Years ago I worked as a deck hand at the QCL in Naden Harbour and they ran out to the fishing grounds about half way between Naden and Langara Island. I was up there for the month of August, so fishing was pretty good. I had the opportunity to go out on my own unguided, but, as a fly fisherman, I had never fished the chuck for salmon and had never fished bait fish (the go-to method on the North Island). Now I had had the ability to eavesdrop in the common room in the evenings and listen to who was having success and where. I learned the necessary lingo (kind of like Antonio Banderas' character in Eaters of the Dead) by watching and listening and piecing it together. I learned how to cut the bait strip and how to rig it and learned the depth (in "pulls") that most fish were being hooked at. On my first trip out I simply followed the guided boats out and watched them. Then I found my spot, not more than a few hundred meters off shore along seal covered rocks, rigged my herring, and (having access to the guides radio frequency) pulled out the required line to get to the required depth. We were using a simple mooching set up, a 2 - 4 ounce weight (depending on the depth needed) and the herring strip (no down riggers, dodgers, etc). Within minutes I had caught and released a coho (there was a closure for coho that year) and then I got my first chinook, a 31 pound Tyee (I earned my pin despite not landed it in a row boat in the Campbell River). The north island waters are so rich that you are going to get into fish for certain. A guide is going to ensure that you get fish, but unguided you are still in good shape. Now, as I said I was there in August and the pinks soon moved into the harbour and so, after I had my Tyee, I was more interested in fly fishing for them off the beach at the lodge then running an hour out to the fishing grounds, or even further out to the halibut grounds. Had I gone back out, I may have discovered that I simple got lucky on my first trip, but I suspect that I would have come back with fish every trip (I was there 4 weeks and did not hear of a single boat returning without a fish). This was good, as this was also the year of Mark Messier's Fishing Classic and they were certainly not disappointed. Mark's sister Mary Kay even caught a fish. Of course the cash incentives for the guides helped ensure success for the celebs as well.
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Topic: Langara Fishing Lodge (Read 4828 times)