Ryan Orr, Lodge Manager Hippa Island
The week started off right where the previous week left off, with fantastic salmon fishing and virtually nonstop action. As the week progressed the weather deteriorated and the fishing slowed down some. Salmon were caught although the overall numbers were down compared to the previous week. In the end, our guests found success and took home a delicious assortment of fish.
For those of you who are regular readers of this report I’m sure that I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but the hotspot for salmon this past week was, you guessed it, Freeman Rocks. In fact, Freeman was more than just the hotspot, for several weeks running it has pretty much been the only spot! There have been a massive number of spring salmon holding at Freeman and the action has been consistently awesome. Comparatively, there have been few fish in most of our other favourite spots. As a result, the determining factor for the number of salmon caught has been the weather. Any day that we have been able to get to Freeman has been a great day; otherwise anglers have had to work harder for the salmon.
The early part of the week also started off with some excellent tyee fishing! Although the majority of the salmon were in the 20-25 lb range, one single day last week produced a whopping 12 tyees! There were numerous fish in the high 30s and the largest of the week was a 44lber caught by long-time Hippa and Tasu guest, Bruce English. Bruce waited many years to catch his first 40+ and this year he was rewarded. Nice work Bruce! As happens this time of year, we are starting to see more steady coho action and for the first time this season some guests were starting to take home a full limit of the silver bullets.
One area where we struggled some in this past week was on the halibut hunt. For a couple of weeks now, guests have had to invest some time and exploration in order to find the halibut. 
The Hump produced a few good sized halibut and Flattop and Red Rocks produced strong chicken action. In the end, anyone who stuck with it found their halibut. The release trend continued this past week and the largest halibut of the week, estimated at 135 lbs, was landed and subsequently released by Garry Shaw. Thank you, Garry. In terms of ling cod and red snapper, there was once again no difficulty finding them. It seems that a fish box full of these tasty critters can be easily found in a number of different locations.
As I mentioned earlier, the weather had an impact on our results over the past week. We experienced steady NW winds for much of the week and while we never had perfect weather, we did have plenty of opportunities to venture out to Freeman Rocks, our current hotspot, for some fantastic west coast action.
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
