I recently embarked on a fishing trip across the international border into Canada, where you can legally catch and keep all sorts of salmon that are not legal to catch and keep in the State of Washington (more on this topic further down!).
I will share a few helpful tips and my overall report from our fishing trip, but also how you can quite easily go through the steps and requirements to have your own fishing trip in Canada while we wait for our blackmouth seasons to open up in Puget Sound.
We intended to launch from John Wayne Marina around 7:30 am with a 7:45 sunrise and motor north to Coyote Bank in the middle of the Strait of Juan De Fuca, where the international boundary runs right through the bank. These plans went slightly awry when they shut down Highway 16 due to an accident.
Fishy information for Canadian blackmouth salmon fishing
Eventually, we got to the Marina, and there was only one boat ahead of us on this random Tuesday morning, and they let us go ahead of them as they were screwing around with some stuff. So that meant we were the first boat to the fishing grounds, which was about a 16-mile run from John Wayne Marina.
The current had a slight ebb running, so we aimed for the Northeast corner in about 160 ft of water and trolled in a SW direction. Man, it felt weird to be downrigger fishing again after about a 5-month break! I dramatically reduce my downrigger fishing as soon as salmon start to pour into the river in August and September.
We made our first pass in about half an hour with zero bait, zero fish, and zero bites. Now, there’s another article published on this topic of fishing for salmon on Coyote Bank on another blog that I was basing some of my intel on. It said to fish 30-40 ft off the bottom due to the high abundance of small lingcod in the area that will absolutely mess up your trolling plan.
We started out that way, but at some point, the blackmouth instincts kicked in, and you gotta hit bottom with your lead and troll right there within 5 feet of the bottom the whole time. We tried a shallower depth line and it was still dead. We passed the other 2 boats out there with us and they said the same thing.
What we were using to fish for these International Blackmouth
I was using an anchovy in a herring aide helmet, and my fishing partner was running his favorite hoochie setup with a fillet. Nothing was getting bit. We also tried spoons off and on throughout the day as one of the boats got their fish on spoons. For more on salmon fishing setups try this page about Puget Sound Salmon Fishing here.
Finally, we moved into the 115 ft line and got our first fish. It was a hatchery fish, maybe 45-50 cm (min size is 45 cm, which is a little more than 17 inches!), and rather than measure it, we decided to let it go, thinking we were here to catch bigger fish than this. It was probably 20 inches, one of those fish you would almost measure in Washington, but you know it isn’t going to be 22 inches.
Now the 100 ft line is basically where the US border is, but anything from there to 120 is about on top of the Bank where all the Ling Dings are. If you are within 20 ft of the bottom you will hook a ling ding and you won’t even see them take your offering. Staying at least 20 ft from the bottom in between 100 and 120 feet seemed okay. In deeper water, there aren’t as much Ling Dings and you can drop all the way down without hooking them.
We talked to the other boats and I would guess they had 2-3 bites the whole day. We ended up with two bites and two fish by the end of the day.
The second fish was in 105 feet of water, and I had dropped down to about 100 feet on the wire, and it bit immediately. If it hadn’t bit, I would probably would have had a ling on shortly afterward.
Unfortunately, something broke on my Luhr Jensen mooching reel, and the drag would not engage. I fought this fish basically without drag the entire time, and it took me too long to realize that’s what was going on, which resulted in some sore knuckles as any releasing of the reel paddles resulted in plenty of whack-whack-whack on my fingertips and knuckles as it free spooled quickly.
Eventually, I got the blackmouth (chinook, spring?) to the boat, and we got it in the net. The fish looked to be about 10-12 lbs. We were disappointed that it had a fin, and our understanding of the regulations was that only adipose fin-clipped salmon could be retained. Boy, were we wrong about that! So, we released our second “keeper” of the trip.
Here’s how we mis-read the regulations.
The above indicates to us that Areas 19-3 had a min size of 45 cm, 2 daily limit and status of open with restrictions, so we head down to the restrictions section below:
So I read the above but failed to take into account the word “Reminder!” Why is there a reminder in the restrictions area? I assumed restrictions were things you were restricted from doing. And after reading about hatchery-marked salmon, I assumed wrongly that I could only retain hatchery salmon!
The last thing I will say about our trip and future trips is the tides are really important. Normally, when I’m in the swing of things I’m look at the tides very closely, but being out of practice I just lined up the perfect weather with my schedule for the week and got a group together to hit it. I of course looked at the tides for launching and retrieving, but neglected to examine them for fishing.
We fished a super small tide exchange that allowed us to fish both ways all day. While that’s great for shrimping, it resulted in zero bait being pushed up on the bank, which meant fishing was incredibly slow. This area has been hot on better tides, so pay attention to that, or you might just be having a beautiful day on the water like us.
I’m not complaining, it was an incredible day!
How to take a trip to Canadian waters for salmon this winter.
Okay, here’s how you can repeat this trip.
Take a look at this URL for your regulations on the area we fished which is 19-3.
Here’s where you can go to purchase a Canadian license online for salmon fishing.
Here’s the link to WDFW’s trip reporting notification tool.
Make sure you take your passport and a printed-out version of your license with a chinook catch card and immediately record any chinook salmon retained. Also, you will need to fill out that WDFW trip notification before your trip to Canada.
As long as you don’t land in Canada or anchor up you don’t have to deal with customs.
Last point, watch the weather extremely closely. This is not a place you want to encounter dynamic volatile weather as it’s a long run to anywhere safe from the middle of the Strait and this area is known for many convergence events that produce huge seas in response to strong winds that can come seemingly come out of nowhere.
If you don’t know how to plan safely around marine weather, head to our page on marine weather safety here.
Don’t mess around!