2019 Port Hardy Reports

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Left Hardy last week on Wednesday evening, and camped near River's Inlet. It poured rain for the first few days and we didn't catch much. The guides reported the same slow fishing. We fished a bit south of the crowd, near Alexandra Passage, and managed to find a bay which held quite a few fish. The smaller springs bit on army truck and green/glow hootchies, and the bigger springs bit on 3.5" glow green/white (5' leader to flasher) spoons trolled FAST. We actually found out by accident that if we trolled at 4mph we hooked the large springs and avoided the smaller ones.

There wasn't much bait but we did come across two balls on the surface. At one, we counted 50 eagles in the trees, taking turns swooping into the bait ball, hooking a few small herring, and returning to the trees. We actually scooped our bucket alongside the boat and got a number of small herring to use as bait.

Bottomfish was slow. Don't even bother fishing Rankin Shoals/Sea Otter Group. I assume it's been hit hard by the longliner which we saw moored in various bays at night. We did manage to catch the lings and two small halibut but it took a while (fish the pinnacles closer to shore).

Dropped off my friends Sunday night at Port Hardy, and took out a different friend on Monday morning. We fished a few spots, but managed to find our springs in a shallow bay close to Cape Sutil. Trolled with the tide around points and into the eddy, in 30' of water. 3.5" spoons. The guide fleet was at the Cape itself but we preferred to be out of the crowd and ended up doing just fine.

Tried for hali by dragging the bottom in 140' a few miles out from the cape. Nothing touched the cut plug herring with large glow/LED hootchies. So we anchored on a pinnacle at 160' and no luck. Tried a trough at 325', but no luck. Finally caught our two halis at about 200' in a hump we anchored on. Some pretty exciting gaff and harpoon work happened (it was my friend's first time fishing), but we got the fish in the boat.

Saw humpbacks every day, sea otters, and a bear on the beach. What a great time.
 
Sutil is slowing down spent the last few days out there. Took awhile to scratch up a couple fish. Could probably fish closer to Hardy and get just as many fish and in the slot.


Picture of the bait that was in the stomachs out their
 

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How do you know, when to go to Sutil outside over the bar, or take the inside route? Tides, Any advice?
 
How do you know, when to go to Sutil outside over the bar, or take the inside route? Tides, Any advice?
it is actually much safer if you take the inside along the shoreline vs right up the center - we have had no issue the couple times we took that (while it was definitely uncomfortable up the middle). Just watch your sounder and stick with the deeper channels is all. Some of the regulars are welcome to chime in, but that was the tip that they gave us at Scotia Bay and it seems no problem whatsoever when we started using it.
 
Anyone know what channel Duncanby lodge monitors? Heading up that way tomorrow and looking to stay safe!


Thanks
 
My buddy and I are spending 5 nights in Port Hardy this week and looking to fish PH and WH while we are there. We are also going out with Codfathers charters the first day we are here. So we will have 3 days on our own to fish for Lings, Hali's and Salmon. I would be curious to hear any recent reports on these, especially around Port Hardy. Do the Masterman's produce Lings / rockfish in the rockier dropoff areas? We are hoping for numbers of fish (silvers / pinks) vs hog hunting for big springs, so any suggestions there would be helpful as well. Thanks and we will be sure to post a report here that would help others as well.
 
My buddy and I are spending 5 nights in Port Hardy this week and looking to fish PH and WH while we are there. We are also going out with Codfathers charters the first day we are here. So we will have 3 days on our own to fish for Lings, Hali's and Salmon. I would be curious to hear any recent reports on these, especially around Port Hardy. Do the Masterman's produce Lings / rockfish in the rockier dropoff areas? We are hoping for numbers of fish (silvers / pinks) vs hog hunting for big springs, so any suggestions there would be helpful as well. Thanks and we will be sure to post a report here that would help others as well.
Just returned from Port Hardy...and fished Cape Sutil, Castle Point and Duval.
Had a fun day at Castle Point 2 wild 10lb cohos, 1 hatch and a keeper spring fishing 150ft on the rigger...
Large white hoochies were the ticket at Sutil and 4 inch kitchen sink spoon at Castle point.
 
Just returned from Port Hardy...and fished Cape Sutil, Castle Point and Duval.
Had a fun day at Castle Point 2 wild 10lb cohos, 1 hatch and a keeper spring fishing 150ft on the rigger...
Large white hoochies were the ticket at Sutil and 4 inch kitchen sink spoon at Castle point.
much action at Sutil still? Worth a trip there? We are heading up Thursday - its getting late for springs so trying to figure out a game plan!
 
We had an epic trip from Aug 7 - 11 up in Port Hardy. There's a lot I would like to share about our trip and I plan to write a blog article on the topic that might help others on similar trips. Can I share the link to that article (when it's completed) here or is there a policy against that?

Here's a few tips I would share:

1. It's not a bad idea to hire a charter for your first day if you've never fished the area. We went with Codfather charters and skipper Yogi put us on some good fishing. He also shared lots of good intel we could use for our next 3 days on our own.

2. We stayed at Bear Cove Cottages which was a great experience and the owner Wade was very helpful as well with some good suggestions about where to go and input on the area.

3. The fishing had slowed down quite a bit at Cape Sutil and somewhat in the points around Hardy Bay (Duval and Daphne), but local was fishing better than making the run to Cape Sutil, and many of the charters were coming back to fish local vs staying outside.

4. We had multiple fantastic days just fishing Point Daphne and would recommend that especially if you have morning flood tides pushing bait up against the point. Don't ignore the kelp beds on both sides of the point. We hooked multiple large springs in 25-35 ft of water, power mooching with green label cut plugs.

5. Don't bother crabbing the north end/inside of VI. If you want to crab and prawn, plan to spend a day out of Coal Harbour.

6. If you get calm days without wind and even better when you get no wind plus no fog (twice for us!), make the run out to the Deserters Islands, fish Castle point, but go further north and hit those smaller islands. We were catching big pinks and kings in that area, while being surrounded by whales breaching and attacking a large bait ball with hundreds of birds doing the same. Some of the rocks there with kelp beds around them have huge sea bass. Don't bother keeping a smaller rockfish since you can only keep one. Go use that one on a big sea bass.

7. Trolling around flashers with green on them and the kingfisher 3.0 in herring aide with some herring or anchovie smelly jelly was outfishing everyone. It caught every species from rockfish, ling cod, springs, coho, pinks. Don't make it too complex, when there's fish around, they are quite snappy.

Port Hardy is an amazing area, with amazing people and even on what people called a "slow week of fishing" we had an absolutely epic adventure and plan to come back next year. Let me know if you have any questions and hopefully people will enjoy my full blog article when finished.
 
up with the boys for our annual trip 9-13th - definitely our biggest grind going up there given the number of hours on water, mostly thanks to the hardest bottom fish grind for us. Ling cod, little success - largest around 20lb, couple around 10 - our regular haunts didn't work out, so tried lots of new reefs in the gordons and Deserters and mostly found all other cod varieties - huge black bass (5lb+) and coppers thou but after bringing up 100 of those (and lowering all down with success when needed), it got frustrating. Halibut no good either - our regular spot not a sniff, tried airport, dogfish heaven, tried towards Malcolm, nothing, didn't bother with Taylor as we heard the commies just raped it, tried in the Deserters one day and nothing going there. Got our only one further out in area 11 and a few nice snapper as well that stayed down safely it seems (one pushed 15lbs!)

Salmon, bit more promising - didn't go far this year as we were told Sutil was off & our boats aren't worthy of further north (even though weather would have allowed). Few schools of nice pinks came through, coho was spotty - best action off Castle but I think only 1 clipped in our group. Best for us definitely Duval and Daphne - got several in the teens up to low 20s with largest mid 20's in the Gordons. Not without the opps though - one lost a mid 30's right at the net at Daphne, and we probably had 5 huge hits/early runs that either sawed us off or didn't stick long enough to give us a chance. Duval with most of the action bay side of the painted rock - mid 30's and 70's-80's were the depth ticket and glow greens were the best for us.

Quite something as well to get stopped by DFO - first time ever on the water...not once, but 2 days in a row! Actually good to see and sounded like wild coho and barbs were the biggest issues around. They were very active though and easy for them one day as fog was coming and going so easy to swoop in on boats.

Can't complain too much though - weather was absolutely amazing - brief period of 10 knot wind was all we saw the entire stay - otherwise a mill pond.
 
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