Kinahan Islands

The Kinahan Islands sit west of Prince Rupert in the approaches to Chatham Sound, a cluster of rocky islets and kelp-fringed shoreline that concentrates baitfish and holds feeding salmon along their edges. Chinook Salmon are the headline target, with peaks running February through April and again April through July, while Coho Salmon fire from May through September. Working depths of 30 to 120 feet covers the productive water, where downrigger trolling with whole herring, anchovy in a teaser head, trolling spoons, or hootchies behind flashers is the dominant approach for Chinook, backed up by mooching cut-plug herring or jigging metal jigs and soft plastic swimbaits along the drop-offs. Coho respond to trolling spoons, hoochies, plastic squids, and cut plug herring on the downriggers, and turn aggressive to bucktail flies worked near the surface or metal jigs and casting spoons retrieved through breaking fish.