Great day on the Cowichan River today, which is a sentimental favorite for most island anglers, inasmuch as it is a designated Canadian Heritage River. The system appears to be in very good shape, possibly the best I've seen in several years, plenty of big Chinook are returning to spawn, which is naturally a great sign. "K" broke the rod tip on his brand new $500 rod fighting a big slabbie - good thing for him its under warranty.
Both "D" and I lost a few lures tussling with these big hogs but all is fair out on the river. I'll happily lose a $10 lure for a feisty man-to-fish tug of war. We hoped to see more Coho - I did hook but did not land one today - but it was 99% Chinook as far as we could tell.
We got to Sandy Pool early, by about 7:15 but the small parking lot was already overflowing and the river at that time was very high and fast flowing, so we moved on about 5 kms up the river until we found a great access point. Parked and walked about 10 minutes down a trail paralleling the river and then perhaps another 200 meters upstream along the river proper, where we found some nice flat water sections of the river and a couple of really nice deeper pools. "Access" along the Cowichan is becoming more challenging year over year due to the encroachment of private property/lands along the river proper.
Had an interesting convo with a local guide contracted out to DFO to drive the entire length of the system specifically to canvass and record the observations of anglers up and down the river about how many fish we're seeing, what species, how long we fished a particular segment of the river, whether we were fly or spin casting etc. Nice to see some actual planning and thought and 'science' occurring in BC fish management...!
We got into an animated discussion with him on one of the sorest topics among those of us who love this river, namely the annual drunken inner tubing nonsense that occurs each year on this special river, and which does great harm to it. Like us he hated the idea of it but did mention that one of the key properties where tubers enter the river is apparently for sale and there is hope among locals that a new buyer will put the kibosh on that highly destructive activity. We can but hope because all that sun tan lotion and screen glopped onto a couple thousand people winds up in the river, massively impacting primary fish food sources by compromising and killing off bug hatches.