Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
The winds really picked up once we past Refuge Bay off Porcher Island
Once we got out into the Straits I turned to a guy sitting a few seats away from me and offered up...what do you think....35 knots, 3 meters?
Nope, 45 knots and 4 meters he responded. He said it with such conviction the wave heights gained another meter
He turned out to be a dungeness fisherman from Sandspit and I learned lots from him about Moresby Island which was where I'd planned on heading this trip
I rattled off the rivers I'd planned on fishing and he looked unimpressed. Yeah that's fine but the coho came in early ---you won't find them there. Take a right when you get off the ferry instead of a left....
That tip abolutely made the trip for me. It was a three hour drive down a narrow logging road but when I got to the river I saw my timing had been perfect---because of the storm the night before the river was running high, coffee colored, churning with leaves. But I could see it was on the drop and with the temperature heading south I knew the next morning would be golden.
The next morning was off the charts. Basically a fish every cast for two straight hours. These were absolute chrome coho, 8 to 12 lbs, hung with sea lice as they were only half a kilometer or so from Skidegate Narrows
The next morning I left the dog in the truck and hiked to the estuary. The area was crawling with black bears because of all the dying chum salmon on the river bank. On the ferry a guy had shown me a picture of a black bear eating apples in his back yard. The bear was pushing 350 lbs ....the size of a yearling grizzly bear. I knew my dog would only **** them off so safe in the truck made sense. But the estuary was absolutely gorgeous. That's Skidegate Narrows off in the distance and Graham Island on the other side
With all the coho I had hooked the day before on nuclear weapons (spoons) I decided to stick with a fly rod. It made no difference---the dead drifted flies I found in that liquored up fly box were just crushed multiple times during the drift by hordes of coho. It was nuts. THis is the only dark fish I caught---all the others were chrome. Really nice to hear that Hardy Super Silex screaming its mournful scream once again with all those wild coho
From there it was time to go to Grey Bay. While on GRaham Island last October I had a guy hyperventilating about how beautiful it was there and admonished me that I just HAD to go.
So I did. It was a spooky drive, though ---big winds up in the trees and me on a narrow logging road for 3 hours without a chain saw. Never again---got to have a saw in the truck when making moves like that on logging roads
Here's an idyllic shot of Skidegate Lake in between wind gusts:
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