Just back from our first trip to Esperanza, after fishing Nootka the last 2 seasons and about a month ago. Ran the boat up from Gold River on Monday, stopped and fished in Nootka on the way up since we technically couldn't check in to Port Eliza until 3 pm. Was DEAD for us in Nootka for the afternoon tide change on Monday. Fished Camel, the Wall, Hisnit, and Hoiss all the way past Coopte to the no fishing boundary at the start of Tahsis inlet. Nothing. Saw lots of commercial boats anchored up waiting for night, and back at the launch in Gold River the First Nations crew were processing their catch - so I think all of that had an impact on fishing inside at Nootka. Take that with a grain of salt though, we only gave it a couple hours and it was mid day.
Beauty run up the rest of the way to check in at Port Eliza, ditch coolers and personal gear, have dinner and get set to fish new to us waters. We got an amazing weather window on Tuesday and Wednesday, allowing us to easily get my little 17' Arima outside and up to Sandstone, which is where we caught most of our salmon.
On Tuesday, we ended up with 2 and 2 between Coho and Chinook. All quite shallow, from 22' to 44' on the rigger. Found most consistent success in tight to the kelp beds, but we got both in deeper water on the return tack too. Got fish on chovies but Skinny G spoons were outfishing everything else by a wide margin, including one particular colour combo. More on that later.
Wednesday we took the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach and headed back to Sandstone. We stopped in the deeper water a bit out from the main tack to set up gear where we wouldn't get in anyone else's way. Got a pin popper hit on the first rigger seconds after putting it down, while I was getting the second one set. Missed it due to distraction. Got the 2nd one down and within a couple minutes got another pin popper which we landed. A nice Chinook, after only fishing for 5 minutes tops. Took a closer look at the chart and realized we were trolling around a little hump quite a ways out, and with two hits in 5 minutes of course we gave it another pass. All we picked up were small rock fish that time though, so we trolled on and joined the parade at Sandstone. 2nd day was quite similar to the first - a mix of decent sized Chinooks and Coho, again spoons shallow being the best producer. One of my TMX5 reels started acting up during the day - the clicker was noticeably quieter, and the drag was pretty much full on or none at all. Made playing some of the bigger Chinook a lot more sporting - thought one of them was going to spool me until I managed to bring it under control with the palm. Ended up with 3 and 3 Chinook/Coho for the day. Chinooks mostly in the high teens including a pair of twins at 17 lbs each. Couple of the coho were probably pushing 8 -10 lbs or so, but we didn't weigh them.
Decided since it was still so calm out we would try running out to the 126 contour as we had heard tails of other guests trolling up lings and even a chicken Hali out there, so we gave that a go for an hour or so before calling it a day. No excitement other than hanging up (and getting back) a downrigger ball. I am a bottom fishing novice, and didn't have the boat or the confidence to head out to the true off shore spots, even though the conditions I'm sure would have been fine. Not to mention we were down to about 1/3 tank of fuel by this point.
Thursday, we tried to get out to Sandstone again but it was definitely lumpier past the surf line than the first two days. Swell coming in from the NW, and wind chop from the SW made for some washing machine like conditions. Not dangerous, but not comfortable either. I am quite sure we could have pounded our way out to Sandstone again which was the plan - but we decided to go easy on ourselves and turn around. We had not spent any time at all exploring the inside spots, so may as well make lemonaid we figured. Got to Rosa a bit later than I would have liked to have lines in the water due to the detour, but very soon after putting them down one rod popped up with what turned out to be the largest fish of the trip - 19 lbs chinook at 22' on that same Skinny G that had been getting most of them. About an hour later another slightly smaller at 16 lbs. Then it slowed right down for the rest of the day. A few missed hits here and there, a couple coho that got away including an absolute rocket that managed to wrap itself around the kicker leg, and lots of chinook shakers released. In addition to Rosa we tried Garden Point and did a loop around Centre Island. Tried both shallow and deeper water, bait, spoons, hoochies, flash fly, even a dodger. I just don't think the big fish were there in the numbers they were outside.
At this point we were 1 chinook short of our possession limit for 2 people - so I was trying real hard to find that last one. And I got my shot late in the day with another big hit. Got it off the clip and could definitely tell it had the weight of a good sized fish. Gave it a hook set and the line went immediately slack. A few choice words reeling in a bare line. The hot Skinny G and flasher setup that had been doing all the damage was gone. I immediately cursed myself - this was the same line that had wrapped the kicker leg earlier and clearly I had not given it a close enough inspection afterwards. Tied something else on and trolled around for another half hour or so, but no real hits. 2 decent Chinook for a day of fishing the inside, nothing to complain about really but definitely not as much action as outside.
Up early on Friday to collect our fish from processing and enjoy a flat calm run back down to Gold River. Even managed to avoid the rain until the last 10 minutes approaching the launch. Port Eliza was great - friendly staff, good food, hot showers, fuel and ice available, guides were happy to give some pointers over a beer in the evening, and fish processing was more than reasonable. One of the guides even gave us a pity chicken hali at the cleaning table, since we didn't really put any time into bottom fishing and as such - didn't get any. Would go back for sure.
And if anyone catches a Chinook on the inside towing this setup around, make sure you give it swim. I would say it was responsible for 75% of our catch this week.
