Start of Prawn Fishing

May 1st:  We set out from Cowichan Bay on Sunday April 29th, but did not get to far before we discovered a problem with an alternator over charging and had to pull into Ladysmith to get things fixed up. Left from Ladysmith on Monday afternoon and made good time up to Lasqueti Island where we stopped for the night. The weather held for us as we continued early the next morning for Seymour Narrows. Fair tides and light winds allowed us a uneventful rest of the trip up the coast.

Arriving to the snow covered mountains in the inlets we traveled to where we like to fish and proceeded to get the traps baited and ready for opening day. We are not expecting a big prawn season here up here north as the signs at the end of the last season pointed to an average to low season this year.

May 8th:  We have been fishing for a few days now and it appears that fishing will be down from last year as we expected. With less prawns around we are only finding them in the favoured feeding areas (called honey holes). With less prawns there are also less and smaller octopus.

The salmon farms use Slice a insecticide to get rid of sea lice from their fish. The Slice is also  toxic for other shellfish like prawns and crab, so there is a dead zone for a mile or so around farms that have been treated this past winter. We will be moving more this year to different grounds throughout the season.

We may not be fishing much where the King shrimp are, so there may not be any for the CSF this year. The weather is warmer and dryer, the ocean temperature 3 or 4 degrees higher than the previous year.

This year the crew is my Son Sebastien back from University and my daughter Rosalie who has finished high school and is coming for her first full fishing season this year and Clay Minette-Crow is back again to round out the crew.  We will update you with news of the fishing season from time to time