British Columbia Sport Fishing Article
Kyuquot Discoveries
by Rikk Taylor
July 1997
July '97 was a time of rich discoveries all over the universe. Russian and American astronauts were discovering new ways to survive in a crippled space station. NASA was elated with their success in landing and directing a robot on Mars. Rikk and Pat Taylor were discovering Kyuquot’s Slam Bang Lodge and perhaps the best and most consistent fishing in B.C.
Kyuquot is remote. Perhaps that is what keeps the fishing amazingly great. The beautiful, small Slam Bang Lodge puts little pressure on the constant runs passing their front door and it only took one afternoon with anchovies in a Rhys Davis holder to hook and play a baker's dozen Chinook over 25 pounds to convince me that I had found a new Valhalla of sport fishing...Peas in a pod; obviously the fish were from the same run and on their route to a spawning river. It was nice not to keep a single fish that afternoon as I had made a pledge to only consider keeping anything larger than my second fish of the season which was a Kyuquot Tyee of 34 pounds.
Kyuquot salmon are unique fighters. After ripping the bait off shallow downriggers, the fish roar to the surface and take their first long run to the north peeling yards of line off your reel while your guide asks you to decide if you can turn the fish or should he start chasing it through the grids of lava rock spires which seem to hold natural bait ponds for the feeding salmon. We chased every fish.
Never did we see more than four boats working the kelp lines of the outer islands beneath the towering peaks of the Broughton Peninsula that juts out from the western mountains of Northern Vancouver Island. In the four days that we fished Kyuquot we never experienced the offshore rollers since Pat found a 72-pound halibut in 35 feet of water on the inside. We never did get to take a promised trip out to the offshore shoals where we were told "the fishing is even better."
The compact floating lodge consists of a separate dock for fish care and a welcome sauna bath. There’s plenty of space for the boats and float planes to tie up. The main lodge has four guest rooms and a lounge below the main house which is the owner’s home. The second floor has a living room with a dining area for 12 facing the open ocean and a large kitchen. The front yard is the Pacific Ocean which is just beyond Al’s beautiful ketch – the 55’ “Marda”.
I know you want to hear more about the salmon and halibut fishing, and you will, but I do want to impress on you that with all this wilderness and beauty, there are two other unique benefits of any Kyuquot visit: the sea otters and the whales. And fishing highlights and trophy salmon will be forgotten long before the memories of a perfect family-run fishing lodge will ever fade.
The inshore sea lifeis dominated by the sea otters who raft in the kelp beds for protection from their only predators, the Orcas. It’s difficult to get near to the back-floating otters, but it’s easy to get to the twice-annual parade of Gray whales. Fifteen thousand whales pass Kyuquot on their way north to the krill rich waters of Alaska in the spring and again in the fall as they migrate down the coast to their birthing lagoons in Baja, Mexico. Our guides told us that they are also seeing more humpbacks who travel to our shores from Hawaii; this may be another factor in the warming trend of the ocean.
Salmon are the primary measure of quality of any location and on the basis of both quality and quantity I give a high rating to Kyuquot – in spades. On our first day our guide Colin Good asked us how many fish we “wanted to keep”. My line was not even in the water, but I answered, “One or two for us and one or two for the neighbours.”
I thought we might be getting the treatment from the guide, but bang... no slam bang!… as soon as our lines where in the water we had hits. We had our self-imposed limits of Chinook on ice after one tide; this was going to be a great fishing trip. On the next tide, Colin put me on top of a 34-pound Tyee and then suggested that I might want to release all fish unless I beat the big one’s weight.
My best fighting fish was a Coho of only seven pounds that refused to give me any line while he sky-hopped around the boat.
By our third day, now guided by Steve, I began a series of tackle tests by allowing 15 minutes to each sample lure sent me in the past year. Pat was fighting with a forgiving Penn reel and all the fish taken were on her line. Steve, an experienced commercial troller, told us that it wasn't always this way. “Sometimes the plugs will out-fish bait,” he said.
After hooking some kelp in a fairly shallow turn, Pat had pulled out 30 pulls of her 20-pound test line only to feel the rod-bending weight again. “It’s more kelp,” she said. Steve took a quick scope of the distance between us and the kelp patch and said, “I don’t think so. Wind slowly.”
The kelp turned out to be a 72-pound halibut which will keep us in fish and chips for the winter.
Going to a wilderness resort and playing dozens of salmon to the guide’s net (or for release) is only a dream for many fishermen. I would guess that only a very few have done this on a regular basis, and I have only managed it two or three times in a lifetime of fishing.
I honestly believe that you could do this every day of the season at Slam Bang Lodge.
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