Ryan Orr Lodge Manager, Hippa Island
This past week at Hippa was a little tough for salmon, however we experienced our most productive halibut fishing of the season so far and we have had a huge number of wildlife encounters, even more than usual, making for some pretty fantastic times spent on the water. Whether it was a massive pod of 50 or more orca whales, extremely curious humpbacks, or baby black bear cubs, there always seemed to be something incredible to see up here.
This past week was probably our toughest week of the year for spring salmon fishing. Anglers had to put in some time to find the springs and had to fight occasional inclement weather and orcas in order to land their chinook. When we were able to travel down to Freeman Rocks we generally found decent spring numbers, with most boats catching fish and some boats limiting out. During some of the tougher weather we also found springs on the inside in The Coves. The Coves produced the strongest action first thing in the morning and right at the end of the day which somewhat reflected the tide changes although not entirely.
In terms of size, we did not see a lot of big fish, with most springs in the low 20’s and the occasional tyee. The largest spring of the past week was 31 lbs and was brought in by Steve Fillmore. Nice work Steve. We have also started to see the odd coho around although the numbers aren’t really high enough yet to start targeting them specifically. We expect many more to start showing up in the coming weeks. Most of the coho are in currently in the 5-8 lb range.
One area where we had no trouble finding fish this past week was on the bottom. We probably experienced our best halibut fishing of the season as well as very strong lingcod and rockfish fishing. At one point, we had a total of 16 halibut ranging from 40-100 lbs in just two days! Most of these fish came from a new spot, midway between Freeman Rocks and Hippa Island, unofficially called the “257 Hump”. We also found strong halibut fishing off Sadler Island and around Kunakun Pt. The largest halibut of the week was caught, and subsequently released, by Mike Perkovic and was estimated at 150 lbs. Nice work Mike and thank you for releasing one of our massive breeders.
The weather this past week was once again a mixed bag. We had some beautiful days that allowed us to travel freely on the outside but we also experienced some nasty winds that kept everybody pretty close to home.
The wind directions seem to have been all over the map and the forecasts have been changing constantly often making in difficult to predict what the weather will do. All we know is the tomorrow will be another day and we’ll all be excited to get out there and go fishing.
If you have recently visited Hippa, thank you for joining us and we hope to see you again. For those of you who have a trip planned to Hippa in the near future, the staff and I look forward to your arrival. If you have any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me at rorr@westcoastresorts.com.
Ryan Orr
Lodge Manager, Hippa Island
