FishTactics
Member
Thanks for the kind words! I had fun making the video too - I took along 2 GoPros, numerous mounts, 4 SD cards, 12 batteries, 4 dual chargers etc and spent a couple hours each night recharging and dumping data to a backup hard drive. The memories captured were worth it. BigBird007 hope this helps give you an idea about what it is like up at Langara!
One of the reasons I chose Langara is that the fishing grounds are so close to the lodges and given the wind direction you will always have a safe place to fish. One really calm day we circum-navigated the entire island in 35 minutes. When we went we got lucky with low winds and spent a lot of time on the west side fishing lacy and fish bowl/cape knox areas. It seemed to be where the larger chinook were hanging out that week. I spoke to a few people that had fished langara a couple times prior and never had the opportunity to fish the west side due to wind. Sometimes the west is shut down for all but the largest guide boats. The more popular spots like coho pt, andrews pt, macpherson pt etc are all along the east side of the island along with other sheltered hot spots along graham island shoreline.
Here are a few things you should know - We chose to fish with west coast fishing club that equip their boats with downriggers because they are familiar to us and we thought they would be an advantage. 2 of the 5 days we found fish in the 80-120ft depths off Lacy and in my opinion that would be a lot of line off the reel if mooching with just 8oz weights in the currents. Most hookups with chinook were 40-80 on the downrigger with 60ft being the magic number most times. We fished with one dummy flasher on one of the downriggers and while I'm confident it drew in fish, the line hooked up to that downrigger got the LEAST amount of hits - very interesting. Even if you use downriggers be sure to use a 3rd weighted rod off the stern. Both large fish (and several others) hit the back rod set at 10-12 pulls and if we weren't using that shallow weighted line the outcome of trip would have likely been different. There is a reason why Langara boats don't think its necessary to use downriggers! Radio chatter is very secretive, guides wont give away their locations on the radio unless its a place they aren't catching. Know your charts and all the hot spots before you go. Tides are extremely important in terms of figuring out where to fish, certain spots produce better on an ebb vs flood. If you read through the archive of reports on langara's website and west coast fishing club's website you will start learning the location and names of fishing spots and the tides they fish best and this is especially important if you are fishing unguided up there for the first time.
Learn how to cut plug a herring before you go so you don't waste time on the water trying to get it right. There is a reason why every guide up there uses cut plug herring the majority of the time. We normally fish with gear and brought a lot of spoons with us and while we did catch several on some AP needlefish spoons, an XL cut plug herring was the clear winner. It's the proven presentation of choice up there, don't deviate from that too much!
Finally, as much as the lodge owners like to stay quiet on the subject - Sea lions are a big issue. Sea lions pretty much shut down fishing at andrews pt and machperson pt while we were there. If sea lions are in the water at a fishing spot, you might as well move along. If enough boats are in the area you can hope that someone else hooks up before you and distracts the lion while you play your fish. To avoid lions a lot of guys are fishing a little farther offshore and a little deeper but having said that we were always able to find some good water and not have them interfere too much. I think we only lost 4 fish to lions. There are about a dozen popular fishing locations to cycle around. Hope this helps!
One of the reasons I chose Langara is that the fishing grounds are so close to the lodges and given the wind direction you will always have a safe place to fish. One really calm day we circum-navigated the entire island in 35 minutes. When we went we got lucky with low winds and spent a lot of time on the west side fishing lacy and fish bowl/cape knox areas. It seemed to be where the larger chinook were hanging out that week. I spoke to a few people that had fished langara a couple times prior and never had the opportunity to fish the west side due to wind. Sometimes the west is shut down for all but the largest guide boats. The more popular spots like coho pt, andrews pt, macpherson pt etc are all along the east side of the island along with other sheltered hot spots along graham island shoreline.
Here are a few things you should know - We chose to fish with west coast fishing club that equip their boats with downriggers because they are familiar to us and we thought they would be an advantage. 2 of the 5 days we found fish in the 80-120ft depths off Lacy and in my opinion that would be a lot of line off the reel if mooching with just 8oz weights in the currents. Most hookups with chinook were 40-80 on the downrigger with 60ft being the magic number most times. We fished with one dummy flasher on one of the downriggers and while I'm confident it drew in fish, the line hooked up to that downrigger got the LEAST amount of hits - very interesting. Even if you use downriggers be sure to use a 3rd weighted rod off the stern. Both large fish (and several others) hit the back rod set at 10-12 pulls and if we weren't using that shallow weighted line the outcome of trip would have likely been different. There is a reason why Langara boats don't think its necessary to use downriggers! Radio chatter is very secretive, guides wont give away their locations on the radio unless its a place they aren't catching. Know your charts and all the hot spots before you go. Tides are extremely important in terms of figuring out where to fish, certain spots produce better on an ebb vs flood. If you read through the archive of reports on langara's website and west coast fishing club's website you will start learning the location and names of fishing spots and the tides they fish best and this is especially important if you are fishing unguided up there for the first time.
Learn how to cut plug a herring before you go so you don't waste time on the water trying to get it right. There is a reason why every guide up there uses cut plug herring the majority of the time. We normally fish with gear and brought a lot of spoons with us and while we did catch several on some AP needlefish spoons, an XL cut plug herring was the clear winner. It's the proven presentation of choice up there, don't deviate from that too much!
Finally, as much as the lodge owners like to stay quiet on the subject - Sea lions are a big issue. Sea lions pretty much shut down fishing at andrews pt and machperson pt while we were there. If sea lions are in the water at a fishing spot, you might as well move along. If enough boats are in the area you can hope that someone else hooks up before you and distracts the lion while you play your fish. To avoid lions a lot of guys are fishing a little farther offshore and a little deeper but having said that we were always able to find some good water and not have them interfere too much. I think we only lost 4 fish to lions. There are about a dozen popular fishing locations to cycle around. Hope this helps!
