Vancouver Island trip - Aug 2011

Hey everyone.  Recently (last week) I did some fishing on Vancouver Island while on a family vacation.  What a blast.  I tried to fish around China Creek out of Port Alberni but the wind and waves got the best of me.  They were catching a lot of fish around there but my arms just couldn't handle it any longer.  I may be interested in a Hobie sooner rather than later.    I had one more chance to head out on the Saturday so I decided I would try the mouth of the Little Qualicum River since I had scoped it out the day before and there were a lot of boats hanging around.  Hit the water early and tried my luck.  Unfortunately I couldn't  hook up that morning so I decided to try my luck with the fly rod.  I headed up the coast a bit to Nile Creek and had some fun there catching Pinks.  What a blast on the fly rod.  After some of that fun I decided I would switch back to the trolling setup and head back to the Jeep and call it a day.  Good decision because not long after I started paddling I got a big hit and had some fun.  I had forgotten my net when I left the mainland (actually there was no room left after kids, dogs, wife, gear........) so it was quite the battle.  I finally landed the pig after beating it silly.  My first Chinook on the kayak and it was an experience.  I took some video footage of the day and posted it under the video link section of the forum.  If you don't want to find it there, and are interested, here it is again.

I will definitely be doing that trip again next year.  Now it is time to get some fish off of my local river the Vedder/Chilliwack River.  The Pinks are starting to move in and there are still a bunch of Chinook moving through the Fraser.  Anyone looking to get out just let me know.

That was a beautiful salmon. Great video.

Your rig has motivated me to get a down rigger and head to the island, great set up and nice work on the cool video and the nice fish!!

Nice work on the video - I enjoyed the music, the scenery, the t-shirt weather, and the fish action!  Too bad we didn't get to see you wrestle that nice king into submission - well done.   

Nuthin like a little doom rock to accompany some salmon fishing. Nice work on the chunk!

Looks like everything was perfect! Now I got cabin fever.

Nice flick. Now what I want to know was did you land that chinook w/o a net?

Hey everyone.  Glad you liked the video.  Zee, I thought I was going to have to drag it into shore but I was lucky.  Played it for quite a while and then she just got tired.  I won't lie though, I thought I was going to end up swimming to shore.  I tailed it softly and then proceeded to use my club.  Let's just say I should always keep a club with me for protection. I can really throw that thing around in a hurry when I am excited.