Year Of The Charlotte Queen Kings
Kicker Boat Adventuring On The
Hippa Side of Haida Gwaii
Originally Published December '11, The Reel News
By Terry W. Sheely
We came to this wild place on the far side of Haida Gwaii, 50 miles into the ocean beyond the edge of the continent, expecting to cram the fish box with big northern silver salmon, and fell into an unexpected sizzle of unbelievable late chinook action, two-handed hallies, limits of ling, flat water, unexpected suntans and great fish stories.
I love this place.
You never know what to expect, but you know it’s going to be good and this time it was even better.
And that was before lithesome Laura, jigging alone, hooked, harpooned and heaved into submission—112 pounds of halibut attitude, which was a day before Jim and I gave up trying not to catch gorging kings on garish halibut rigs and took refuge at The Fangs to hook lingcod, black rockfish and other edibles on every cast to the edge of the kelp with trout-size spinning rods and Point Wilson Dart jigs.
It was the first full week in August last year when TRN publisher Jim Goerg and I arrived by air shuttle, Sikorsky S-76A helicopter, on the upper deck of the floating fish lodge Charlotte Queen, while it was anchored in the calm of its reflection in Nesto Inlet.
The sheltered inlet is behind the imposing shield of towering Hippa Island on the northwest side of Graham Island and no matter how bad the ocean blows up, I’ve always been able to catch salmon and halibut in the lee behind Hippa Island. It’s the only, as far as I know, west side floating lodge anchorage that offersprotected fishing no matter how bad the weather is the ocean.
We’ve been here several times before because this is where I come when I need a fishing adventure to remember and fillets for winter dinners. Because this is where I caught a 40-pound king alone in a gale, where my wife lost her largest chinook ever while surrounded by half-a-dozen breaching humpback whales, where Jim was broken off by a monster king—50 probably bigger—that smoked his reel on a screaming long surface run, where my son and I stayed longer than we should have in waves that stacked up like two story buildings because we were catching kings and silvers on every drift, and where doubles on 25 pound kings sometimes come so often that it hardly rates a footnote.
And then there are the ling cod, blankets of tasty black rockfish (bring a fly rod and streamers or light trout stick and jigs-the fun is worth the effort), ominous salmon sharks, whales, puffins, incomprehensively beautiful scenery, bears, custom dual-console 18-foot fishing skiffs for self-guided fishing and Chef Pierre’s quail stuffed with white rice, spinach, and cranberry.
If it sounds pretentious—it’s not. It’s a fish camp with class and comfort and flannel shirts at the dinner table.
Graham is the largest of the 400-plus islands and dry rocks wedged into the archipelago formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. It is the land base for the storied fishing at Langara 40 miles north of Hippa and its nooks shelter the few floating lodges tucked into the uninhabitably rugged west side where we are fishing.
If the name Haida Gwaii seems unfamiliar it is only because it is new. Local Haida advocates are in a final push to officially revise the historic English name Queen Charlotte Islands to traditional First Nation Haida Gwaii, which translates to Islands of the People. Had they asked me, I would have named it Islands of Fish which outnumber the 5,000 people by a million or so.
The Continental Shelf lies just offshore from the west side of Graham, an abyss that generates upwellings, food and tidal surges that funnel baitfish, salmon, halibut and bottomfish into a confusion of predators and prey unlike just about anywhere else-period.
The west side is 50 miles off the British Columbia mainland into the Pacific. It’s such a rugged place, slammed by monster winter storms that every one of the year-round residents live in clusters on the lee side of the archipelago. The exposed west side facing into the ocean is uninhabited.
Only one road, a narrow logging track from Queen Charlotte City crosses the islands to the west side at Rennel Sound. When you fish here, you know that you’re alone except for other lodge fishers and a roving fish master who rides herd, radios hot spots, and replenishes supplies.
The Haida Gawii complex is shaped like a huge slice of pie, and is an off-shore oasis that spawns tons of herring, anchovies, candlefish, shrimp, squid, krill, fry and other feeder baits, which attract feeding salmon, halibut, lings and other migrating predators.
For spawner salmon slowly migrating toward mainland rivers the uninhabited, food-rich west side of Graham Island is the first landfall they hit and these fish are prime, smoking hot and unbelievable fighters. The kings invariably fight bigger than they are. I’ve had 30 pounders do successive cartwheels, 20 pounders nearly spool reels, and been surprised more than once to fight a “personal best” that shrank to 25 pounds in the net.
The Charlotte Queen is a remodeled, renovated, buffed, varnished and polished floating lodge that came into the world as a working tug boat, and has evolved into a first-class, royal blue base camp anchored in the dead-calm waters of Nesto Inlet. It is 100 feet long, limited to 12 guests, with private cabins and showers. A hot tub is on the upper deck, and the dining area is open all hours. Each dinner offers surf and turf entrees, good wines, and you need to save room for dessert.
We’re issued rainproof float coats and pants, and rubber boots that are stored in the heated gear room. Partners are assigned to center-console fishing boats with 50 hp Honda four-strokes, dry storage, GPS, depth sounders fish finders, single-action mooching rods and reels. For salmon we are given 10 ½ foot Daiwa mooching rods and Daiwa M-1 single action (knuckle busters) mooching reels. “Shimano TR 200 G level wind reels are available for those we cannot convince to use the single action,” Bruce says. Reels are loaded with Maxima 25 pound ultra green. For halibut the boats are equipped with 7-foot Berkley Rough Neck Halibut rods and Shimano TLD 20 reels with Berkley Big Game 50-pound line.
The boats carry well-stocked tackle boxes, plenty of mooching and circle hooks, array of round weights (rigged sliding) net, gaff, marker buoy and harpoon. The tackle is replenished each day and deckhands efficiently whisk the daily catch off to be cleaned, vacuum packed, frozen and logged on the fish board.
On an attached barge is a helipad, industrial vacuum packer, freezer, cooler wedged with soft drinks and beer, and an assortment of whale bones and international flotsam.
The lodge fishing season is Memorial to Labor Day from the anchorage behind Hippa Island where the ship is comfortably protected from the seasonal snits and squalls of the north Pacific. We are smack in the center of one of North America’s finest salmon, halibut and bottomfish grounds.
Charlotte Queen Adventures (www.salmonfishingonline.com) owner Bruce Plankinton and lodge manager Laura Rossy along with the rest of the crew line up to greet us as we step off the ‘copter. A quick stop in the dining room for barbeque ribs, shrimp, seafood chowder, quiche’ and prawns, then it was out to the boats for a rundown on do, don’t, tackle and boats. The familiarization came with a dandy little booklet of fishing maps, tackle rigs, knots, and other how-to.
The day had started with a wake-up call at the Delta Hotel in Richmond near Vancouver International Airport, and a short shuttle ride to Charlotte Queen Adventures offices near the South Terminal. We left Jim’s SUV at the Delta, where overnight guests are allowed free absentee parking while fishing). At CQA headquarters we picked up fishing licenses, coffee and muffins, and boarded a chartered Northern Thunderbird Air Beechcraft 1900D turboprop for a 1½ hour flight up the coast and west across Hecate Strait to Sandspit. At Sandspit airport we transferred into the 12-passenger helicopter for a gorgeous low-level flight through the mountains and snow fields and across the island to the lodge. For me, the flight in is a big part of the adventure.
A half-hour later Jim and I are dropping plug cut herring 20 pulls into a flat ocean at “The Shipwreck” marked by the rusting remains of the Clarksdale Victory a US cargo transport that blew aground on Hippa in a wild November storm in1947. Forty nine died. Two hours later Jim and I have four kings and three 7 to 12-pound silvers in the boat, one silver short of our daily limit of two kings and two silvers each.
In the first half-day of get-acquainted fishing our six-boat group brings back 16 kings and four silvers. My 28-pounder is big chinook for the day and the trip is just starting.
Bruce tells us, “this is the best fishing I’ve seen in years,” explaining that water temperatures are running 5 degrees colder than in recent seasons and herring are thick. Our kings are deep, 180 to 240 feet, working balls of herring that show up on the Lowrance LMS 525 like globs of green and orange mashed potatoes. Silvers are near the top 20 to 30 pulls out.
The weather, always a question, is shaping up perfectly. Mild breeze, flat water, 60+ degrees, and the best bite is on the slack and ebb tide run out. The next day we find out just how loaded the area is with king salmon when we nail another three kings in short order and shift into catch-and-release mode, which is harder than you might imagine.
The bait is balled deep, often over 200 feet, and the kings are with the bait. Which is where we’re trying to catch halibut. Time after time our huge halibut circle hooks, draped with salmon bellies, horse herring or squid, are inhaled by king salmon, either on the drop or while mooching along the bottom 40 fathoms down.
This many kings this late is an anomaly that Haida Gwaii veterans attribute to the colder ocean water and plentiful bait. Normally June is the best king month, with another surge in July that tapers into August. Last year the bite was hot when Bruce opened the doors and stayed hot until he pulled anchor.
Silvers are July-August fish, and while halibut are here all season-long the biggest are invariably caught in August.
Last year the overlap was huge and offered tremendous fishing for a mix of kings, silvers and halibut. If water temperatures remain cool this year, Bruce looks for a repeat this summer.
On Day 3 Jim and I run to a submerged lump in the ocean called simply, “the hump,” where the bottom rises to within 200 feet of the surface, attracting bait that attracts salmon, lings and hallies plus the usual assortment of humpback whales.
While whales fluke slap and blow, Jim plays a big king that ate in 246 feet of water, makes three circles completely around the boat and finally comes unbuttoned well short of the net. When I last fished The Hump with my son Chad the waves were stacking up like foothills, and crashing like waterfalls and we should have gone in long before we did, but didn’t. Today it’s so flat and the swell so mild I fight to keep awake while running the boat.
Jim hooks another king and releases it. We keep bouncing bottom, looking for hallies or a nice ling and pickup a couple of decent lings and more salmon. We move to “the lighthouse” where kelp streams off a reef in 180 feet of water and I know there are halibut.
I feel a twitch, a pick-up, tighten the slack and slam the rod home. My hallie bite turns into another king, this one a snorting 27 pounder that gives me fits on the spinning rod we brought for bottomfish. The king ate a two-ounce leadhead jig with a plastic white sickle tail worm. Go figure!
Jim catches another chinook on his jig rod, I catch another and then we have a double. King fishing is outrageous this morning. We move, hit another king, then a mess of quillbacks, a couple of yellow-eye and more quillbacks. We move again, switch over to Point Wilson Darts and again we hit a couple of king, but also add yelloweyes and dinner-size lings. Later Chef Pierre tells me to keep a quillback and he’ll stuff it with brown rice and a cream sauce and steam it and he says I’ll beg for more. Tempting, but I pass.
Most of our boats have gone in for lunch soups and naps, but Jim and I are on the hunt for hallies and we eat our sacked lunches while dragging salmon bellies across the bottom, 250 feet down, 1 mph on the GPS. A light overcast is turning into burning sunlight and the water is flat.
Jim’s mooching rod bucks, quivers and powers down. He comes back hard, the fish augers into the bottom, the rod vibrates with tail slab. “Halibut!” Jim shouts. About time.
It’s a good fish and it fights a good halibut fight straight up and straight down always under the boat, always in a tight spiral. I free the gaff lay it nearby and ready the harpoon with the detachable head and 10 feet of nylon rope with a buoy. I’m going to spear this sucker.
Five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes and I see a flash of white under the boat. “Color” I call. Jim tightens down. The fish dives again. Jim grimaces, I grin and balance the harpoon in my hand. I’m a ‘pooner. Get him up here. Jim bends and pulls, reels and bows and the fish is coming up. I shake out the harpoon rope—again. The fish is spiraling upward. I see its white halibut side in the green depths and as it slowly revolves to the surface it—unfreakin’ believably—materializes into a big king.
Salmon, I mutter.
What? Jim says, puzzled, lurching to the gunwale for a look.
A good size king, probably as confused as the angler who caught him, is on its side at the boat. The circle hook is embedded in its left side, explaining the spiral up and down fight, but not explaining how a snagless circle hook can snag a king in more than 200 feet of water. We pop out the hook, hold the king until it wiggles and watch it go. The best halibut fight of the trip came from a king salmon. You just can’t keep them off the hook this time.
Bruce and Laura are fishing in a neighboring boat and they each have a good size king to hold up for my camera. “I’ve been fishing this area for 51 years,” Bruce says, “and you can quote me: This is the best king fishing I’ve ever seen.”
It is outrageous. Jim and I catch chinook when we try for them and when we don’t. We catch chinook on halibut rigs fished 250 feet down, we catch chinook on jigs with plastic worms meant for ling cod, we catch chinook on darts and salmon bellies..
One of our boat calls on the two-way radio complaining, “we can’t get through the salmon to catch our lings.” Ahhhh, poor guy.
Jim and I run a few miles south to Skelu Bay where an ugly reef of exposed rock called “The Fangs” reaches to the edge of deep water surrounded by carpets of streaming brown kelp. Laura caught her halibut near here. And while we’re fishing the shallows with spinning rods and light jigs for lings and rockfish, the salmon bite turns off and the halibut bite turns on back at Red Rock on the flat that we had just left. Over the radio we hear Lynn and John Raber celebrating their twin barndoors—87 and 83 pounders. I turn it off and cast to the kelp.
Halibut or not, Jim and I are having a hoot, casting the light stuff to what must be a voracious feeding carpet of black rockfish. Against the kelp we catch the blacks, good size eaters, keep a limit and continue to catch and release while we hoot, holler and laugh in the boat. Twenty yards away from the kelp and 80 feet down and we hit lings, toothy axe handles, and bigger green things with attitude. We bonk a couple, add a few greenling for sweet fillets. This kelp line is simply loaded with fish. But we can’t find a hallie and we run again—back to Red Rock, back to where the Rabers’ have already caught our halibut.
A whale rolls past. The water is dead still. I drop a salmon belly to 242 feet and immediately catch a big silver.
Later, I’m dragging bottom almost 300 feet down and I see a salmon leaping repeatedly well behind the boat. “I hope that’s not on my halibut line,” I say, but it is. We release the salmon and call it an early day.
On the run in the sun is bouncing off the blue and white of the Charlotte Queen, a black bear is on the beach behind the boat, competing with a dozen eagles for salmon heads, and it’s not raining. We take a break in the hot tub on the top deck, watch the eagles and bear, sip iced ambers, and feel fish muscles turn into pulp.
Prime rib is on the menu tonight served with thick fibrous horseradish that can be cut with a fork. I may kidnap Pierre and pack him off to a kitchen in Black Diamond.
At dinner, there is a low roar of good fish talk--halibut caught, kings lost and released, rockfish in feeding frenzies, whales blowing past. On the back deck the crew is packing fish boxes for the flight out. Bruce says the king catch is a boat record.
On the last day we get a couple of hours fishing before the helicopter arrives and we depart. We run a couple of miles, try half-heartedly for halibut (sure we wound up with enough to eat, but that big one…..) basked in an orange sunrise that lit up Hippa like a spotlight, brought out the green in the water and illuminated the heads of perched eagles like snow balls in green cedar. We called it a trip and headed in for steak and eggs Benedict, showers and to repack.
We wait on the back deck, sipping coffee in the morning sun, and I tell a guy from Quebec that if I ever try to convince someone back home that there is sun on the kings in the Charlottes, they’ll call me a liar.
He laughs. Don’t tell them he says. Don’t tell them.
HIPPA NOTES:
Charlotte Queen Adventures offers 5 and 4-day package trips and limits anglers to 12. There is an 8 man crew including a superb chef and fish master. All fishing is self-guided. A fish master is on the water to hand out gear, refreshments, assistance and advice. Most of the fishing is on the west side of Hippa Island, within a couple of miles of shore, and there are protected inside areas to fish if the wind kicks up.
Downriggers are available, but mooching and trolling with free-sliding weights to develop the “Hippa Drop” is the preferred technique. Single action mooching reels are standard, but conventional reels are available.
All equipment is provided and from our experience is quality gear. There is a strong emphasis on service, and a good wine arrives with every evening meal. Bring liquor. Fish are cleaned, vacuum packed and frozen in airline-approved freezer cartons.
We drove up from Seattle and processed through customs the day before our7:15 a.m. departure and overnighted in Richmond at the Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel which is conveniently located on Cessna Drive within sight of VIA. A lodge representative issues fishing licenses, coffee and breakfast rolls, at the Thunderbird Air office.
Contact:
Laura Rossy,
Charlotte Queen Adventures,
1-800-784-1718 or 604-583-6556.
[email protected]
or on the web at:www.salmonfishingonline.com
For more information:
Charlotte Queen Adventures Ltd.,
1-800-784-1718 or 604-583-6556,
www.salmonfishingonline.com
Queen Charlotte Visitor Centers,
250-559-8316,
www.quinfor.ca
Haida Gwaii print or electronic visitor guide,
www.queencharlotteislandsguide.com
Tourism B.C.,
604-660-3679,
www.HelloBC.com
Delta Vancouver Airport
604-278-1241
www.deltahotels.com
Northern Thunderbird Air
604-232-9211
www.ntair.ca
Charlotte Queen Adventure Ltd. 9398 Alaska Way
Delta, BC V4C 4R8
1-800-784-1718
Fax 604-583-6554
Email: [email protected]
www.salmonfishingonline.com
By Terry W. Sheely
We came to this wild place on the far side of Haida Gwaii, 50 miles into the ocean beyond the edge of the continent, expecting to cram the fish box with big northern silver salmon, and fell into an unexpected sizzle of unbelievable late chinook action, two-handed hallies, limits of ling, flat water, unexpected suntans and great fish stories.
I love this place.
You never know what to expect, but you know it’s going to be good and this time it was even better.
And that was before lithesome Laura, jigging alone, hooked, harpooned and heaved into submission—112 pounds of halibut attitude, which was a day before Jim and I gave up trying not to catch gorging kings on garish halibut rigs and took refuge at The Fangs to hook lingcod, black rockfish and other edibles on every cast to the edge of the kelp with trout-size spinning rods and Point Wilson Dart jigs.
It was the first full week in August last year when TRN publisher Jim Goerg and I arrived by air shuttle, Sikorsky S-76A helicopter, on the upper deck of the floating fish lodge Charlotte Queen, while it was anchored in the calm of its reflection in Nesto Inlet.
The sheltered inlet is behind the imposing shield of towering Hippa Island on the northwest side of Graham Island and no matter how bad the ocean blows up, I’ve always been able to catch salmon and halibut in the lee behind Hippa Island. It’s the only, as far as I know, west side floating lodge anchorage that offersprotected fishing no matter how bad the weather is the ocean.
We’ve been here several times before because this is where I come when I need a fishing adventure to remember and fillets for winter dinners. Because this is where I caught a 40-pound king alone in a gale, where my wife lost her largest chinook ever while surrounded by half-a-dozen breaching humpback whales, where Jim was broken off by a monster king—50 probably bigger—that smoked his reel on a screaming long surface run, where my son and I stayed longer than we should have in waves that stacked up like two story buildings because we were catching kings and silvers on every drift, and where doubles on 25 pound kings sometimes come so often that it hardly rates a footnote.
And then there are the ling cod, blankets of tasty black rockfish (bring a fly rod and streamers or light trout stick and jigs-the fun is worth the effort), ominous salmon sharks, whales, puffins, incomprehensively beautiful scenery, bears, custom dual-console 18-foot fishing skiffs for self-guided fishing and Chef Pierre’s quail stuffed with white rice, spinach, and cranberry.
If it sounds pretentious—it’s not. It’s a fish camp with class and comfort and flannel shirts at the dinner table.
Graham is the largest of the 400-plus islands and dry rocks wedged into the archipelago formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. It is the land base for the storied fishing at Langara 40 miles north of Hippa and its nooks shelter the few floating lodges tucked into the uninhabitably rugged west side where we are fishing.
If the name Haida Gwaii seems unfamiliar it is only because it is new. Local Haida advocates are in a final push to officially revise the historic English name Queen Charlotte Islands to traditional First Nation Haida Gwaii, which translates to Islands of the People. Had they asked me, I would have named it Islands of Fish which outnumber the 5,000 people by a million or so.
The Continental Shelf lies just offshore from the west side of Graham, an abyss that generates upwellings, food and tidal surges that funnel baitfish, salmon, halibut and bottomfish into a confusion of predators and prey unlike just about anywhere else-period.
The west side is 50 miles off the British Columbia mainland into the Pacific. It’s such a rugged place, slammed by monster winter storms that every one of the year-round residents live in clusters on the lee side of the archipelago. The exposed west side facing into the ocean is uninhabited.
Only one road, a narrow logging track from Queen Charlotte City crosses the islands to the west side at Rennel Sound. When you fish here, you know that you’re alone except for other lodge fishers and a roving fish master who rides herd, radios hot spots, and replenishes supplies.
The Haida Gawii complex is shaped like a huge slice of pie, and is an off-shore oasis that spawns tons of herring, anchovies, candlefish, shrimp, squid, krill, fry and other feeder baits, which attract feeding salmon, halibut, lings and other migrating predators.
For spawner salmon slowly migrating toward mainland rivers the uninhabited, food-rich west side of Graham Island is the first landfall they hit and these fish are prime, smoking hot and unbelievable fighters. The kings invariably fight bigger than they are. I’ve had 30 pounders do successive cartwheels, 20 pounders nearly spool reels, and been surprised more than once to fight a “personal best” that shrank to 25 pounds in the net.
The Charlotte Queen is a remodeled, renovated, buffed, varnished and polished floating lodge that came into the world as a working tug boat, and has evolved into a first-class, royal blue base camp anchored in the dead-calm waters of Nesto Inlet. It is 100 feet long, limited to 12 guests, with private cabins and showers. A hot tub is on the upper deck, and the dining area is open all hours. Each dinner offers surf and turf entrees, good wines, and you need to save room for dessert.
We’re issued rainproof float coats and pants, and rubber boots that are stored in the heated gear room. Partners are assigned to center-console fishing boats with 50 hp Honda four-strokes, dry storage, GPS, depth sounders fish finders, single-action mooching rods and reels. For salmon we are given 10 ½ foot Daiwa mooching rods and Daiwa M-1 single action (knuckle busters) mooching reels. “Shimano TR 200 G level wind reels are available for those we cannot convince to use the single action,” Bruce says. Reels are loaded with Maxima 25 pound ultra green. For halibut the boats are equipped with 7-foot Berkley Rough Neck Halibut rods and Shimano TLD 20 reels with Berkley Big Game 50-pound line.
The boats carry well-stocked tackle boxes, plenty of mooching and circle hooks, array of round weights (rigged sliding) net, gaff, marker buoy and harpoon. The tackle is replenished each day and deckhands efficiently whisk the daily catch off to be cleaned, vacuum packed, frozen and logged on the fish board.
On an attached barge is a helipad, industrial vacuum packer, freezer, cooler wedged with soft drinks and beer, and an assortment of whale bones and international flotsam.
The lodge fishing season is Memorial to Labor Day from the anchorage behind Hippa Island where the ship is comfortably protected from the seasonal snits and squalls of the north Pacific. We are smack in the center of one of North America’s finest salmon, halibut and bottomfish grounds.
Charlotte Queen Adventures (www.salmonfishingonline.com) owner Bruce Plankinton and lodge manager Laura Rossy along with the rest of the crew line up to greet us as we step off the ‘copter. A quick stop in the dining room for barbeque ribs, shrimp, seafood chowder, quiche’ and prawns, then it was out to the boats for a rundown on do, don’t, tackle and boats. The familiarization came with a dandy little booklet of fishing maps, tackle rigs, knots, and other how-to.
The day had started with a wake-up call at the Delta Hotel in Richmond near Vancouver International Airport, and a short shuttle ride to Charlotte Queen Adventures offices near the South Terminal. We left Jim’s SUV at the Delta, where overnight guests are allowed free absentee parking while fishing). At CQA headquarters we picked up fishing licenses, coffee and muffins, and boarded a chartered Northern Thunderbird Air Beechcraft 1900D turboprop for a 1½ hour flight up the coast and west across Hecate Strait to Sandspit. At Sandspit airport we transferred into the 12-passenger helicopter for a gorgeous low-level flight through the mountains and snow fields and across the island to the lodge. For me, the flight in is a big part of the adventure.
A half-hour later Jim and I are dropping plug cut herring 20 pulls into a flat ocean at “The Shipwreck” marked by the rusting remains of the Clarksdale Victory a US cargo transport that blew aground on Hippa in a wild November storm in1947. Forty nine died. Two hours later Jim and I have four kings and three 7 to 12-pound silvers in the boat, one silver short of our daily limit of two kings and two silvers each.
In the first half-day of get-acquainted fishing our six-boat group brings back 16 kings and four silvers. My 28-pounder is big chinook for the day and the trip is just starting.
Bruce tells us, “this is the best fishing I’ve seen in years,” explaining that water temperatures are running 5 degrees colder than in recent seasons and herring are thick. Our kings are deep, 180 to 240 feet, working balls of herring that show up on the Lowrance LMS 525 like globs of green and orange mashed potatoes. Silvers are near the top 20 to 30 pulls out.
The weather, always a question, is shaping up perfectly. Mild breeze, flat water, 60+ degrees, and the best bite is on the slack and ebb tide run out. The next day we find out just how loaded the area is with king salmon when we nail another three kings in short order and shift into catch-and-release mode, which is harder than you might imagine.
The bait is balled deep, often over 200 feet, and the kings are with the bait. Which is where we’re trying to catch halibut. Time after time our huge halibut circle hooks, draped with salmon bellies, horse herring or squid, are inhaled by king salmon, either on the drop or while mooching along the bottom 40 fathoms down.
This many kings this late is an anomaly that Haida Gwaii veterans attribute to the colder ocean water and plentiful bait. Normally June is the best king month, with another surge in July that tapers into August. Last year the bite was hot when Bruce opened the doors and stayed hot until he pulled anchor.
Silvers are July-August fish, and while halibut are here all season-long the biggest are invariably caught in August.
Last year the overlap was huge and offered tremendous fishing for a mix of kings, silvers and halibut. If water temperatures remain cool this year, Bruce looks for a repeat this summer.
On Day 3 Jim and I run to a submerged lump in the ocean called simply, “the hump,” where the bottom rises to within 200 feet of the surface, attracting bait that attracts salmon, lings and hallies plus the usual assortment of humpback whales.
While whales fluke slap and blow, Jim plays a big king that ate in 246 feet of water, makes three circles completely around the boat and finally comes unbuttoned well short of the net. When I last fished The Hump with my son Chad the waves were stacking up like foothills, and crashing like waterfalls and we should have gone in long before we did, but didn’t. Today it’s so flat and the swell so mild I fight to keep awake while running the boat.
Jim hooks another king and releases it. We keep bouncing bottom, looking for hallies or a nice ling and pickup a couple of decent lings and more salmon. We move to “the lighthouse” where kelp streams off a reef in 180 feet of water and I know there are halibut.
I feel a twitch, a pick-up, tighten the slack and slam the rod home. My hallie bite turns into another king, this one a snorting 27 pounder that gives me fits on the spinning rod we brought for bottomfish. The king ate a two-ounce leadhead jig with a plastic white sickle tail worm. Go figure!
Jim catches another chinook on his jig rod, I catch another and then we have a double. King fishing is outrageous this morning. We move, hit another king, then a mess of quillbacks, a couple of yellow-eye and more quillbacks. We move again, switch over to Point Wilson Darts and again we hit a couple of king, but also add yelloweyes and dinner-size lings. Later Chef Pierre tells me to keep a quillback and he’ll stuff it with brown rice and a cream sauce and steam it and he says I’ll beg for more. Tempting, but I pass.
Most of our boats have gone in for lunch soups and naps, but Jim and I are on the hunt for hallies and we eat our sacked lunches while dragging salmon bellies across the bottom, 250 feet down, 1 mph on the GPS. A light overcast is turning into burning sunlight and the water is flat.
Jim’s mooching rod bucks, quivers and powers down. He comes back hard, the fish augers into the bottom, the rod vibrates with tail slab. “Halibut!” Jim shouts. About time.
It’s a good fish and it fights a good halibut fight straight up and straight down always under the boat, always in a tight spiral. I free the gaff lay it nearby and ready the harpoon with the detachable head and 10 feet of nylon rope with a buoy. I’m going to spear this sucker.
Five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes and I see a flash of white under the boat. “Color” I call. Jim tightens down. The fish dives again. Jim grimaces, I grin and balance the harpoon in my hand. I’m a ‘pooner. Get him up here. Jim bends and pulls, reels and bows and the fish is coming up. I shake out the harpoon rope—again. The fish is spiraling upward. I see its white halibut side in the green depths and as it slowly revolves to the surface it—unfreakin’ believably—materializes into a big king.
Salmon, I mutter.
What? Jim says, puzzled, lurching to the gunwale for a look.
A good size king, probably as confused as the angler who caught him, is on its side at the boat. The circle hook is embedded in its left side, explaining the spiral up and down fight, but not explaining how a snagless circle hook can snag a king in more than 200 feet of water. We pop out the hook, hold the king until it wiggles and watch it go. The best halibut fight of the trip came from a king salmon. You just can’t keep them off the hook this time.
Bruce and Laura are fishing in a neighboring boat and they each have a good size king to hold up for my camera. “I’ve been fishing this area for 51 years,” Bruce says, “and you can quote me: This is the best king fishing I’ve ever seen.”
It is outrageous. Jim and I catch chinook when we try for them and when we don’t. We catch chinook on halibut rigs fished 250 feet down, we catch chinook on jigs with plastic worms meant for ling cod, we catch chinook on darts and salmon bellies..
One of our boat calls on the two-way radio complaining, “we can’t get through the salmon to catch our lings.” Ahhhh, poor guy.
Jim and I run a few miles south to Skelu Bay where an ugly reef of exposed rock called “The Fangs” reaches to the edge of deep water surrounded by carpets of streaming brown kelp. Laura caught her halibut near here. And while we’re fishing the shallows with spinning rods and light jigs for lings and rockfish, the salmon bite turns off and the halibut bite turns on back at Red Rock on the flat that we had just left. Over the radio we hear Lynn and John Raber celebrating their twin barndoors—87 and 83 pounders. I turn it off and cast to the kelp.
Halibut or not, Jim and I are having a hoot, casting the light stuff to what must be a voracious feeding carpet of black rockfish. Against the kelp we catch the blacks, good size eaters, keep a limit and continue to catch and release while we hoot, holler and laugh in the boat. Twenty yards away from the kelp and 80 feet down and we hit lings, toothy axe handles, and bigger green things with attitude. We bonk a couple, add a few greenling for sweet fillets. This kelp line is simply loaded with fish. But we can’t find a hallie and we run again—back to Red Rock, back to where the Rabers’ have already caught our halibut.
A whale rolls past. The water is dead still. I drop a salmon belly to 242 feet and immediately catch a big silver.
Later, I’m dragging bottom almost 300 feet down and I see a salmon leaping repeatedly well behind the boat. “I hope that’s not on my halibut line,” I say, but it is. We release the salmon and call it an early day.
On the run in the sun is bouncing off the blue and white of the Charlotte Queen, a black bear is on the beach behind the boat, competing with a dozen eagles for salmon heads, and it’s not raining. We take a break in the hot tub on the top deck, watch the eagles and bear, sip iced ambers, and feel fish muscles turn into pulp.
Prime rib is on the menu tonight served with thick fibrous horseradish that can be cut with a fork. I may kidnap Pierre and pack him off to a kitchen in Black Diamond.
At dinner, there is a low roar of good fish talk--halibut caught, kings lost and released, rockfish in feeding frenzies, whales blowing past. On the back deck the crew is packing fish boxes for the flight out. Bruce says the king catch is a boat record.
On the last day we get a couple of hours fishing before the helicopter arrives and we depart. We run a couple of miles, try half-heartedly for halibut (sure we wound up with enough to eat, but that big one…..) basked in an orange sunrise that lit up Hippa like a spotlight, brought out the green in the water and illuminated the heads of perched eagles like snow balls in green cedar. We called it a trip and headed in for steak and eggs Benedict, showers and to repack.
We wait on the back deck, sipping coffee in the morning sun, and I tell a guy from Quebec that if I ever try to convince someone back home that there is sun on the kings in the Charlottes, they’ll call me a liar.
He laughs. Don’t tell them he says. Don’t tell them.
HIPPA NOTES:
Charlotte Queen Adventures offers 5 and 4-day package trips and limits anglers to 12. There is an 8 man crew including a superb chef and fish master. All fishing is self-guided. A fish master is on the water to hand out gear, refreshments, assistance and advice. Most of the fishing is on the west side of Hippa Island, within a couple of miles of shore, and there are protected inside areas to fish if the wind kicks up.
Downriggers are available, but mooching and trolling with free-sliding weights to develop the “Hippa Drop” is the preferred technique. Single action mooching reels are standard, but conventional reels are available.
All equipment is provided and from our experience is quality gear. There is a strong emphasis on service, and a good wine arrives with every evening meal. Bring liquor. Fish are cleaned, vacuum packed and frozen in airline-approved freezer cartons.
We drove up from Seattle and processed through customs the day before our7:15 a.m. departure and overnighted in Richmond at the Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel which is conveniently located on Cessna Drive within sight of VIA. A lodge representative issues fishing licenses, coffee and breakfast rolls, at the Thunderbird Air office.
Contact:
Laura Rossy,
Charlotte Queen Adventures,
1-800-784-1718 or 604-583-6556.
[email protected]
or on the web at:www.salmonfishingonline.com
For more information:
Charlotte Queen Adventures Ltd.,
1-800-784-1718 or 604-583-6556,
www.salmonfishingonline.com
Queen Charlotte Visitor Centers,
250-559-8316,
www.quinfor.ca
Haida Gwaii print or electronic visitor guide,
www.queencharlotteislandsguide.com
Tourism B.C.,
604-660-3679,
www.HelloBC.com
Delta Vancouver Airport
604-278-1241
www.deltahotels.com
Northern Thunderbird Air
604-232-9211
www.ntair.ca
Charlotte Queen Adventure Ltd. 9398 Alaska Way
Delta, BC V4C 4R8
1-800-784-1718
Fax 604-583-6554
Email: [email protected]
www.salmonfishingonline.com