2018 Winter Harbour Reports

headed up this coming weekend for a week.... any idea if the sockeye are in the area? sounds like an amazing fishery...!
 
Just got back fishing was slow inshore but not bad offshore lots of coho offshore but mostly wild no big springs largest was 18 lbs
 
Oh Bill, what are you doing to me!?!?!
Now I have to pack my sockeye gear too?
Team Gong Show is set to arrive this Sunday for 4 nights.
 
Oh Bill, what are you doing to me!?!?!
Now I have to pack my sockeye gear too?
Team Gong Show is set to arrive this Sunday for 4 nights.
Gong Show.... where you staying... and what boat? I will be there as well... red Hewescraft..... keep in touch on the water... lets share them hot spots and reports.....
 
Chinook cabin at Oli's.
Blue hulled eaglecraft.
My dad is an old piledriver and pretty deaf, so that is why I will be yelling.

Looks like a convergence zone on Monday, so hopefully will be able to get to the outside for some springs.
We will be talking about what we are seeing but not what we are hearing.
What channel does everyone chat on?
 
Thats great news! And they are open correct? I am having trouble finding a line on the DFO site that says "YES".. they are open.
Leaving Sunday AM... be there Monday for the week...
See Fishery Notice 666, open in area 127. Devils number......BB
 
Gong Show.... where you staying... and what boat? I will be there as well... red Hewescraft..... keep in touch on the water... lets share them hot spots and reports.....
I think 69 is the local "guide" channel... Andy from Oli's is on there.... 19 is the store I think.
 
Heading up to Quatsino tomorrow and hope to be fishing Saturday through Wednesday. Haven't heard anything more about sockeye, but I understand they are out there somewhere. Also, lots of coho and chinook in the area. I'll post a report when I'm back as we are off the grid until then ( by choice! ).
 
Heading up to Quatsino tomorrow and hope to be fishing Saturday through Wednesday. Haven't heard anything more about sockeye, but I understand they are out there somewhere. Also, lots of coho and chinook in the area. I'll post a report when I'm back as we are off the grid until then ( by choice! ).
fished July 27-31 catching quotas for 2 and put in many hours-Cliff was OK 4 springs lots of coho ,many small 8" coho,large jellyfish and kelp, very few springs off shore, many larger coho to 12 lb.Fished July 31- Aug 3, 8 springs to 22 lb one morning, mostly on white hootchies, and sm spoons at 60' early morning to 240' later in the day, best was at the RCA boundary at Topknot ,managed salmon quotas for 4 and 6 lings
 
Does anyone have any luck with prawns or crab?......just more gear to pack I guess;)
You are correct, it is not worth packing it in unless you set the crab traps around Cole harbour
or Rupert Arm, and then fish really deep as the otters are after the crabs.

Have a safe trip . .......BB
 
Just back last night from 4-ish days of fishing WH for the first time.

Have to comment on the great relaxed atmosphere of WH and the people there. Everyone we met 'gets it'.
You do have to be self-reliant, not a lot of services. Make sure you have the right screwdriver to remove the idle jet in your kicker.

The fish were moving quite a bit around the various spots. We heard of morning bites at Cliffe Point and Lippy.
We had good luck just putting in our time and working through a few different presentations and depths.

Two days of fog and two days of hot sun. Winds stayed low with an interesting outflow in the morning.
Tides were perfect, lots of flood action during the day.
Big jellyfish everywhere, took awhile to clean the gear when a big one hit and stuck. It also seemed to mess up our dr clips.

There were lots of coho, although we were not having as much of a problem as others in getting the gear past them to deeper water.
We trolled the highway at the 50 fathom line, caught a couple of springs and a number of lively, nice looking hatchery coho.
Off Lippy at 150' was also a nice place to troll.

Others were having luck with spoons, not us. We did have luck with white hootchies, anchovies both small and not so small and plugs.
Halibut and ling were not thick and we had to wait awhile anchored with the chum bag. We did do well in the end.
Only caught three rockfish with one being a yelloweye. As promised, the Outpost has both mechanical and fancy seaquilizers.
We were lucky in our learning curve with the mechanical, did not time the drop right and the yelloweye slipped off the seaquilizer hit the water and swam right down. Did not see it surface again.
Lucky, it's not just a beer.

We hit the well known spots and had a great time. Planning on heading back to put in some more time and find 'our' spots.
 
Can one of the guys on here familiar with the regulations clear up something for us? When fishing Quatsino Sound area 27-2 can a person keep 2 wild coho a day and have 4 in possession (2 days limit) .... the way they write the special regs it isn't clear (at least it doesn't state it clearly to us when we read them, if you can have 2 a day as a mixture of hatchery and wild or two hatchery or two wild ( I know it is two a day, but in what combinations )???? thanks for any help !
Hello, If your inside the line you can have either. but outside the line only clipped. it reads just like you see it. Daily is 2, (remember inside the line or outside tells you which you can have.) Daily is 2, total possession is 4. hope this helps.
 
Well late but not forgotten, Here's how our fishing went at WH during our stay from 7-28 to 8-4. We got started at 4am to start our trip, turned the key on the truck and nothing happened! WHAT! 40 min later the truck started and ran like crap. Oh man no not now. Away we go down the road truck running like crap sputtering and bucking. Got to the border crossing, only to meet a guard that needed more coffee or maybe a snickers bar. But we made it through and got to the Ferry on time. Upon arrival at Duke point, we are getting ready to get off the ferry and we are standing at the trailer hitch and see that someone when crossing over the tongue of the trailer stepped on the surge brake line! REALLY! Oh crap. break fluid puddling. Ran all the way to Campbell River with no trailer breaks. Got a break line there for 57.00. oh boy just keeps getting better. fixed it and fueled up and stopped at the sportsman and got some bait and a new Islander reel. Truck still running like crap. Got to Coal Harbour at about 4pm. Launched and disconnected the batteries of the truck, just in case. Ran out to WH, half way by radar in the fog. cleared up as we came into the harbour fog lifted and we docked.
Now on to the fishing part. we fished every day at 4:30am. Seems the Fish had just came in, it was suggested to run out to 350 feet look for bait and you should find fish. We took the advise and no kidding within 60 seconds after the downrigger stopped we had fish hitting. Now we are first timers to WH and were ready to dash if winds came up. but for the next 4 days we fished between the 350 to 550 depths we brought to the boat 78 fish ranging 13 to 24 lbs. For us this way fishing heaven! we love catch and release fishing. between these to areas and the south side of the bay, ( west of cliff pt. ...... I cant remember the names) and Grants bay? we limited on our springs and coho. Wow what a great 4 days of fishing. On day 5 we still had to get 4 more springs. So we slept in a little and left at 5:30, went out to the same depth and within two hours we had our last springs on board. So now we ran south towards lawn point we found a table top and dropped anchor, a couple hours later we were on our way to the dock with our upper limit Hali. We made a decision to not try to take smaller bracket size because of the churn of fish we would have to go through to get them. That just left us with finding our Ling. Next morning we headed out to Lawn pt again. We found some great pinnacles, and started pounding them, no giants but respectful sizes. we managed to get 8 lings in the 20 to 35 pound range. We got up and got ready to leave loaded up and boat decides it wants to stay in WH and wont start. **** really, My fun meter is starting to peg now and, by nothing we did it starts. Poof we ran to Coal Harbour hoping there was enough water to get out and will the truck start! All went well, got out ok and the truck started, still running like crap. Homeward bound. Made the ferry and then we found a 2.5 hour wait at the boarder crossing. Made it home safely and the next day I was looking at my truck engine and found a injector plug loose by my oil cap! All is running good again.
We had a great time fishing, hitting good weather and fish were in. Thank you Dick and Just Steve. Without you two we would not have done so well nor had such a good time. We will be back.
 
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