Milbanke Sound Trip: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

I was fortunate enough to go to Milbanke Sound for my second year in a row and it was nothing less than a great trip again. We stayed with West Coast Resorts which moves its lodge down to Milbanke from Whale Channel.

We were delayed flying into the lodge because the fog was bunkered down, so the pilot of the float plane asked us if we were uncomfortable flying real low to try and find a path into the lodge and nobody objected. We were flying probably about 15 yards at most above the water which was really cool.

The fishing started off slow but the last couple days had a pretty steady bite. My boss who couldn't buy a king bite hit the payload our second to last day, he first hit a 31lb king and then after a hour battle he landed a 50lb king, which was netted on top of a kelp bed. That was second biggest fish of the year for the lodge until the next day where a 55 and 53 were caught. Also multiple 60lb plus fish and multiple 50lb were caught by a neighboring lodge the same day we caught the 50lber.

The trip is first class all the way, the food is amazing and so is the scenery, the fishing is okay too.

I finished the trip with my king limit(2 coho shy of my salmon limit, too hungover to fish the last morning), a 34lb and 15lb lingcod. The fishing and weather didn't permit us to go halibut fishing, we usually try to get most of our salmon before we spend a day trying for hali.

The water was a little rought the first day and a half then the northwesterly winds calmed and so did the water but the fogged came in and it was real thick. The boats don't have gps, but some of the guides bring their own. So the last night our guide was running with another boat from the lodge, thinking they had a gps in their boat to say the least we ended up in a cove with a bunch of rocks and kelp beds surrounding us, luckily it only took the lodge about 30 mins to find us(good thing cause there was no more beer on the boat).

Here are the pics, I forgot the camera over half the trip, morning rush to get out on the water plus the barley pops at night didn't help things out either.

Plane flying out the guests from the previous week