Alberta Outdoorsmen Forum - 2021 Season Wrap Up, Great Fishing

Hello from Northern Vancouver Island,

I hope everyone is doing well and getting out fishing as the fall starts. It is crazy but we want to thank you all as we are nearly fully booked for 2022...for FOUR boats running! Looking ahead it looks to be a great season but first let's talk about 2021 season.

This past season here in Port Hardy was extremely good. The best word for it I think is consistent. The Chinook salmon were a little bit later than usual, this is the first time in 8 or so years that happened, but once they arrived it was just absolutely insane fishing. Our normal "go-to" spots were good early in the season and consistent throughout with some great Chinook fishing in August. We were lucky enough to find a spot that only we knew about for a month or so and literally could hardly get two rods in the water mid season. This spot was quite simply the best Chinook fishing I've probably ever seen for over a month and 3/4 time span in the middle of the season. I'm sure it was great before we found it as well. It is crazy to think that fishing here for 20 years and still every single year we find absolutely phenomenal Chinook, lingcod, and halibut spots we have never fished before. It really shows how where we fish is so untouched, especially our halibut, lingcod and rockfish spots (as we are pretty much the only ones to fish them). Size wise the average Chinook was slightly down from previous years but we did get into nearly 20 Tyees (over 30lbs) this season. Again, can't really say enough about the action we had when guests weren't too worried about going for a "hog". When hogs were the goal we would head to a different area that still had decent action, bite every 20min or so on average.

Coho salmon fishing this season was the best we have seen in as long as I can personally remember. July on we were into quite a few with the odd couple day gap between runs but overall it was very good. Spin casting on light tackle for them from about the 23rd of August onward was the best we have had in a few years as well, river mouths just chalk full of them and action was second to none. We will most likely extend our season next year for these guys a bit as even on our last day it was lights out.

Lingcod and bottomfish was probably our best season to date. The only thing, as usual, that prevented us from slamming em was weather and July was literally a lake out there everyday, super calm. August had the odd rough day but over a 3-4 day package you always get a few good days to go out and pound them. When out there it is just banana lands for Lingcod. The amount of lingcod we are seeing in the 12-20lb range is the most ever, which is great for the next few years we should see a lot in the 15-30lb range. We try and encourage release of the larger ones as breeding females and not quite as good to eat but that decision is always yours to make. Rockfish as everyone knows school up and on light tackle up here is a hoot, can easily get your 15 rockfish in mere minutes, just non stop action and fun.

Halibut was great this season as well. We saw a really large amount of halibut in the 30-60lb range this year, perfect eaters. Less in the 150+lb range than we are used to although we didn't seem to have as many guests wanting to target those monsters this year so that may have been a reason for the decrease in number...but still nearly 40 over 100lbs! The halibut fishing closer to home was really good as well so many of our best spots with a mix of 50-70lb and lots of 100+lb halibut we didn't even fish this season as we didn't need to.

Looking forward to 2022, we are running 4 boats the majority of the summer next season, so that will be a bit of a change and while Dave Sr will still be the lodge entertainment and deckhand the odd day he will not be guiding, but we will be hiring another guide for next season to run the "Sophie Spirit". If any of you are interested in 2022, let me know as soon as you can. Even though we are running 4 boats we only have a handful of dates for 2022 open, literally 5 actually. This is exciting for us but we want to make sure that those that want a fishing trip of a lifetime can make it! We are also taking bookings for 2023 if that is the year you want to experience Port Hardy with us.

See pictures below!

Let me know if there are any questions I can answer for you!

Tight Lines,
David Summers Jr
Serengeti Fishing Charters