First trip of the season... Success

[RiverChromeGS]

So i go to the north-west coast of vancouver island about 6 weeks every year for salmon/halibut. This was our first trip, i thought id post a quick report/picture topic to let everybody know whats happening and that the fish are coming! we fished 4 days, this trip is primarily our halibut trip, so we fished 3 days hali, one day chinook. in the 3 days we kept 45-50-65-95 pound hali's and released one much over 100, and 5 more 30-60. Great hali fishing this year!!! And limits of lings. 10-20 lbs. This is still very early for kings, dont do well until mid july usually, but this trip was decent for so early. had 4 chinook on in the one day we fished them, landed 2, 18-22 pounds. Still small but its early. lost 2 other nice ones running hard, barbless hooks....... got a limit of small coho too. running flasher-anchovy, and large squid for the butts. pics are below! salmon are coming!!!! theres suppose to be 40% more chinook this year, outlooks say! Tight lines...

[BARCHASER10]

Nice Pics. You did well! I go to Ucluelet every year with my boat. I have resers for the first week of August, been going there for 20 years. You must be out of Gold River, Winterharbor, Tasis sound? I have Springers in the freezer from the Willamette and the Columbia plus two Hallies from Sekiu, so I dont need the fish. I dont think Ukee is as good as where you go but it is closer and we usually manage our poss limits of Chinooks (excuse me, I mean Springs, it is BC after all!) and Hallies. I thought about heading further north on the Island but old habits die hard.

Your Hallies are nice size, they have been getting smaller the last few years at CQ and Ukee. I use flashers sometimes, but mostly Tomic plugs and Tomic/Coyote spoons. There are a lot of silvers around Ukee also, but hard to find a silver w/o a high fin.

All things considered, I usually go with salmon bellies for Hallies. Sometimes I hang on a squid, run a hook in it and tie it on to the belly with thread.

[RiverChromeGS]

Yea we fish out of tahsis! I cant wait until all the big chinook come in from end of july thru august, we practically live up there then! Its too bad tho that they close shoreline fishing July 15, which means we have to go way offshore and fish deep. We do really well for big chinook, but we are forced to use flashers and anchovies, which works, but i wish shoreline was open so we could fish straight bait or plugs. The Hali fishing is really good up there this year, all the guides are coming in with 50+ pounder limits. This was our first trip of the year, and our first "hole" we tried had all these 40-100 lb hali's in them! SOOO much fish! good thing everyone we know loves king/hali and so on, lots of giving away when the freezers, yes multiple freezers fill! haha good luck on your trip, suppose to be a lot of larger 5-6 year kings this year. Land a 50!

We have a friend who commercially fishes and has some connections, although i havent really used salmon bellies as hali bait, except on HUMPY years when we catch so many, we got some free 15-20 inch squid from our buddy, and one of those on a double hook rig took every single halibut. They must love squid, maybe this year when humpies are in, i'll connect some belly to a squid and drop it down, see what happens!

[akochman09]

nice nice. Barchaser i fish out of bamfield so similar area. Do you fish primarily in barkely sound and offshore such as areas like the big bank, se corner, places like that? Or do you go up from uclulet?? Also wondering on the silvers if you were there in late august 2 years ago. the coho fishing was insane. like 40 fish days on 10 plus pound fish. A surprising amount of them hatchery as well. yeah i feel yah on the halis. most we catch are 10 to 20 pounds, only hooked about 4 over that.

[BARCHASER10]

I dont have a real big boat, 19' North River Seahawk. So if the ocean is rough I just fish inside the surf line, Great Bear Rock, Alley Rock etc. Sometimes I run through the Broken Group and over to your side. But most of the time the ocean is decent and I fish South Bank 4-5 miles offshore, the Adipose, the Turtleshead, Lighthouse Bank etc. I have fished SW corner it is further out.

Two years ago the Silver fishing was insane. But around Ukee, it was about 5 or 6 wild fish to each hatchery Silver. The first two days we had our Silver poss limits and the last two days it was hard to get our Chinook limits, too many Silvers. We were still getting Silvers down at 130 feet on Tomic plugs. The funnest part on the Silvers was flat lining Coyote spoons with no weight. That was cool.

Ukee is known more for Chinooks and Hallies, so all those Silvers was unusual.