January 25th - Winter Spring Fishing? (#26)

Pete, Kyle and I set out for a morning of winter spring fishing. The reports had been good, and conditions were forecast to be favourable. Conditions ended up being calm but very foggy. Visibility was between 100 and 300 m throughout the day! We went out to Constance Bank first and had no luck though we hooked three small ling cod. After Constance Bank (where a huge freighter was anchored) we went over towards Esquimalt, and had no luck other than a borderline legal spring which we let go. In spite of no fish to bring home, it was a nice day on the water - and not bad for January!

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56 km

December 24th - Cowichan Bay (#25)

Monica, Jenny,Claire and I went for a Christmas eve prawning trip to Saanich Inlet. The weather was sunny and calm and not too cold considering the time of year! We put our traps down off Ardmore and then went to Cowichan Bay for a pub lunch - nice and warm! After lunch we made our way back to pull the traps and stopped by a large cargo ship on the way. 295 m long and 45 m wide - a bit bigger than us! The catch was not as big as some times, 103 prawns, but I think I dropped a few traps too shallow this time. The prawn puller with hands free attachment worked well. A lovely day out!

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48 km.

October 5th - Constance Bank (#24)

Martin and I went out again to Constance Bank to look for some more coho. We stopped first and emptied Martin's prawn traps near the launch ramp and then went out to the bank. On our way we dropped out traps at two locations near the bank (#63 and #64). the traps were well weighted and has 300+ ft of line in spite of about a 200 ft depth. We fished for a while, and things were pretty quite. We hooked and landed one nice coho (while watching the MS Coho come in and out of Victoria!) at #65. After we decided that coho fishing was too slow we tried our hand jigging for halibut on the bottom with no success. When we decided that we were done we went looking for our two prawn traps, but they were nowhere to be seen! Amazingly we found trap#64 at  location #65 and then after much more searching found trap # 63 at location #66!. So no gear was lost! (we thought we had probably lost all of them!) . The weather conditions were great, and we were lcuk that it was easy to see the traps at a good distance.

Overall route - click to enlarge

Click to enlarge - zoom on Constance Bank

52 km.

October 2nd - Constance Bank (#23)

Martin and I went out to Constance Bank for the afternoon to see how the coho fishing was. We landed two coho and had a couple more hits. It was also a great afternoon to be out! Flat water and a few rainbows about!

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33 km

September 6-8 - Sidney C-Brat Gathering (#22)

I launched the boat on the 2nd at Cattle Point north ramp and went over to the mooring buoy where I left Natural C-lection until the 5th when I went up to Port Sidney Marina where I was hosting the Sidney C-brat gathering. I met a few of the "brats", had a nice Thai dinner and then came back to Victoria by car so as to work Friday. On Friday afternoon, I went back up by truck and dropped off the trailer to have the brakes fixed. We then gathered at Fish on 5th for a great dinner and a group of us went on to Boondocks for a couple of beers. Saturday was spent walking the docks, checking out everyone's boats, a Thai lunch, a visit to West Marine, a few boat christenings, and then a post luck dinner in the event tent. I was pretty happy how the event went and feel I would be happy to host another one in a year or so. I came back to Cadboro Bay late Sunday morning and left the boat on the mooring again. During the week, the trailer brakes were fixed, and I took the boat back out of the water on the 14th. Even in that short time, there was a rim of algal growth to remove, as well as several gull deposits!

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The album

Sidney Cbrats

61 km, not sure how much gas...

September 1st - Otter Point fishing (#21)

Jenny, Jayson, Claire and I went for a fishing trip to the waters out of Sooke. The forecast was for some wind, but it was calm until late morning. Unfortunately,the fishing was very slow - one good hit, a small pink and a wild coho. I forgot to turn the tracking on for the first part of the trip, so there is a blank section which I made up from memory! We had some "adventures" with some commercial crab trap lines that resulted in some lost gear... not the best day fishing, but a good day out on the water! :)

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38 km, 1.3 km/l approx

August 30 - prawning and Portland Island (#20)

Jenny, Claire, Jayson and I set out from Tsartlip ramp to go prawning and to visit Portland Island. We left the ramp around 10:30 and spent some time setting our traps in the usual area. we covered depths from about 180 ft to 270 ft and the deeper ones were more productive at this time of year. We then went around to Princess Bay where we shore tied with the anchor buddy, had a picnic lunch and then went for a walk inland and over to the Kanaka bluffs and back via shell beach. We then made our way around the east side of the island and back to our traps which produced reasonably well! The anchor buddy system works well, and my ACE prawn puller system also works well!

Portland trials - click to enlarge

The boat shore tied with the anchor buddy

It was Jayson's first time prawning and he had fun pulling traps and cleaning the prawns.

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56 km,