JoAnn and I had the good fortune to visit Tofino with our dogs, fishing again this year with Rob Frawley of TofinoFishing.com. Joining us fishing were Rob and Hillary Holman of NWFR and Noah, a member of the site and east side NWFR camera assistant. JoAnn decided to spend the vacation walking the beaches and exploring the shops in Vancouver. She's not big on offshore fishing.

We fished three days, something different each day. The diversity of opportunities is a great reason to fish the waters around Tofino, not to mention it's just an amazing area and town.

Our first day we fished about five miles outside of Tofino, near-shore, trolling off rocky islands in 50-80 feet of water for Chinook salmon. We ran two rods, the ten foot variety with single action "knuckle buster" reels. This set up is a blast with salmon and we had a good day with lots of action, including multiple catch and release of un-clipped coho salmon. The big fish of the day tipped the scales at 22 pounds and was caught by Hillary on a flasher and spoon. We brought back five nice Chinook and lost nearly as much. The weather was amazing, but definitely bumpy waters. Nothing we couldn't handle though.

Our second day we tried the same spot but the bite was off, so Rob took us to the far side of Flores Island where we were able to fish inside, off the ocean, for coho, clipped or not, as well as being able to keep Chinook. The boat ride over was about an hour and along the way we enjoyed the amazing scenery of Vancouver Island as well as pods of orca whales. When we arrived at our fishing grounds we immediately started hooking up to an abundance of 6-8 pound coho and an occasional Chinook. It didn't take us too long and we had our limits of fresh chrome bright coho.

Day three the offshore winds/swells had died down so Rob took us to some halibut spots to try to get us our halibut. We sat on anchor in 135 feet of water on a gradual sloping ridge. While waiting on the halibut Hillary hooked into a monster 100 pound skate, I got a nice flounder, and we battled too many dogfish. Finally a halibut bite! Angler Rob brought in a nice 35 pound hali. At this point we had to decide on moving and trying another spot or salmon fishing. Rob had been on the radio with some charter friends fishing a couple miles from us and the bite was "on" for Chinook. So we pulled anchor, switched to Chinook salmon and in short order banged out four nice kings.

Our time was running out for the day, but we did end things up with a quick session of black sea bass jigging along the rocky shorelines south of Tofino. The sea bass are off the charts and huge! We caught our limits (3 each) in a matter of minutes and made it back at the dock in time for me to take JoAnn out for another amazing dinner at one of the local restaurants.

If you ever get the chance, don't miss a trip to Tofino to do some sport fishing and explore the town. It's a great destination within a day's drive of Puget Sound. Give Rob at TofinoFishing.com a call and his crew will get you on some great fishing to boot.

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