Wow, the west side of Vancouver Island is experiencing some outstanding chinook fishing!

Joining me at Zeballos this year for our Vancouver Island fishing adventure are Rob and Hillary Holman, and Bruce Barany from the General Store in Spokane. After a traveling day Saturday we started Day One of three days of fishing today. We are fishing with Adrian O’Connor, owner of Reel Obsession Sport Fishing. He and his wife Angie run an amazing resort and have a staff of great guides as well as support staff at the resort. It’s a wonderful time away from the stresses of city life and work. As one NWFR member commented to me yesterday “This is a life-changing experience, really amazing. You weren’t kidding in your videos!”

We got up at 5am and grabbed a nice breakfast, then headed down to the boats. Adrian has four boats in his fleet and they all had clients today. After loading our gear we made the scenic run through Esperanza Sound out to the ocean. The fish are in close this year and in short order we had two rods running off downriggers, working off the bottom. One rod had a thin spoon and one rod had a whole anchovy. Amazingly, within 5 minutes we had a double. One fish came off and my fish, what I thought to be a very decent ten pound chinook, Adrian looked at and commented “I hate to release the first fish of the day, it’s not good luck, but I know we will catch bigger fish.” To which I replied “I would like to keep it, in Puget Sound that would be a nice king!” So in the fish box it went.

As the morning progressed I admit I did second guess myself as the rest of the fish we caught all ranged from 15 to the big fish of the morning, an estimated 22 pound king caught by Bruce. Oh well, I’m not going to regret a beautiful 10 pound king! We did change over to strictly spoons as the bite was very good on them. We had multiple doubles and also caught incidentally coho and ling cod, sweet!

Around 11am we called it for chinook fishing and headed 7 miles off shore to fish for halibut. Adrain anchored us in 270 feet of water and we sent down four baits, waiting for the tide change bite to start. Over the next couple of hours we caught a lot of “chicken” halibut that went back into the sea. It was Bruce’s day today as he caught the only full-sized halibut, at 110cm apprximatedly 40 pounds. This year the haliut limit is one fish up to 126cm (approximately 60 pounds), or under-sized fish (10-15 pounds each). I caught and kept an under fish at 15 pounds, but we couldn’t find any more big guys. We did catch a 7 foot Toke shark, as well as a skate and dog fish simultaneously on the same rod.

All in all, a very nice Day One at Zeballos. Returning to the resort I grabbed a quick shoer, changed clothes, and made myself a two shot drink. Relaxing on the deck, looking over the bay I reflected that maybe that NWWR member wasn’t so far off the mark. This was kind of life changing – in a good way.

Stay tuned for my Day Two report!

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