Otters abound in Winter Harbour

These playful creatures are on the dock and around the boats all the time. A family of 70 otters live in Winter Harbour. Lying on their backs using their bellies as plates, they eat fish and clams. They offer out morsels with their outstretched paws to the gulls and occassionally decide to snatch it away – leaving us chuckling at their human like antics.

Winter Harbour, Part Deux

It just took a day of slow fishing at TC for us to make the decision to return to Winter Harbour on a salmon expedition. Launching from Coal Harbour this time we enjoyed a late Sunday evening run through Quatsino Narrows to arrive at the Outpost, a private fishing resort whose logo is “The fish are bigger here”.

While fishing for Coho, we were surprised to see shark fins around the boat. The blue sharks would steal the salmon right off the line if we didn’t get them in fast and occasionally they even took our hoochies, spooling the line from our reels. Thankfully our quoto of cohos was met and we headed to deeper water to catch our springs/kings/Chinook. The Chinook fishing proved to be as exciting and bountiful as the coho and we left winter harbour with 16 salmon – our limit with big smiles – another excellent adventure and another witners fine dining looked after.

The Boys Go Fishing

A 4:00 a.m. departure by truck from Telegraph Cove to the boat at Port Alice had the boys tingling with anticipation. The plan was to make a two hour run out to Salander Island in the wild Pacific Ocean. Salander is reputed to be home to some of the best fin fishing on the entire west coast. Stephen was joined by two friends from the campground. Dan Santera, from New Mexico, known around the cove as Dan, Dan the Halibut man and Bob Sanford, the soon to become Bobby Ling.

The water was like glass as they raced towards their destination. Dan was using pink heads on circle hooks and Bob was using herring and pink bellies, looking for the big halibut. The action was fast and furious all day. We limited out on ling cod and snapper, had one gorgeous canary rockfish but alas no halibut. Hanging on longer that we should have, the winds came up strong from the north. Heading back to Quatisino Sound in ten foot waves with a big chop on top and many waves breaking over the top of the boat, the going was slow. We arrived back at TC with an enviable catch, tired and a little beat up from our buising ride but satisfied with a wonderous fishing adventure.