Chinook Salmon Fishing in Prince Rupert, BC

Prince Rupert sits on the migratory highway for Skeena and Nass Chinook plus Alaska-bound stocks, and that traffic shapes your whole trip. The heaviest push runs from mid-June through July as fish stage before entering the rivers, with strong fishing from April onward and an earlier window from February through April. Feeder Chinook, the immature fish that never leave, hold through spring and again in fall and early winter around Work Channel and Chatham Sound, so the water is rarely empty. Late winter is the soft spot. We cover 26 spots that hold Chinook here, including Baron Island (North End), Bell Passage, Chatham Sound, Digby Island Kelp Beds, Dundas Island, Edye Passage, Green Island and Holliday Island.

Two things drive the bite. Fish the low light, from just before sunrise through the first couple of hours of daylight, and again as the light goes in the evening. Through the middle of a bright day it tails off. Fish moving water too, ideally once the tide is running at about 1.5 knots or more. Dead slack is the worst of it, so plan around the run of the ebb or the flood rather than the turn.

Downrigger trolling does most of the work, with whole herring, anchovy in teaser head, trolling spoons or hootchies behind flashers at 40 to 120 feet along the tide lines off Work Channel, Dundas and the Skeena approaches. Drift-mooching cut-plug herring works on fish tight to structure along the outer islands, and metal jigs or soft plastic swimbaits cover bait balls and pinnacles.