So, 30 some years later, it was time to visit Hakai Lodge again. This was my 3rd or 4th trip there after going up on consecutive years while I was a working stiff. This time I took my daughter who was more than excited to go! As a matter of fact, when I texted her back in January, I got an immediate response stating, "Oh F$&# ya Dad! Some may feel that it's kind of pricey to fish at fly in floating lodges, but fishing, exploring, and spending time with your kid is priceless. We had a great time.
We were there from the 20th thru the 24th. The ride up and back on NW Seaplanes was excellent. The lodge had been upgraded and remodeled some since my last trip. The staff was fantastic, the food incredible and plentiful, and the weather was darn near perfect. A huge shout out to Holly who is the lodge manager and has been there for 30 some years! She keeps the place running like a well-oiled machine.

The silvers were thicker than maggots on a gut pile. They were literally everywhere. The kid even got a 24lb King, which was her first. Doing so completed her salmon grand slam of catching all 5 Pacific species. The others were caught on an Alaska trip when she was 10.
Although the silvers were thick it did still require some working knowledge of salmon fishing. The standard cut plug herring mooched or trolled worked pretty well, but we did as good or better on Brad's Super baits. It was the where and how that made the difference. We fished close to shore on ledge edges and not very deep. Without electronics on the self-guided boat making it a challenge, the daughter downloaded a Navionics app on her phone which helped out amazingly well. The nice part of doing self-guided was the time was ours to fish and do what we wanted, when we wanted. Plus the tide changes were great so we could sleep in, have a nice breakfast, hit a slack, go in for a bit, and return for the afternoon slack. We took our time getting our 8 salmon per person limits, releasing smaller ones when we could and targeting 10lb and bigger. Largest was probably in the 15-16lb range. We probably lost as many as we kept with the barbless hook rule, but it's the fight we go for right? I'm sure we lost a few that were pushing 20lbs when they went flying out of the water. We had doubles at times and even a triple or two as BC allows 2 pole fishing. Some hit even with the bait hanging out the back of the boat without being deployed yet! It was CRAZY!
The daughter saw her first whale too, which was a humpback traveling thru. The coolest/amazing episode we witnessed and got on video, was a wolf patiently waiting out a deer that it had pushed into the water. It went on for an hour plus with the wolf following on the beach while the deer stayed in the water swimming. It wasn't going to end well for the deer and the wolf got his reward. Mother nature in action.

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