Sombrio Beach, Vancouver Island, April 21-24 (REPORT)

Yeehaw!!!  That was some weekend!

Charles met me at my house a little before 5 on Friday and we loaded up his gear in a pouring rain.  Is this what the weekend was going to be like?  An hour an a half later we arrive at the Anacortes ferry dock and wait for the boat to come in.  Tom "Fishin-T" and his friend Steve from Oklahoma arrive a few minutes later.  Off we go on for the 3 hour ferry ride.  By the time we got to Vancouver Island, the sun came out, and it stayed out for the whole weekend!  Two hours later we arrive at the trailhead and Sean "snag-a-but" is there packing up the last of his loads for the 1/2 mile trek to the beach.  And shortly thereafter, his friend Brandon shows up.  Not knowing what to expect, I loaded ALL my gear on the kayak and proceeded down the hill.  Bad idea, as there were steps, and roots, and tight turns.   The trek brought back memories of Elk, but half the distance.  Anyway, we ended up doing multiple trips with everyone pitching in.  The wind was up on Friday so no fishing for us.  That's alright, we sat around talking kayak fishing for the rest of the evening.

Steve woke us all up the next morning bright and early and we geared up.  Here's Charles getting ready.  Our campsite was the edge of the woods right behind him.



We headed  out in search of halibut and paddled about 2 miles distant.  No joy for a bit except some Red Irish Lords bothering us, but Charles did manage a nice Cabezon.  He donated a VHF radio to the sea gods to get it.  Ouch!   A power boater caught a 20 pounder right in front of us to add insult to injury.  But at least we knew they were there.



A bit before noon, Tom had a sinking feeling in his stomach as the wind came up and we all pointed our kayaks towards home.  And UP the wind came!  We paddled the 2 miles back quartering against the headwind.  If felt like 4 miles.  That certainly gave us a workout.

Well, if we can't fish, we might as well eat and out started coming breakfast.  Hot pancakes, sausage, and eggs and we were all satisfied.  And right around 2 the wind let up.  Let's go fishing!!!  Brendan and Sean fished the inshore kelp beds and had fun with the greenling.  Steve, Charles, and I went a little outside and explored a bit.  Oh my!!!  I was catching one underling after another, with a few blacks and coppers thrown in.  We finally drifted over some good structure and Charles is marking stacks of fish (My fishfinder was out of commission as I left the power cable at home).  We have large leadhead jigs on to target the lings, but we still are having a nice pick of blacks and some beautiful coppers.  We are releasing most of the them and keeping just a couple choice fish.  Almost none of the fish came up bloated and the limit is only 3 rockfish anyway.  I did stick 1 nice 29" ling.   It still wasn't wide open and I was suspecting the large jigs had something to do with it, so I switched to a small while curly tail and was hooking fish on the drop one after the other.  In the first 5 drops I immediately hooked 5 nice sized coppers.  What a treat that was!!  I actually tired of that after awhile and switched over to a large scrambled egg Tady iron.  It slowed a little and I suspect the slack tide had something to do with it.  I did have a monster hit that didn't stick, but a few seconds later it came back and I was on to a bull.  I was thinking big ling but it turned out to be a 25" cabezon.  I think it was the biggest cab I've caught.  Here's a picture of the ling and the cab.  Anyone want to guess the weight on that cab?



Charles and Steve ended up with their limits of rockfish and I had the ling, cab, and a couple coppers.  With the bite slowing and dinner calling, we decided to head in.  I'm sure I release more than 30 rockfish and 20 lings.  I felt like a kid in a bluegill pond.  A couple more of Sean's and Brandon's friends showed up and we ate some fish, drank some beer/scotch/rum/wine, and of course talked more about the day and fishing in general.  We had a big bonfire going on the beach.  Life is good!

The next morning was harder for me to get up.  I wonder if the beer had anything to do with it?  Steve and Tom were raring to go and they got a jump on us.  We geared up and met them on the halibut grounds.  It was a bit windier today and after one long drift, Steve and Charles head inshore to fish for lings and rockfish.  Tom and I were pulled up close chatting when Tom gets a bite.  Fish on!  I'm reeling in and got tangled with him.  No worries, a quick slash of the knife and I'm no longer a problem.  Tom get the fish up in short order and up come a  nice shadow.  I think it's ok to net this one and I do exactly that.  20# halibut in the net!!!  I lift him up onto my lap and give him some wood shampoo and we're good to go.  Success!!!  We came here thinking halibut and I'm happy at least one of us got to tangle with one.

I don't know what is brighter, the white side of this fish, or the smile on Tom's face.



The wind starts coming up more and we start heading in.  I stop off on the inshore with Steve and Charles while Tom kept heading in.  He was so happy about his hali that he didn't need to fish anymore!!!  I got a 28" ling before the wind really came up and we were in for another long paddle against it.

We head in and everyone but the 4 of us is packing up and leaving as they needed to get back to Victoria.  We help them pack and cook up another big hot breakfast.  Of course it was already 2PM.  The wind is still up and we weren't thinking we'd fish again that day.  But it seemed to come down just a little, so we made the call.  This time we'd paddle upwind first and have the wind push us back to shore!!!  I headed out before the others as I was ready.  On my first drop I get a little shaking like an underling, but a few seconds later my line get HEAVY!  I've got a hitchhiker ling on and it's a good size one.  Up from the depths come up a dark coppery shadow  (look at the color on this fish below) and I see a head sticking out one side of it's mouth and a tail out the other.  The hitchhiker had folded a 18" ling in half in his mouth.  I set up my net in record time and into the boat he comes, all 35" of him.  A couple more drops and I get a couple more underlings, but the wind comes up again and we are drifting fast.  I call it a day and head in.



We packed up some of the gear and hiked it out so we wouldn't have too much to carry in the morning as we had an early start to catch the ferry.  Dinner was fresh caught fish on the fire, some pan fried potatoes, and some corn and broccoli.  I called it a night early as I was TIRED!

As you can see from the pictures, we had outstanding sunny weather.  We couldn't have asked for a better weekend in April.  The wind wasn't so bad, a bit pesky at times, but it didn't prevent us from having some fun.  The campsite was fabulous.  Here's a couple view shots from the campspot.

View to the east.  You can see the ankle slapper surf we had to deal with.



View to the west.



What a good group of people!  Thanks Sean for hosting us at your beautiful spot.  I for sure will be back.

-Allen

P.S.  I didn't seem to take too many pictures, and am waiting on some of the other pictures people got.  I'll post some of the better ones when I get them, or perhaps one of the other guys will.

Yes Allen, that was some weekend 

Thanks for making the trip, it really was a lot of fun. The weather turned out to be great and the fishing was a success as well. You guys really know your stuff.

Great idea to create this website, it gives us the feeling of having our own home. It's allready a shortcut to my desktop  Cheers!!!

It's always nice to see some pix so here are a couple from the latest Sombrio expedition

First pic : Steve heading through the surf
Second pic Tom  (Fishin T) and his new Hali (made in Canada)

Wow for some reason I was under the impression that the trip up to Sombrio beach was gona be price out of range for me. But if $30 bucks for the ferry is pretty good. Whats a Canadian license cost for not resi..

So does Northwest Kayak Anglers have a home page with photos and articles? looks good so far.
Matt

Floatin:

A non-res. license is about $120 US but a three day permit is only about $19 and a salmon stamp is $6 more.  And then you don't even want to hear what we had to pay to have that perfect weather piped in .  If you go, always check the Tswassen ferry as well as Anacortes for scheduling purposes since they're easily as cheap and run a LOT more sailings.

Yeah, that was one epic trip!  All of the pieces seemed to have fallen into place for this one.  Snag-a-butt's (Sean's) hospitality was absolutely legendary and near semi-pro Polepole was a perfect mentor for our group.  And Charles?  Well, I guess that Charles made the perfect straight man for jokes at the campfire, what with his vast and many naval experiences.  That first night it was clear that we had somehow assembled 6 of the most hard core, premier kayak fishermen in ALL the great northwest (I think that there's about 2 more still out there).  Everybody caught lots of fish and nobody got hurt... how can you beat that?  For all you hon-yocks that made it what it was, thanks so much!  For you guys that weren't able to make it out, don't miss it next year!  See ya there then.

Matt,

All things considered, it was a pretty inexpensive trip.  Ferry was ~$110 round trip for 2.  Actual road miles was in the neighborhood of 300 miles (a tank of gas) round trip from Seattle.  Canadian 3 day license was ~$20.  Camping was CA$5 per night.

There is a home page of sorts right now.  It's only a template with a link to the forums.  I'm working on making it better, but I have to learn to be a web site designer first.     http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com

-Allen

Bummer that I wasn't able to make it on this trip- it looks like it was a gas. Unfortunatly, the Whidbey/Admiralty Inlet area acted like a funnel for the NW winds headed down the Sound.

My abbreviated version was just to Whidbey. Woke up Sat. morning and checked the launch at Fort Ebey. It looked barely launchable for my wherry with 2-3' surf. The wind was blowing in directly from the NW at 10-15; it looked like a long hard slog to Partridge Bank. Even the PBs looked to be pounding, offshore. I expected even greater winds, later, so looked for a plan B.

Did a driveby of Ebey's Landing, which is between Ft. Ebey and Ft. Casey. Smaller waves, but still a stiff wind and even a longer distance to Partridge. Next potential launch was Keystone, near Ft. Casey. Went about 1/2 mile east of the boat launch, to beach access on spit between Crocker Lake and Admiralty Bay. The water was relatively smooth,with an offshore breeze. Easy Launch, and started pulling for the cluster of boats about a mile out. Managed only two drifts before the wind got to be too much. (Would drift offshore, then row back in.) The first drift, I started rowing back after getting about 3 miles from the launch. It was blowing about 10-15 with 2-3' waves when I started rowing. A little slow, but not outrageous. (At one point, had a boat that circled around and asked if I needed help. )  By the time I made it back to where I had started my first drift, it seemed calmer and the wind had backed off a bunch, so I rowed a little farther out into Admiralty Inlet and started another drift. Was nice and easy until I was even farther out and south. Then the tide changed and the wind picked up. Now I had 3-4' wind waves and 15+ winds. It was a LONG and hard row back. Even with the ebb tide, the winds were strong enough to take me the SE at a rapid clip. The waves were enough that I had to quarter in to them, and ended up making the beach about 3/4 mile east of where I had launched. I rowed about 1/2 the way along the beach before just landing and resting. I was pooped!! In 6 hours on the water, I managed to fish 2 1/2 and rowed about 3 1/2 ! In all that time, I didn't see 1 fish landed!

Hi Allen get job can't wait to go on our next trip!

Charliefl66

Hi Allen great  job can't wait to go on our next trip!

Charliefl66