Cougar Creek Forestry Rec Site - Nootka Sound

pacemaker

Well-Known Member
After hearing many rumours about whether Cougar Creek would be open or not, I decided to make a run out there just to see for myself what is true and what is not. I don't camp out of there, but know that there are many people on this site who do. Headed out there on Saturday and met up with the camp hosts and had a good chat. On the way in, the Tahsis road was in pretty decent shape with a bit of washboard on the hills. Nothing too bad. The road into Nesook was in it's normal state of disrepair, but not too bad overall. Only found one fender from an EZ Loader trailer that had broken off. There was no logging traffic on either road, but it was a Saturday, so that may well have made a difference.
The Rec site is open now, and the outhouses etc are open too, with large containers of hand sanitizer in them. The dock however is in a bad shape, and is closed for moorage purposes. Anybody who stays there and wants to fish from there is going to have to trailer their boat in, and launch the boat each morning, and put it back on the trailer at the end of the day. Either that, or anchor up in the bay and use a dinghy to get to and from the boat. The main dock is still able to be used to load passengers and cargo at the normal drop-off spot, but is closed from there out. No parking of boats at the dock.....Not going to happen....
Apparently there were plans in place to have the dock replaced in the Spring, but that was all put on hold because of Covid. Now, the tendering process to replace the docks in back on, but that of course takes time. While it is hoped that the new docks will be in place later this summer, there is no guarantee that it will happen in time. The new dock, when it happens, apparently is supposed to be pretty nice. It is being designed to be something like 300 feet long, with 3 fingers off the right side that are all supposed to be about 150 long each. There should be room to park 90 boats of 20 ft each. Sounds pretty good in theory.....
There are probably other things that I should add, but can't think of them right now. But this gives a pretty good scenario of what you should expect to find if you are going to be camping / fishing out of Cougar Creek in the short term this summer. Be prepared to launch your boat at the start at end of each day. Bit of a PITA, but that's the way it is.
If you do go, good luck, stay safe, and good fishing.........Pacemaker
 
Wow the dock is that bad?.
As you can tell I haven't been in there for many yrs now.
My son helped Dick build the fingers off to the right when we would go in almost every weekend in the summer.
Great memories of that place.
Steve and Ryan
 
Wow the dock is that bad?.
As you can tell I haven't been in there for many yrs now.
My son helped Dick build the fingers off to the right when we would go in almost every weekend in the summer.
Great memories of that place.
Steve and Ryan

i can remember going in there in the early 90’s (i have a pic of me there wearing a blue jays world champs shirt) and there were like six guys camping. next year 20 or so , next year is was complete mayhem. people with feeezers and generators etc. camel rock was as far as we went. good times tho
 
Is the campsite busy?
After hearing many rumours about whether Cougar Creek would be open or not, I decided to make a run out there just to see for myself what is true and what is not. I don't camp out of there, but know that there are many people on this site who do. Headed out there on Saturday and met up with the camp hosts and had a good chat. On the way in, the Tahsis road was in pretty decent shape with a bit of washboard on the hills. Nothing too bad. The road into Nesook was in it's normal state of disrepair, but not too bad overall. Only found one fender from an EZ Loader trailer that had broken off. There was no logging traffic on either road, but it was a Saturday, so that may well have made a difference.
The Rec site is open now, and the outhouses etc are open too, with large containers of hand sanitizer in them. The dock however is in a bad shape, and is closed for moorage purposes. Anybody who stays there and wants to fish from there is going to have to trailer their boat in, and launch the boat each morning, and put it back on the trailer at the end of the day. Either that, or anchor up in the bay and use a dinghy to get to and from the boat. The main dock is still able to be used to load passengers and cargo at the normal drop-off spot, but is closed from there out. No parking of boats at the dock.....Not going to happen....
Apparently there were plans in place to have the dock replaced in the Spring, but that was all put on hold because of Covid. Now, the tendering process to replace the docks in back on, but that of course takes time. While it is hoped that the new docks will be in place later this summer, there is no guarantee that it will happen in time. The new dock, when it happens, apparently is supposed to be pretty nice. It is being designed to be something like 300 feet long, with 3 fingers off the right side that are all supposed to be about 150 long each. There should be room to park 90 boats of 20 ft each. Sounds pretty good in theory.....
There are probably other things that I should add, but can't think of them right now. But this gives a pretty good scenario of what you should expect to find if you are going to be camping / fishing out of Cougar Creek in the short term this summer. Be prepared to launch your boat at the start at end of each day. Bit of a PITA, but that's the way it is.
If you do go, good luck, stay safe, and good fishing.........Pacemaker
 
i can remember going in there in the early 90’s (i have a pic of me there wearing a blue jays world champs shirt) and there were like six guys camping. next year 20 or so , next year is was complete mayhem. people with feeezers and generators etc. camel rock was as far as we went. good times tho

Early 80s for me..we would stay just up from boat ramp at nesook log dump..back then there were 2 old timer brothers from Washington state set up there also...the locals would be setup over at dryland sort.
Wow thats a long time ago..lol
 
Yeah. Can be super variable. Hard pack, muddy, pot holes, freshly graded, dusty, etc. I think it's about 43km and it usually takes me about two hours to get from Gold River to the campsite. I don't want to destroy anything. It's 40 minutes on the motorcycle.
 
I was wondering when you mentioned your motorcycle, island back roads are the worst I've seen. LOL I"m
thinking of going there for Coho in the beginning of Sept. But not sure if that is a good time for them, is there a
better time for this?
 
I was wondering when you mentioned your motorcycle, island back roads are the worst I've seen. LOL I"m
thinking of going there for Coho in the beginning of Sept. But not sure if that is a good time for them, is there a
better time for this?
Not sure about Coho. We fish for Springs and bottom fish in the summer. I haven't been there in September.
 
Sign posted at the Nesook dump turn off states the Recreation Site is closed. As for the road condition, 22 logging trucks counted on the Head Bay FSR on Friday all headed to the Nesook dump since WFP is not operating its Gold River sort.
 
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