WILD BLOG: Salmon paradise found in the Queen Charlotte Islands
Aug. 20, 2008

SANDSPIT, British Columbia - As I type this, the thumb and index finger on my left hand are rubbed raw, the result of furiously reeling an Islander MR3 for three days, with severely ticked-off Chinook and coho scorching line out the other end. The knuckles on both hands still creak and groan when I flex them, the result of fighting fish after fish after ocean-bright, raging, running, slashing salmon.

Once in a great while, a fishery so far exceeds your expectations that your only choice is to reach for Roget's Thesaurus. How good was the salmon fishing last week in the Queen Charlotte Islands?

Dear reader, may I introduce you to Mr. Roget: stupendous, superb, transcendent, exceptional, superlative, unparalleled, outstanding, magnificent, astonishing, spectacular, ri-frickin'-diculous ... I could go on and on.

When Northwest Wild Country co-host Bill Hezog and I climbed aboard a helicopter at the Sandspit Airport on Graham Island in northern British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Archipelago, little did we know that 20 minutes later, we'd be touching down on the helipad of the MV Salmon Seeker and preparing to sail into the salmon-fishing equivalent of The Perfect Storm.

Here's how we survived it.

DAY 1: Anticipation, arrival, tip of the iceberg
VANCOUVER/KANO INLET, B.C. - It's taken Herzog and I a combined 88 years to get to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and we should be giggling like hyenas as we board the Friday morning flight at the Vancouver Airport South Terminal, bound for the tiny town of Sandspit, on the east coast of Graham Island.

I'll call it "muted excitement": we're thrilled beyond belief that we're finally going to fish one of the world's salmon Meccas, but optimism is tempered by reality.

The West Coast salmon migration has been unpredictable to the point of capriciousness this year, and sustained summertime reports from good friends in Sitka, Prince of Wales Island, Port Hardy and Langara have repeatedly confirmed that Chinook fishing in 2008 is utterly impossible to pattern. Weather is an X-factor as well: the eruption of Mount Omkok in the Aleutian Islands the week prior has pushed a giant plume of ash into the atmosphere and sent a low-pressure ridge spinning toward the Charlottes. As Herzog and I offload in Sandspit, we're fully prepared for 30-knot winds, heavy rainfall, and 3 1/2 days of lights-out coho fishing. If we luck into a Chinook or two, we'll consider the trip a smashing success.

Weather worries are out the window immediately: not only is there no wind in Sandspit, the air is so still in the Salmon Seeker's home in Gevinchy Anchorage at the head of Kano Inlet that the chartered float plane can't land there: too much fog. Herzog, Hawg Quest duo Glen Hall and Taj Gombart and I are hustled out to a helicopter waiting on the tarmac, and whooshed off due west for the outside of Graham Island and the 180-foot floating lodge that will soon serve as Ground Zero for the most explosive salmon bite in the world.

The Seeker: Oak Bay Marine Group's MV Salmon Seeker has a long and illustrious history as an Arctic ice-breaker and oil surveyor, but it's served as a haven for Queen Charlotte salmon anglers since a 1993 retro-fit turned it into a 28-person floating lodge.

And the Seeker sits in some prime real estate: Kano Inlet slashes deep into the middle of Graham Island's west coast, within easy reach of the continental shelf and hundreds of uber-rich reefs and points where all five species of Pacific salmon feed heavily on herring during their annual southern migrations, and where barn-door halibut and massive ling cod patrol the ocean floor. It's raw and rich, and deserves every whisper of its reputation as a world-class fishery.

The Seeker is geared to take advantage of the wealth, with super-clean 20-foot walk-around Boston Whaler Outrage fishing machines powered by 150-horse Yamahas and 8-horse, 4-stroke kickers. Every boat in the fleet is loaded with two Scotty electric downriggers, 10 1/2-foot Shimano Technium TC4 rods, and Islander MR2 and MR3 single-action reels - Penn 320 levelwinds are available if you can't operate a single-action - spooled with 30-pound Maxima and 40-pound Triple Fish mainline. You fish two guests per boat, with a guide.

The guides: Every one of the Seeker's gillies is a certified B.C. character with a serious fishing addiction. Within 20 minutes of touching down, Herzog is approached by three of the Seeker's guide crew, all of whom have been reading his books and columns in Salmon, Trout, Steelheader magazine since they were kids. Every one of them is a devotee of traditional, old-school hardware, and it takes Herzog and I about 2.2 seconds of walking the Seeker's boat dock to zoom in on rods loaded with Cop Car, Half and Half, Pearl Herring and Wonder Bread Silver Horde S2B No. 6 spoons, and 7-inch No. 111, 500, 600 and 602 Tomic plugs.

"Bill, that looks a helluva lot like Chinook gear to me," I mutter as we slip on our rain gear and head to boat No. 7 for a blast out to the mouth of the inlet to take advantage of the evening ebb.

Good reason for it. The group of anglers departing the Seeker that afternoon had gotten pummeled by wind and rough seas, but even though all of them look bedraggled and anxious to be air-lifted out of the storm, they've managed to scrape up several 30-plus-pound Chinook fishing the wind-blasted mouth of the inlet during the three previous days. There are obviously more kings around than Herzog and I had anticipated, and we're about to take our first crack at them.

The evening ebb: Clay Johnston is the kind of guide you pray for when you're assigned boats on a random draw. The first member of the crew to welcome us off the Seeker chopper pad, Johnston turns out to be friendly and comical, and anxious as hell to fire up the big Yamaha for the 20-minute run to the mouth of the inlet for a two-hour evening "pre-fish". Turns out that he's an ex-dolphin trainer from Sea World Australia and a former Fortune 500 whiz kid who forsook the corporate grind to spin herring for a living.

My kinda guide.

"Let's go with herring to start, boys," Johnston advises as we throttle down in 160 feet of water a half-mile south of Kindakun Point, the major point that juts out of the north end of the mouth of Kano Inlet.

The entire inlet mouth serves as an enormous buffet for migrating salmon, with mile after mile of reef structure that holds herring like chafing dishes at a Las Vegas buffet. Chinook and coho wash into the area on the tides and line up at the buffet, and when the bite is on, the area known simply as "The Point" can produce the hottest salmon fishing in North America.

Purple-label herring are the standard here, fished on 5/0 barbless rigs and 40-inch leaders, and with Johnston's Lowrance sonar screen lighting up with clouds of herring, a fattie cutplug seems like the can't-miss choice.

"How deep?" Herzog asks as he flips his cutplug overboard.

"Oh, let's say ... 57, 67, 77 or so," Johnston responds. "Your choice."

Alrighty then, a 20-foot depth range, eh? We don't understand at the time, but Johnston's "generous" depth range is perfectly descriptive of where we'll find fish for the next two days. I run my bait down to Merlin Olsen (74 feet), but Herzog is fussing with his bait, obviously dissatisfied with the performance of his herring.

"Dude, it's not spinning right. I can't put that out," he says.

"Yeah you can," Johnston responds

"No, I can't, it looks like hell," Herzog fires back.

"No, it's fine. Just get it down," Johnston urges.

Herzog relents and pulls the lever on the Scotty downrigger, sending his cutplug down to 70 feet. After 10 seconds, it's already driving him crazy.

"I have to get that bait up and change it," Herzog fusses. "That's not going to catch anything."

"No, trust me, just leave it down there," Johnston assures him. "If it doesn't get bit in 5 minutes, you can bring it back up and change it."

Johnston is off by about a minute: Herzog's rod does the oh-so-sweet "thump ... thump ... bump ... boooom!" in just over 6 minutes, and he's soon setting the hook on the first fish of the trip, sloppy-ass cutplug and all. After some violent head shakes, two line-zipping deep runs, and a steady, heavy pull, Herzog says "Chinook."

Ten minutes later, Johnston is settling the net around a picture-perfect 24-pound king, and Herzog and I are starting to wear the evidence of cautious "Could this be ... ?!?" grins.

Two hours of trolling the flat calm, fog-shrouded Point later and we're on the way back to the Seeker with 24- and 26-pound bookend Chinook in the fish box, and a half-dozen 15- to 20-pound kings caught and released. And we're not the only ones with Chinook on board: the rest of the crew have whacked 18 Chinook, including six Tyees over 30 pounds and a 44-pound hawg boated by Jeff Sorenson of Port Coquitlam.

Sorenson will become "THAT guy" on this trip, the dude who mercilessly weighs in the biggest fish of the day three times in three days while punching a four-fish Chinook possession limit that most salmon anglers work 10 years to land.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. As the rowdy galley fills up for the evening meal, Captain Zak Farid officially welcomes us to the Salmon Seeker and hits us with a weather report that seems too good to be true: flat calm, no rain, perfect tides.

We're 10 hours away from the greatest single day of salmon fishing the Salmon Seeker has ever seen. We're about to enter the eye of the Perfect Storm.

DAY 2: The Perfect Storm: "Like a really good movie, over and over again."
KANO INLET, B.C. - Bill Herzog is a gear freak to the highest degree. If you've read his "Tips and Tricks" column in STS, you know that he's a little wacky about details. He's obsessive about hooks, he's picky about line, he's anal about colors and sizes.

And he's absolutely f*#^$ing obsessive about rods and reels.

Herzog had fished the previous evening wearing a borrowed sweatshirt, borrowed rain gear and borrowed boots, and he'd been forced to use a loaner rod and reel because his luggage and rod tube hadn't reached the Seeker by the time we departed. This morning, though, he has his beloved 10 1/2-foot 1062F yellow Lamiglas trolling rod and his left-handed MR3, and as we arrive back at The Point and set the downriggers out, something feels different.

It feels like Hammer Time.

This morning is all about the bent metal, and while Herzog sets up his rod, I run a 6-inch Silver Horde Pearl Herring spoon down to Jack Youngblood (85 feet), lean over to put the butt of the rod in the holder and bump ... bump ... bump .... WHAM!

Fish on. It turns out to be a 22-pound Chinook.

Herzog follows up with a Silver Horde S2B Cop Car spoon down to Dwight Clark (87 feet), and waits all of 3 minutes before the bump ... bump ... bump ... WHAM! pulls him out of his seat again. Another Chinook.

"Think it might be good today, boys," Johnston deadpans.

Baa haa haaaaa! "Good", he says?!? After one hour we're up to 14 fish (seven Chinook, seven coho), and we haven't even hit the tide change yet.

Over the course of the next 7 hours, we experience salmon fishing as it must've been 50 years ago. We land Chinook after 24-pound Chinook and coho after 14-pound coho, bringing at least 150 fish to the boat, longline releasing dozens more, and missing 20 to 30 drive-by strikes. It doesn't matter what we fish, or how deep we fish it.

We switch to plugs and run them down to 110 feet.

WHAM!

We try herring at 120 feet, just for the hell of it.

KABLOOOEY!

I leave my rod at Dick Butkus (51 feet) just to see what'll happen ...

BLAMMMO!

We fish with the tide, against the tide, on a dead-flat tide, overcast, sunny, purple-label herring, blue-label herring: WHAM! KABLOOOEY! BLAMMO!

We're not the only ones in the eye of the storm, either. The Hawg Quest boat spins in a circle as Glen bellows at the top of his lungs: "A shark is eating my 40-pound Chinook!!!" At one point I glance around and start to count the number of boats with fish on.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 ...

"Joeljoeljoeljoeljoel, fish on!" Johnston interrupts.

"S*^t!" I respond, and jump on fish number eleventy jillion for the day.

After about four hours, Herzog hits us with the best description I can imagine for this DEFCON 4 salmon bite: "This is like watching a really, really good movie, over and over again."

Bump ... bump ... bump ... WHAM! Bump ... bump ... bump ... BLAM!

Over and over again, all day long. There's no other Pacific Northwest salmon fishery to fairly compare it to.

Buoy 10 at its hottest? Not even close.

Tillamook Bay in its fall peak? Nope.

Point Defiance, Possession Bar? Eh ... no, sorry.

This is, as Capt. Farid puts it "The best salmon fishing in the world."

For today, at least, I can't muster even a feeble argument.

About 3 p.m., Herzog and I cry uncle.

"I can't catch any more fish," he says. "I hate to say this, but I've had enough. I feel like I've been punched in the nuts."

Ditto. I've already reeled in and am pulling the downrigger ball for the run in, because I've had enough, too. No Tyees on board, but we have four Chinook running 24 to 29 pounds and eight coho to 15 pounds in the box, and are at the ragged end of the best salmon fishing any human being has a right to experience.

DAY 2/PART 2: The aftermath; making Salmon Seeker history
KANO INLET, B.C. - The bright, blazing sun has fought its way through the afternoon clouds as we throttle down on our approach to the Seeker, where there's a flurry of activity on the boat's back deck.

An 800-square-foot aft deck serves as the Seeker's de-facto commercial processor. Two gigantic cleaning tables flank the port and starboard sides, and a pair of commercial vacuum packers maintain a steady hummmm inside a tent adjacent to the starboard cleaning platform.

Each of the Seeker's guides is responsible for cutting their catch of the day, and the first thing we see as we climb up to the cleaning deck is the pair of hawgs pictures at right, waiting to be cleaned by Shawn "Stiffler" Counts.

"What a minute ..." I mutter to Stiffler. "Your guy didn't catch both of these, did he?"

That "guy" is Jeff Sorenson.

Again.

The same Jeff Sorenson who whacked a 44-pounder last night, and now he's brought in this pair of fatties, too?!? Sorenson is just strolling down from the main lounge as we admire his fish, the same goofy-ass grin on his face and a cold Kokanee in his hand.

"I'd never caught a 40-pounder in my life, and now this?!?" he laughs. I congratulate him, jokingly tell him to go screw himself, and turn to take a full survey of the cleaning deck.

I can't believe what I'm seeing. Rows of 20- to 45-pound Chinook are lined up on the cutting surfaces on both sides, being whittled into fillets and loaded into food-grade plastic tubs to be taken to the vacuum tent. The deck it loaded with a dozen giant plastic totes, each of them overflowing with massive, spotted Chinook tails and hundreds of pounds of chrome. A pile of humongous kings lies at the back of the deck, next to the big spring scale where the fish are all weighed. Behind me - on the Seeker's staging dock - guides are pushing more overloaded totes up toward the cleaning deck, awaiting their turns at the cutting tables.

One of those totes is loaded with four fish over 30 pounds, all caught on the same plug. That same boat also released three more Tyees that day, and has a load of 13- to 15-pound coho to boot.

I'm bamboozled by the number of fish between 25 and 40 pounds, but fishmaster Brett Thomas says that it's a common occurrence during the peak of Chinook migration.

"One day we'll catch nothing but 18- to 22-pound fish, and, overnight, 30- and 40-pounders will move in," he says. "The next day we'll get nothing but big fish. One tide changes everything."

That's the beauty of this location. Looking at the physical characteristics of the deck load of fish, it's perfectly obvious that there are fish here from the Columbia, the Fraser, possibly Robertson Creek, maybe even Tilllamook Bay. Long, lean fish lie side-by-side with short, squat, stubby fish.

Even with the odd migration patterns we've experienced in 2008, Kano Inlet and the west side of Graham Island are still major feedings grounds for fish from dozens of different fisheries.

I snap some photos of the carnage and then head amidships, where the day's catches are displayed on a dry-erase board. I'm greeted by a 6-foot-tall white board that's completely covered by dry-erase ink, the black-and-white evidence of the day's salmon haul.

Captain Farid is standing at the board, neatly recording every single fish weight into his log: 48, 43, 37, 42, 41, 29, 36, 32, 40, 28, 34, 38, 27, 35, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.

"Cap'n'," I ask, "uh, is this a typical day here?"

He's completely sincere when he answers: "I have said that this is the best fishing in the world, and I mean it. But this ... this is a very good day."

I find out exactly how good at dinner, when the Captain approaches me again.

"You were asking about the fishing today?" he says. "The total amount of fish caught today was 1,093 pounds. Now, you have to understand, there have been days when we've had a higher total weight because people have caught 200-pound halibut. But for salmon, this day was the biggest we've ever had here. And, I have looked at the weather and tides, and I think that tomorrow is going to be better."

B-E-T-T-E-R?!? Brother, I don't know if I can handle "better".

To be continued ...

-JS

Read about Day 3 and the continuation of the Perfect Salmon Storm soon.

TUNE IN SATURDAY MORNING (6 to 8 a.m. on Sportsradio 950 KJR) as Herzog and Shangle discuss the Perfect Storm with Oak Bay Marine Group General Manager Brook Castelsky.

-JS