Running the British Columbia Inside Passage is the stuff coastal dreams are made of!
Nautically speaking, it’s one of the coolest things you can do with a good boat and the ocean, as we’ve been doing our best to showcase on Big Coast for the past decade!
As we’ve always spent a ton of early season time in Prince Rupert, running North to South and following the migrating salmon makes this trip exceptional. Early season in Prince Rupert, and we’re talking late April and May, can be lights out fishing with Chinook in good numbers and lots of early season Halibut. Fitting, of course, for the Halibut Capital of The World!
This past season I was fortunate to join Don and James McNeice, Andy White from Mercury and a number of Mercury Marine brass from Wisconsin on an amazing Southbound run. What set this trip aside from all the others I’d done, was the two-boat plan. With eight live bodies we needed the two big Bridgeview BV30s for the trip, Don’s powered by Twin Mercury V12 500s and mine with new Twin Mercury V10 350s. By my match, which has always been a little skeptical, this configuration amounted to 44 cylinders in action and a combined 1700hp!
The trip plan was simple: depart Prince Rupert and run Southbound through Hartley Bay, North King Lodge, Klemtu and King Pacific Lodge in Milbanke Sound before reaching Bella Bella. This was Leg One of the journey and despite some heavy fog…it surely didn’t disappoint. We had one foggy run down Grenville Channel towing Cam Hill’s Ground n Pound, a true West Coast classic, to Hartley Bay. Upon arrival in The Bay, we met Cam and had a great lunch and some fine Gitga’at Nation hospitality.
From Hartley Bay we ran SouthWest through Whale Channel and down to Caamano Sound and North King Lodge. Now if you haven’t been to North King, it’s owners Clint and Nigel are also West Coast classics and NKL enjoys one of the finest lodge locations in British Columbia. It’s a remote floating wonderland and we managed to fish a night with a couple of the boys and bring a bunch of Chinook to the boat. Which was a blast as always!
The next day we rolled early and had a ton of ground to cover. Heading South from North King we took the backdoor through Kitasoo Bay into Klemtu and met up with some good friends. After a quick tour of Spirit Bear Lodge and Klemtu walkabout, we were on our way across Milbanke Sound and on to King Pacific Lodge. We had a great stopover at KPL, checked out the operation and beautiful surrounding area. It would have been great to stop and chill longer but our itinerary was jam packed so we boarded the boats…and headed South to Bella Bella.
Now Bella Bella Cannery and Bridgeview Denny Island help make up the summer Big Coast complex and our great friends at Heiltsuk Nation and Shearwater Resort made us feel incredibly welcome. A stellar eco tour and some fine dining really helped make our Bella Bella break an absolute beauty.
Don and I fuelled up the two big rigs and we got re-packed for Leg Two of our journey…a run South through Hakai and a visit to Joe’s Salmon Lodge before heading down to Rivers Inlet and visiting Legacy Lodge, Good Hope Cannery and Duncanby Lodge.
After several solid days of fog, we were finally greeted by sunshine halfway down Fitz Hugh Sound and made the most of a warm sunny run. We got an incredible humpback whale show in the Fitz Hugh and some great Coho trolling off Calvert Island…which is always awesome. After a truly stunning day we headed to Good Hope Cannery as special guests, checking out the museum-like old cannery site and enjoying the hospitality of Owner Tony Allard, Ted and Dwayne Walkus and the whole Good Hope crew.
The next day would be the final of our whirlwind tour and we managed to see grizzly bears, a sea wolf and killer whales on the return run to Duncanby Lodge. We enjoyed an awesome lunch, sunshine and hospitality from Sid and Leigh Keay before the the Mercury crew hopped aboard their float plane and flew South for Vancouver. What an incredible five days!
While the Merc crew made their way back to Vancouver and Wisconsin, Don loaded up his BV30 and headed North back to Denny Island. I was fortunate to be headed for Port Hardy and a fishing date with Jim, Nita and Jes. I had one of the most amazing calm and sunny runs around Cape Caution and down to Hardy…which really was the perfect ending to a big amazing boat ride from Rupert, down through Great Bear to Northern Vancouver Island!
