Originally Published December '09, The Reel News
Queen Charlotte Islands British Columbia
Hippa Island Coho, Halibut
Fish Trip To The Wild Side
A Father & Son, Daughter & Father
Adventure That Won’t Be Forgotten
By Terry W. Sheely
“Stuck in Sandspit.”
The guy says it with a straight face.
And repeats it with even more frustration.“Stuck in Sandspit!”
The rest of us look at each other. Someone snickers, and then we all laugh. It’s been that kind of a trip.
“Stuck in Sandspit!” A descriptively visual, albeit misleading, title that could be pinned on a bad movie, a good fish trip, or as it turns out an unforgettable father & son, daughter & father adventure story. It also summarizes the 48 hours that this guy and his two dozen fishing buddies have been stranded at the little Sandspit Airport, 40 miles out to sea from the British Columbia mainland, grumbling and waiting for pea-soup fog to blow out.
It’s a story that is set on the wild ocean side on the most remote western outpost of British Columbia, and involves an outer space dust scientist, sharks that don’t show, wickedly wild water, big bunches of super-sized salmon, float planes, helicopters, fog, gale-force winds, brown black bears, a coho that cartwheels from the ocean to beach on top of a kelp ball, some righteously fine food, a reincarnated tug boat, and a bottomless bucket of Gummy Bears.
And while the story officially starts in the little known charter office of Thunderbird Air, across the runway from the chaotic international hum of Vancouver International Airport, the real beginning takes shape after the hour-and-forty minute flight when the Beechcraft twin engine 1900 D crabs into the crosswind, and bounces onto the paved runway at Sandspit, population 387, largest town on Moresby Island, Queen Charlotte Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada.
A few minutes later and the 10 us are on a converted school bus, rattling down a winding road past a gravel-beach guarded by blacktail does and bald eagles to a float plane base in Alliford Bay and a 30 minute, low-level hop to the tricked out former tugboat, the 100 foot-long “MV Charlotte Queen.”
The Charlotte Queen is a remodeled, renovated, buffed, varnished and polished floating lodge that came into the world as a working tug boat, and has evolved into a first-class, royal blue base camp anchored down in the dead-calm waters of Nesto Inlet.
On the attached barge is a helipad, industrial vacuum packer, freezer and an assortment of whale bones.
It’s anchored for the summer fishing season in Nesto Inlet on the west side of Graham Island, tucked behind Hippa Island where it is comfortably protected from the seasonal snits and squalls of the north Pacific. It’s the headquarter lodge for Charlotte Queen Adventures (www.salmonfishingonline.com) and sits smack in the center of one of North America’s finest salmon, halibut and bottomfish grounds.
I’ve fished the west side of the Queen Charlotte Islands from this lodge several times, each time an adventure, each time delivered an unforgettable spike and this time I have the rare chance to be fishing with my son Chad. A construction crane operator, Chad is typically at the height of his busy season during the summer when I’m searching for story material, but this time we managed to pull it together for the second week in August, a trip that by coincidence coincided with Chad’s birthday.
On the distaff side of our father-son trip is a father-daughter adventure being shared by Terry and Erin Tranfield. Terry, an Alberta carpentry contractor, B&B operator and cattle rancher, was being hosted by daughter Erin. Living in the San Francisco Bay area, Erin is a scientist with the U.S. space program specializing in extra-terrestrial dust particles, and a killer salmon/halibut fisherman. She had booked the Dad and Me trip immediately after sampling the fishing on a trip here in June.
On the first afternoon, our half-dozen boats are straining the open water off Red Rocks, a distinctive landmark on the south side of Hippa Island, and Chad and Erin are grinning and leaning into fat cohos.
Erin announces over the boat-to-boat radio that she’s caught a 12-pound coho that fought like a 15-pounder. Chad nails a 12-pounder for our boat, I catch a dancing 10 pound fish, Chad loses a bigger one that comes unbuttoned at the boat, I kick back an 8 pounder and we both catch and release pinks and smaller coho. We scoot in by a kelp line and big—up to 7 pound--black rockfish clobber us three at a time. Those fish are as thick as dog hair and attack anything that swims. I brought a pair of trout-weight spinning rods and a bag of jigs and plastic worms just for the world-class rockfish action.
The other boats are into the bite, too. The radio crackles with coho boated, a few chinook in the 18-to-20-pound range, and a lot of long-line releases that get credited to barbless hooks and first-day jitters. We’re allowed four coho a day—each—and two kings a day. Bruce Plankinton, lodge owner, calls the first afternoon coho we catch, “bonus fish,” the ones we lose, “practice fish” and tomorrow, I pledge, we take no prisoners. But first dinner, crusted halibut on red beans and rice, and pork loins on fresh green beans and vegetables followed by cheesecake and served with good red and white wines.
Before we arrived, squalls and fog had been complicating island travel for several weeks. Weather is always a consideration when fishing the remote and exposed Charlottes, especially the open ocean on the west side. I’ve experienced mill pond water and towering blowups, arrived on time and arrived a day late, flown with bluebirds and been grounded in fog. It pays to be patient and ready to wait it out. And for me, the fishing and adventure have always been worth the risk.
In fact, it’s the unpredictable weather that provides one of the big advantages to this lodge compared with other west side fishing lodges—good places to fish in bad weather.
There is a lot of protected and productive inside area for salmon, halibut and rockfish when the ocean is unfishable. At the mouth of the inlet the cloud-wrapped sea mount of Hippa Island shields us from snits of Pacific weather blasting in from the ocean, protects the anchorage and gives us multiple calm-water options to fish no matter how bad the outside is blowing apart.
This time the squalls blow through the mountains between Hippa and Sandspit in time for us to skate between the peaks on the DeHavilland Twin Otter float plane in a spectacular 30 minute flight to Nesto Inlet. Our luggage had arrived ahead of us on a second plane.
We are greeted on the gangplank by Bruce, lodge manager Laura Rossy and most of the crew. With eight crew (including two creative chefs named Johnny) to handle a maximum of 12 guests there’s never a wait for service.
Or for food.
Before our gear is unpacked, we’re nibbling on shrimp appetizers, beef sandwiches, seafood chowder, and a superb quiche, while Bruce explains the protocols, (fish till you drop, eat when you want, if you need something ask), hands out an amazingly detailed 70-page booklet with instruction, directions and illustrations explaining the knots, tackle, productive riggings, bait cutting, mooching and trolling techniques, harpooning, maps with the hot spots Xed and GPS locked. We’re issued Mustang rain/float suits, boots with dryers, and a bin full of chemical hand warmers.
It’s always a good idea to pack wool or neoprene fingerless gloves, waterproof hat and LJs. When the sun shines, you can take it off.
Charlotte Queen Adventures is a self-guided operation. We’re assigned boats, given fishing maps with GPS marks at the hot spots, and turned loose; free to fish wherever, however and for whatever we want. In a separate boat a “fish master” rides herd on the half-dozen skiffs maintaining radio contacts, delivering hot bite reports, spare sandwiches, Thermos refills and replacement tackle.
We’re handed 10 ½ foot Daiwa mooching rods carrying single-action Daiwa M-1 mooching reels—the infamous knuckle busters. I love this rig, but some anglers prefer conventional tackle and are given Shimano TR 200 G levelwind reels. Line is Maxima 25-pound ultra green
For lings and halibut the boats are outfitted with 7-foot Berkley Roughneck rods, Shimano TLD 20 level-wind reels spooled with Berkley Big Game 50-pound line, a gaff and a harpoon with lots of advice on using it.
The fishing skiffs are some of the best lodge boats I’ve ever used. Eighteen feet with seaworthy 8-foot beam, self bailing and packed with positive floatation rated at 3000 pounds. Power is a Honda 50 HP 4-stroke outboard that will troll all day. High gunnels and wide beam frame twin consoles with a walkthrough to the bow. These boats were made to handle the ocean and to fish.
Electronics include Lowrance Chart GPS units pre-loaded with local charts and salmon-halibut honey holes, depth sounders and VHF radios. A self bailing fish box can hold a 140 pound halibut with a little room left over for salmon.
Standing in the mist, Bruce demonstrates gear, rigging, bait cuts, boats and offers plenty of advice. While he’s explaining how to fish a herring on the “Hippa Drop,” he freespools the bait to the bottom and it’s immediately eaten by a rockfish. Point made.
And we step into Boat 5.
On the first full day, we follow the fish master to see what’s left of yesterday’s bite at Red Rocks. A light mist is wetting down the fog. I cut bait while Chad drives. The rods are fishing before the boat drifts to a stop. We find the edge of a bait ball and seconds later Chad’s rod bangs into the water. The king is close to 20 and hit at only five pulls (two feet to a pull). I add another big coho from the bait ball.
A picket line of ominous shark fins, tails and dorsals, bear down on us and pass into the distance. The shark rod was back at the lodge.
My original plan had been to write a shark and silver story.
On earlier trips I’d learned that at times the west side of the Charlottes, especially in the Hippa Island region, attracts big numbers of migrating salmon sharks, cousins of the mako that can weigh up to 800 pounds, and offer incredibly abusive action on standup sport-fishing gear. Ed Pedersen, Captain/Operations Manager told me that it was a developing fishery, that they had the right tackle, and I knew from experiences in Alaska’s Prince William Sound how addictive salmon sharks can be.
Laura said that August was a top month for salmon sharks and that the boat had shark gear if I wanted it. August is also the hottest silver salmon month and when the best halibut fishing takes place and is also the most likely time to find good weather and a flat ocean.
Sharks, silvers, and halibut fishing on a peaceful Pacific Ocean: sounded like all the ingredients for a good fish story to me.
And it would have been. If the sharks had arrived when they were supposed to, and if the ocean hadn’t blown up for three of our four days. The fins that passed us on that first day, turned out to be the last sharks we saw, although after we left I understand that chef Johnny Lowe, a fervent salmon sharker, found them.
We left the Red Rocks bite and ran north to a spot on the GPS marked “the hump.” This is a favorite offshore spot of mine, a couple of miles seaward where the bottom rises up to 180 feet from an abyss on all sides. Stringers of kelp sometimes stream off the hump, which attracts clumps of baitfish, and a mix of salmon and bottomfish. You never know exactly what you’ll catch at The Hump, and you almost always see humpback whales.
The fish are in, we’re alone, the ocean is behaving and Chad and I are grinning and swinging the net close on coho to 12 pounds. Fishing is too hot to leave and we forget about running in for lunch, wolf down roast beef sandwiches, chips, candy bars, bananas, and gummy bears.
The coho action is nonstop and a bit crazy. A 10-pound silver hammers a herring in the wake and streaks for the horizon. Chad is up and on it and struggling to keep his fingers out of the whirling reel handle. The coho streaks for the kelp line and we chase it from kelp patch to kelp patch until finally it swaggers out of the water, flips over and lands on top of a wad of kelp. It flops around, high and dry. I swing the boat in close, net ready. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t lose this fish in a tangle of hooks, leader, line and kelp, but at the last second the fish flips off the kelp and dives—cleanly. Miraculously, none of the hooks are tangled.
At the end of the afternoon, we each keep a salmon limit, including two nice chinook that gave Chad a wake-up.
We fish for 13 hours catching and releasing more coho and pinks than I can remember, and end the day with a try for halibut and ling cod that ends up with quillbacks and one scarlet red yelloweye.
Back at the boat, Chad’s salmon catch weighs in at 53 pounds. Biggest salmon of the day was Rob Morris’s 33 pound king, and Erin is happy with her limit of salmon and a tender chicken halibut.
The next morning, somewhere around 5:30, we eat eggs and ham, grab Thermos’ of coffee and head out into a mist that is turning into wind, that is turning into some serious white caps. The ocean is going to blow up today and before it does Chad and I want to hit “the hump” one more time. We’re the only boat outside, with the other boats hanging close to the protection around Hippa Rocks.
It’s going to be tough. The drift is rocket fast and crazy. Waves are breaking in two sometimes three directions at once, and exploding into white caps higher than our heads. Chad sees a humpback whale breech.
We can hold the drift over The Hump, with the motor, just long enough to catch one to two salmon before we’re blown off and have to re-position. We’re flying across the salmon like a kite, dragging monofilament strings just under the surface. Two of our salmon have bite marks stretched completely across their bodies----seals, salmon sharks, who knows? Everything is out here.
The port rod slams down, Chad pulls back and he’s into a hot fish. “This one’s got shoulders” he says, this is a goooood fish.! The wind is howling now. It’s a king in the 25 pound neighborhood and at times it’s running in waves well above the boat. By the time we slip it into the fish box we’ve been blown three-quarters of a mile off The Hump, according to the GPS.
We fight our way back. The wind and waves are really getting nasty now. The island has long ago disappeared into wet gray. The whitecaps are exploding into horizontal buckshot and there’s a lot less water between the peaks. But the fish are still feeding.
I kill a small king that swallowed the hooks and was dead at the net. For the last hour Bruce, who’s the day’s Fish Master has been checking in on the radio more and more frequently until finally he officially request that we come inside to fish. The boat is handling the rough water, the fish are in a feeding frenzy, but common sense prevails.
It takes 42 minutes to work our way through the whitecaps and wind to reach the lee inside Hippa Rocks. The squalls coming in waves.
We run down to Black Beach and the blue tarp drift, where a year ago I nailed a 40-pound chinook. This time on the first drop I catch a 20 lb. halibut in 150 feet of water.
Even in here, the wind is picking up and it’s getting tough to hold a drift. The squalls outside the island are slamming into it, wrapping around and coming at us from both sides. The wind and rain is coming from two directions, when we finally call it a morning and run back to the lodge for steaming corn chowder with 3 splashes of Tabasco breaded chicken breasts. And gummy bears.
Our clothes go into the dryer and will be ready to fish before the weather is. I feel a nap coming on.
Chef Johnnie Cobb, tells stories of guests and crew catching 20 to 70 pound halibut off the barge, and how an 11-year-old guest with a Zebco rod and time to spare because the weather is too bad for the out-plane to fly, hooks a 60 pounder. The little guy has to hand it off but later he explains that, “I need a team. I’ll hook ‘em but somebody else has to land them.
At times we can’t make out the towering green hill across the inlet. Rain and wind is coming in dark waves.
It’s been a good day though. Several of the guests have connected with kings to 20 pound, including Erin and John Ive of Kirkland. The wall in the lounge is decorated with photos of 69-pound chinook. 179 pound halibut, a 309 pounder caught August 8, 2002 by Ralph Zaleck of Everett. In the halibut picture he’s also holding a king that look to be around 30 pounds.
Fish photos from this trip are already posted on the wall. Father daughter—Terry and Erin and Chad and I with beautiful silvers and Chad’s big king.
The wind and waves are strong enough to keep the eagles buried back in the trees, the gulls on the water, and the ravens pinned into the tree tops.
Late in the afternoon Chad and I run out to see if we can fish Red Rocks but it is still wild and crashing. Waves obliterate the shore. White caps blowing off the top of 15 foot rollers. We troll and can’t draw a bite. No black rockfish, nothing. Bait schools are blown apart and the salmon with them.
Erin and Terry come out for a look, get sucked too close to the reef that is exploding walls of noisy whitewater and sensibly turn back. We try for another 10 minutes then follow them. At the mouth of South Pass we hit a coho that Chad puts in the boat.
LAST DAY: we can fish for two hours but we need to be back by 8:30 to clear the rooms and get ready for the out-flight. A brown phase black bear is sitting on the rocks in front of the barge.
Rain has turned to mist, the wind has collapsed and the waves have retreated into manageable rollers. We leave the bear on the beach, and run into the fog toward Red Rocks, hoping to find one more coho that hasn’t been blown out by the storm, and maybe a ling or nice halibut for the white meat.
I catch and kill our 16th salmon, a fat coho and the last salmon on the two man limit of 8 salmon each.
We run north around Red Rock Reef, past Ship Wreck Reef and stop in 170 feet of water, just short of Lighthouse Reef. The area is marked by white curtains of rollers exploding into the air off the reef. We rig the halibut rods and hit bottom.
Chad catches a 41-inch ling cod that came half way up and went back to the bottom, then came back. It was our last fish---the call came to head back to the barge to shower, eat steak and eggs Benedict and wait for the float plane from Alliford Bay.
It will be late, we all know that but we head in anyway.
Fog is very low, ceiling only slightly lower than the clouds that bury the steep mountains. Our gear is stacked on the deck, huge cinnamon rolls on the table.
As the ocean settles, the bait begins to regroup and the salmon will move back in. The next group of anglers will push off into a table that is being set with bait and feeding coho and chinook, but they are sitting in Sandspit and have no idea of what is waiting for them.
Bruce announces the clouds are still too thick to bring in a float plane. The two Johnnys’ serve lunch. We stare at the fog, make small talk, and reluctantly hope to see an orange and white float plane.
Good Chicago blues is playing softly and quietly in the background.
The smell of food is in the cabin. An eagle poses on a hemlock bow and stares into the ship’s windows.
Three hours later and Bruce gives up on the Twin Otter and sends for a helicopter.
While we wait, Erin, the space scientist, rigs a rod with a herring, drops it off the barge and in 10 minutes catches a 20 pound halibut.
Bruce shakes his head.
All 10 us squeeze into the Bell HeliJet Copter and buckle up for a low level flight over Skidegate Channel, 60 feet above the water, in and out and under the fog. It’s a great flight. At the airport in Sandspit we meet the fishermen who have been waiting two days to fly out to a lodge boat in a fog-shrouded inlet south of Hippa. They are not happy. Two days of sitting in the Sandspit Airport is roughly 46 hours too many.
Stuck in Sandspit, he says and we laugh.
But it’s worth it, it’s always worth it.
WHEN TO GO
Queen Charlotte Adventures starts fishing the last week in May and ends on Labor Day, and according to lodge manager Laura Rossy, "There are salmon here when we arrive, and they're here after we leave".
Largest kings of the year are caught in early June and new runs continue to arrive at Hippa through July and into August.
Toward the end of August king numbers drop, but the average size goes up. During good silver years, the water fairly shivers with runs of coho in late July and into August when they weigh 10 to 20 pounds.
Biggest halibut of the year are almost always caught in August.
HIPPA NOTES
Charlotte Queen Adventures offers 5 and 4-day package trips and limits anglers to 12. There is an 8 man crew including a superb chef and fish master.
All fishing is self-guided. A fish master is on the water to hand out gear, refreshments, assistance and advice. Most of the fishing is on the west side of Hippa Island, within a couple of miles of shore, and there are protected inside areas to fish if the wind kicks up.
Downriggers are available, but mooching and trolling with free-sliding weights to develop the “Hippa Drop” is the preferred technique. Single action mooching reels are standard, but conventional reels are available.
All equipment is provided and from our experience is quality gear. There is a strong emphasis on service, and a good wine arrives with every evening meal. Bring liquor. Fish are cleaned, vacuum packed and frozen in airline-approved freezer cartons.
We drove up from Seattle and processed through customs the day before our 7:15 a.m. departure and overnighted in Richmond at the Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel which is conveniently located on Cessna Drivewithin sight of VIA. A lodge representative issues fishing licenses, coffee and breakfast rolls, at the Thunderbird Air office.
Contact: Laura Rossy, Charlotte Queen Adventures, 1-800-784-1718 or 604-514-6556. laura.charlottequeenadventures@telus.net
or on the web at: www.salmonfishingonline.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Charlotte Queen Adventures Ltd., 604-583-6556, www.salmonfishingonline.com
Queen Charlotte Visitor Centers, 250-559-8316, www.quinfor.ca
Queen Charlotte Islands print or electronic visitor guide, www.queencharlotteislandsguide.com
Tourism B.C. 604-660-3679, www.HelloBC.com
Delta Vancouver Airport, 604-278-1241, www.deltahotels.com
Northern Thunderbird Air, 604-232-9211, www.ntair.ca