NORTH COAST EXPEDITION PART I

Sharphooks

Well-Known Member
Back in early July I was fit to be tied—-I’d left my boat in Nanaimo after two trips to Barkley Sound and now, my local spring season had just started and I didn’t have access to my boat!

I put up with that for a week then finally couldn’t take it anymore...throwing caution to the wind, I booked my ferry north on 15 July. As I’d already booked the return for 12 August, it was starting to sink in....could I do a one month long trip on a 24 foot boat without going stark raving mad???

But the GF was in Europe, I’d left a clean business trail (or so I thought) and my thoughts while boarding the ferry was....just pace yourself...just pace yourself, laddie, and you’ll do fine.

So I got to Port Hardy, had a quick meeting with one of my customers, got some salt ice and a pressed tank of marine gas and then boom, there I was headed across QCS for the promised land.

My plan for the trip was to get well up towards Prince Rupert and explore some new water. Last year I got up into the Grenville Channel and this year my plan was to press even farther north. Or those were my intentions, anyway.

But the truth is, I’m embarrassed to relate that I ran into a serious case of lost nerve on this trip. The operative word here is exposure. How much repeated exposure can we take before we say “enough”?

I’d already had a weather incident in Barkley Sound ( boat camping in 30 - 40 knots with limited protection) That was still fresh in my mind but I made it around Cape Caution with no incidents, got through Rivers and on up towards Milbanke. Once in Milbanke I ran into a solid weather pattern of SE and SW to 30 knots . A few years ago, that was my nemesis ....stuck in the middle of Milbanke in a 20 - 30 knot blow. Got a serious case of PTSD out of that incident: to this day, if I see curling white caps I get slingshotted back to that day several years ago and feel like someone’s kicked me in the groin....and here I was doing it all over again.

I was in quarter following seas, maybe 1 to one and a half meters coming in from the SW. No big deal, right? Well, my boat sucks in any kind of following seas and a quarter following sea pushing me where I didn’t want to go was not what I needed.

And then all of a sudden my starboard gunnel was just about taking water over the edge. In that same instant, all the drawers in my boat came loose, strewing the contents on the floor and everything on my table ended up landing on top of my puppy who was cringing on the floor....

I knew at that moment that it was Operator Error: I have rubber mats on my deck and because I thought they were sticky, it didn’t occur to me to lash down my 60 gallon cooler of salt ice (an easy 225 kg of shiftable weight sitting there ready to make trouble). The quartering seas were enough to break it free of the carpet and it slid a meter across my deck and slammed into the starboard gunnel at the precise moment a large wave hit my port gunnel. When things go bad they go bad quick and there was that magic moment when I thought there was a chance I could roll the boat, especially if another wave came in with the boat keeled over like that and wind gusting to 25....

And so the nerve thing....screw it I thought to my self. I’m sick of this exposure stuff. In April I’d done my 5 day raft trip to Alaska....I neglected to bring the rain fly of my new tent and endured 5 days of monsoon rains and snow in a sodden tent with a sodden sleeping bag, hypothermia in my peripheral vision the entire trip. Then Barkley in June in a wind storm anchored in an exposed bay with water literally smoking around me, anchor dragging with 6 to one scope, thinking I’d wake up on the rocks. And now this. And on top of that, I’d just heard on the radio that I could expect SE and SW for the next 4 days with gusts up to 35 knots.... pull the plug on going north....pull the plug on going north.... that was the voice going through my head

I finally found a hidey-hole to think things over. I’d been on the water 5 days and I’d already found very good spring fishing on my way north. Rivers was very good to me and the normal spots around Shearwater were even better...nice fish on every tide, boom, boom, boom.....why not just do what you did in year’s past and stay put?

I stayed in that spot for three days waiting out the blow. The wind veered like nuts spinning the boat in endless circles. Every morning I’d look out to see if I was on the beach. This is what kept me sane: I knew chartplotters were good for other things besides finding out where you were:

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...6/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76

My favorite moment during that SE/SW event was waking up with water dripping onto my exposed neck....my hatch was leaking in the monsoon rains the SE/SW brought with it

But at the end of that blow all of a sudden the outlook changed....I heard the word “calm” used. heard the word “rippled”. I heard the word “NW” and my most favorite phrase of all ....”5 to 15”.......

So I beat back the nerves and to spite myself, made my move north. God, I was glad I did —- seven days of stunning weather, I found my favorite beach to camp at in the whole world, zero people, and got into ridiculous fishing for not only springs but huge northern coho day after day after day

NEW GEAR

My big purchase for the boat this year in preparation for this trip was an electric windlass. Last year, pulling a 15 kg Rocna and 30 feet of chain multiple times a day gave me a herniated disc. This year I installed a Lewmar ProFish. How have I done these trips in the past without a Lewmar?? I also stepped up for a Mantus snubber. When I was in that bay waiting out the SE/SW that snubber was gold. You attach it to your rode with a double Prussic hitch—-it doesn’t slip

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...7/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76

Then you shackle it to a bridle to keep all pressure off the windlass. When you need to increase scope, you just toss more bridle into your anchor set. Nice!

This is the trick I used to keep from draining my house battery when pulling the anchor:

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...8/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76

With a bungee chord and a length of line I’d keep the spring-loaded tensioner off the eight brait rode and hand-pull until I got to the brait-chain splice. There I’d place the chain back in the windlass, put the tensioner back in place, and just use power to haul the remaining 30 feet of chain and anchor. I never had voltage issues the entire trip due to the windlass using this trick.

ELECTRONICS

My other purchase for the trip was a stand-alone sonar——a Furuno FCV 588. This unit has Rez-enhancement software....the picture is as close as you can get to a Chirp picture without dropping the $1K + for a Chirp transducer. (All on a $ 70 Airmar P66 skimmer)

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...9/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76


In addition, if you look at the bottom of the screen, you can see the “predictive” algorithm it uses to determine bottom structure. You can see the visual representation you get when transitioning from rock to mixed sand and gravel. This is very nice to have! One day I saw the pictorial representation of mud mixed with sand and gravel. I dropped a Tomic 602 down to the bottom and in 5 minutes had a 40 lb halibut

Here’s a screen-shot of stumbling on to a bait-ball and immediately hooking a spring which had been sitting on a rock pinnacle having lunch:

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...0/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76


I also spent more time using the DFF3D side-scan: this install takes a lot of tweaking because it has so many options that if you don’t understand how to use or adjust, you can miss out on valuable information.

Here’s the triple-beam and side scan picking up on a bait ball in 200 feet of water:

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...1/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76

Having the side scan next to the triple-beams shows clearly where the bait is most concentrated and its relationship to the bottom structure

Here’s a historical representation of bottom structure your boat has past over——very nice to have when fishing a new area:

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...2/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76

Last but not least, I stepped up for Doppler Radar—-the Furuno NXT. I spent most of this trip in pea-soup fog. Both my QCS crossings were in pea-soup fog. Very calm feeling seeing targets then using the Target Analyzer and knowing at a glance if those targets are coming towards you (red color with a lollipop-pop icon that shows relative bearing etc) or going away from you (green color)

https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...3/&temp_hash=c3c352b82a88e379bac8d627038fce76
 

Attachments

  • 48CB66AA-D29C-4F41-A981-7D5EB687CA1A.jpeg
    48CB66AA-D29C-4F41-A981-7D5EB687CA1A.jpeg
    214.1 KB · Views: 267
  • ECD6BC7B-39B3-4B80-88F8-6F5A0965C43B.jpeg
    ECD6BC7B-39B3-4B80-88F8-6F5A0965C43B.jpeg
    181.7 KB · Views: 262
  • 50C2E466-10D8-4476-BF88-C3211799D4C4.jpeg
    50C2E466-10D8-4476-BF88-C3211799D4C4.jpeg
    212.5 KB · Views: 252
  • 89870416-5E2A-4313-B4B8-B44EE5D0C75F.jpeg
    89870416-5E2A-4313-B4B8-B44EE5D0C75F.jpeg
    153.1 KB · Views: 251
  • 81FE6866-E56C-45EE-B7B2-19D8229CF7B5.jpeg
    81FE6866-E56C-45EE-B7B2-19D8229CF7B5.jpeg
    134.1 KB · Views: 277
  • 0BAC9730-2CE8-48E3-8B21-A0621D9B633F.jpeg
    0BAC9730-2CE8-48E3-8B21-A0621D9B633F.jpeg
    187.8 KB · Views: 254
  • E494A996-3C44-4F11-91DB-F08695AFF594.jpeg
    E494A996-3C44-4F11-91DB-F08695AFF594.jpeg
    102.6 KB · Views: 228
  • CE38EB28-2235-4E0C-9413-16DACFB4B078.jpeg
    CE38EB28-2235-4E0C-9413-16DACFB4B078.jpeg
    111.7 KB · Views: 219
Last edited:
Geeze I love reading about your trips and explorations.

Many thanks for taking the time and effort to both make your adventures and then share them with us.

Two thumbs up from here.






Take care.
 
Spent a few years on the central coast and charlottes commercial fishing would love to go again sport fishing Etc. Always great stories
 
This was my second year going to Shearwater after reading your Central and North Coast post Thank you Sharphooks The most enjoyable weeks of my life as fishing and boating goes.
 
Back
Top