North Island Lodge Reports

June 30 - July 4, 2008

The schooling pinks continued to wreak havoc on the salmon front this week. Fishing a little deeper seemed to help the state of affairs but it was a lot of work for most anglers looking for their trophy Chinook. I was out for a brief stint in the morning trying to pass on a few skills only to have my head down most of the morning changing baits every couple of minutes.

The odd Tyee, some decent sized Coho and the unusually high number of pinks in the mix had everybody bouncing theories off of each other as to what was the best way to approach this week’s fishery. The answer we came up with….whatever works. If my memory serves me correct, Susan Okamoto found her 37.5lb tyee fishing a traditional cutplug, as did Dave Showman with his 33lber. Harvey Smith took his 38lber on a teaser head and young Jackson Taylor’s 36lber hit a spoon. So it’s anybody guess as to what the Chinook are looking for, you just have to find them.

Westerly winds subsided enough this trip to get out and go for the big halibut. Anthony Lawler’s group, Doug Bell, Don Jung and Hub Cassleman’s crew all came back with a decent Hali’s in the 60-90lb range. The Chickens also seemed to be fairly easy to get for guests that didn’t want to make halibut fishing an all day affair.

Todd McIntyre
Manager
North Island Lodge