Camped in the Broken Islands for Friday and Saturday night (fed about every mosquito on the island) and ran out early to South Bank for my first time. I was a little cautious with my 18' runabout, but the weather was perfect so we made the 14 mile run from our camp. We got out there around 630am, and there were already 30 or so boats in the area. The springs fought really really well, including one that circled the boat so I ran around the bow and had to pass my rod under a downrigger wire, but we ended up landing him. Never have I had such good runs from mid-20's springs. Absolutely insane. After filling our limits for the three of us, we went in to Ucluelet where we met IronNoggin as he was offloading a sh##t-ton of fish for his customers. We had some wobblies and he showed me around his boat. That thing is incredible, and if I was looking for a charter I'd hit him up for sure.
Sunday we ran out again, caught a few, but ran in early as the wind was picking up and the fog was getting dense. Filled our limits closer to shore, although it was quite slow and the fish were smaller.
Caught em in the range of 80-120', on 6" Big Slut (blue with dots) I got from Holmes (thanks bud!), 6" Roscoe from Zurtro (like the lure, don't like the small hooks or the small swivel, but it seems to work just fine as rigged). On Sunday when overcast we switched to a UV 5" white/yellow coyote, 5" Money from Zurtro, and big white glow hootchie which worked well. The plugs we used didn't work for us.
The coho were thick! I had the 6" Rosco dangling just in the water, and before we even fired up the engine, one had hooked itself and started spooling off line. Most were wild, though. A lot of the springs we caught were hatchery.
We also saw a few orcas, humpbacks and grey whales.