I don’t ever want to leave this place.
How’s that for a fishing report? Today is Day Two fishing with Aaron and Noah at Tofino, B.C. with Charter TofinoFishing.com. Yesterday we had a pretty good day of late season chinook fishing. Today we had a day of fishing that left me numb and speechless at the end of the day. A truly amazing experience I will likely never forget.
We were with guide Rob and Gibson and they had a plan. We would start the day fishing for near shore coho and then head out to offshore fishing for ling cod and bottom fish, and back inshore for the afternoon tide change to wrap up coho fishing. It almost worked out perfect…
The inshore fishery is pretty amazing. Just a quick ten minute run to some prime coho travel lanes. It was a lot like Puget Sound coho fishing with a couple exceptions. First, the fish tend to run bigger. There are no resident coho, just a nice run of hatchery and wild fish that run from 6 up to 18 pounds. Yes, 18 pound coho!
We trolled off two downriggers at 20-40 feet deep, using flashers and terminal gear of spoons, herring in helmets, and “the turd”, which is a fat kind of hoochie, and it’s deadly effective. Our first fish came within minutes and ironically turned out to be a nice chinook of 8 pounds that we safely released. After that, it was all coho. Each of us caught a nice fish, Aaron got two. Mine was what I was looking for, a chunky 12 pound coho that put up an awesome bite.
The bite slowed down around 9:30 o we pulled gear and ran off shore about 40 minutes to some reefs that Rob and Gibson wanted to fish for lings. We fished the lings using large lead headed swim baits in the 8-10 ounce weight. These were perfect for getting down the 150 feet or so to a moderately rocky bottom. I was somewhat skeptical that we would be able to bounce bottom without snagging up constantly but I must say the jigs were very resistant to snagging up.
We had little action the first ten minutes and a bit of doubt crept in to my mind. But my doubts lasted only for a minute - because first Aaron, then Noah, then myself started hooking up on lings, and not just any lings. These were big, strong, drag pulling lings in the 10-15 pound range. Wow! The first big guy that came up I let out a big whoop. But by the foirth or fifth big ling it was more a matter of being amazed that there was such a plentiful and large population of fish underneath us.
By the time we had our boat limits I was numb. I could not believe the day we had just experienced. We had two coho left to catch but decided to call it a day after a downrigger ball took an untimely drop to the bottom. Which honestly was OK by me (and I think Aaron and Noah). We were all amazed at the hold full of big lings and coho. What an amazing day!
The evening was capped off by an outstanding dinner at the Wolf and the Fog restaurant. Then a sunset walk with my wife JoAnn and our dogs on the beach and retiring to a relaxing evening at our rental. Life is good!
Check out TofinoFishing.com to learn more about fishing out here and the quaint, beautiful town of Tofino.
