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 They say that in Chile a river guide will drift you into the rapids while you take rainbows in the white water and at lunch you can drink good red wine and fall asleep listening to the sound of the river.
In New Zealand you can stalk brown trout in quiet streams, throwing tiny nymphs upstream and watching while huge trout turn back to take your offering. In Montana you can walk through fields starched brown by the long summer and cast Joe's Hoppers under the willows on the far bank, fishing into the night until you are striking by the sound of the rise . That's all pretty good fishing. But I know of another kind that's not talked about much, maybe because there are just so few places left in the world where you can find it.
Fly fishing for coho in the Queen Charlotte Islands, off British Columbia's northwest coast and just shy of Alaska, may be better than the fishing anglers dream of in places like Chile, New Zealand and Montana. The coho fishing begins in the open ocean in early summer, and get better and better until the late fall, when the salmon move into the estuaries. In the Charlottes, an archipelago of over one hundred steep, thickly forested islands, the silver coho sweep through in small schools, that are part of a migrating wave that numbers into the hundreds of thousands along the entire coast. They begin to show by June. They are headed eventually to spawning streams spread from the Alaska Panhandle to the Washington coast. As they pass through the Charlottes, they feed voraciously, getting heavier by the day.
When they return, it is electric. Off one beach, a strip of gravel between sea and towering forest, they show suddenly along the shore, swirling on the surface as they take spawning needle fish. Here a streamer thrown into knee-deep water will bring a salmon, flanked by two others, racing to take the hot red fly with a sideways slash of its head, the white mouth visible in the water just before the fly vanishes and the rod draws up hard. Sometimes these beach coho will run through the shallows, throwing up a bulge of water in front of them, the line sizzling as it cuts the surface in pursuit. Sometimes they will turn and run straight out into the bay, jumping, ten, twelve times as they go. Early in the year they are not big fish, as I learned in five summers working in the Charlottes as a guide and lodge operator. Seven pounds is an average fish, but nine pounders are common and fish to 15 lbs are not unheard of. Bigger fish, 18 to 20 lbers, show in the estuaries in fall, when they come in heavy from their years at sea. No matter what size they are, coho are among the most prized sports fish on the Pacific Coast because of their aggresive feeding, and their willingness to take a fly. Racing up behind the boat, excited by the swirl of bubbles in the prop wash, I have seen them hit the hull mistaking a fleck of paint for the glint of a wounded herring. When you get into schools like that it can be some of the most exciting fishing in the world. You are trolling fast, the fly skipping in and out of the surface not more than 15 feet behind the boat. It is ridiculously fast, but that's what coho like. Suddenly an eight pounder slices through the prop wash, makes a pass at the skipping streamer then sinks away. Almost at that moment two more come up out of the dark water and looking down you see the school under the keel, 30 salmon or more moving across the bottom. Then one angler is shouting, both are, their rods jerking down, the coho going off in their first run, 50, 60, sometimes a hundred yards in a straight shot, no turning, no slowing, then a jump, and everybody is cheering. One fish is loose now, having thrown the hook in its first jump, firing the fly away into the sky. But the second hooked itself deeply. It runs along the shore, jumps twice, slashes the surface, sounds, comes up and jumps close to the boat going shoulder high on the fisherman playing it. It was a nine foot jump, you say, knowing it could have been seven or eight; it was certainly high. One day, on a blustery afternoon when there was only one hit, a hooked coho jumped over the boat and the camp cook, sitting on the fish box in the bow of the Boston Whaler, had to duck.
One memorable coho came with a California angler who was used to playing marlin. He wanted the boat maneuvered to give him a better fighting angle. Instead I took him in along a beautiful curving sand and gravel beach named after Gen. Bill Twining (U.S. Marine Corp. ret.) a dedicated coho fisherman. Twenty yards from the beach a coho struck from beneath a surface so smooth it seemed to be covered with oil. I killed the engine so there was just the sound of the waves on the shore - and of the reel, yielding and taking back line. The salmon ran short, only 20 yards or so, then began a series of leaps, one after the other, some straight up and falling back on its tail, some with a curving trajectory like a porpoise, and some up high, twisting then going in head down. It jumped 15 times, as I counted. The fish was done soon. As he brought it along side, the angler who had been proving a difficult student in the art of catch and release said: "You can't kill a fish like that. You just can't." We didn't and I trust that salmon's genes went up one of the glass-green Charlotte streams to the spawning beds. They say those big rainbows in Chile will jump high, throwing beads of spray over the white water beneath them. And they say those big, solitary trout in New Zealand can straighten a hook on you. Those big Montana browns, I know, can jump over a low willow branch and then pull so hard the branch breaks and the line with it. As for the Charlottes, well, it's worth dreaming about too. GETTING THERE A boat is a must to fish for coho except in September and October when the fish move into the estuaries and can be taken by wading off the beaches and in the rivers. A brochure produced by the Queen Charlotte Islands Chamber of Commerce quite correctly warns: "If you bring your own boat to the Charlottes be prepared for what you will find here - miles and miles of wilderness waterways, few gas stations, myriads of islands and reefs, and unpredictable weather and sea conditions." Cruising these waters in small car toppers is not recommended. Local guides are available, and are easy enough to find by asking at the local hotel or tackle store. Camping areas are plentiful. Hotels are available in all the communities, but can be over-priced and of poor quality. Although there can be weeks of sunshine, the giant rain forests that cover the wilderness areas of the Charlottes didn't grow from lack of water. Be prepared for lots of rain.
Note: Silver salmon in the Charlottes, like coho anywhere, like fast moving flies that imitate bait fish or shrimp. Beginners can troll behind a boat, using a number three pearl shell spinner immediately in front of the fly, and 18 inches behind a one ounce weight. The spinner and the weight can be abandoned with a little practice, in favor of a skip fly that bounces in the boat's wake. When casting to coho use a rapid, jerky retrieve. Early in the summer (June - Aug.) troll the points to the inlets; in late August and early September the coho will be pushing in towards the estuaries and can be found along the beaches leading to the stream mouths. In Sept. and Oct. wade the estuaries. Three top rivers to fish are the Tlell, Copper and Pallant, all of which are road accessible. Story by Mark Hume with Photography by Nick Didlick and Mark Hume |
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The open-ocean schools of coho constantly shift in pursuit of bait fish. They are also pushed by migratory urges, so that where a bay was empty one day, it is full of fish the next, then you find only a straggler or two and finally it's just you again, with the gulls circling in the grey skies.
