged to the fact that the small coho was dining out on his tab. True, they can be sneaky sometimes, but this one took the foam float under each time.

Look for the inriver Cap coho fishing to pick up on the lower runs over the next couple of weeks. May is typically prime time, but by then the word is out and anglers from around the Lower Mainland converge on the river, and the fish enter a state of shock. So the quandry is whether to fish early when there are fewer fish and fewer anglers or later when there are more fish and many more anglers. My druthers are to go early.