Day 71 – Goldstream Harbor to Duncanby Lodge (River’s Inlet)

John went out fishing this morning in Hakai Passage and came back with a nice Coho! We vacuum sealed and froze most of it but left out a piece for our dinner tonight. Let’s keep filling the freezer! The trip to River’s Inlet across Fitz Hugh Sound was beautiful and smooth, which is a blessing since a good chunk of it was subject to the open ocean past Cape Caution. It’s overcast but balmy today – best of all there’s no rain! We arrived at Duncanby around 3PM and were greeted warmly by the staff on the dock. It’s spendy moorage here at $1.75/ft and there’s no power on the dock despite what our resources indicated. This is a very active destination fishing lodge with about 15 grady whites and another 20 smaller fishing skiffs. River’s Inlet hosts many fishing lodges as it is one of the premier salmon fishing spots here in Canada. The staff on the dock immediately got us a map and told us where to fish, at what depths and lots of great information. Once settled we packed up and went out fishing for the rest of the afternoon. We caught a small spring that we decided wasn’t big enough to keep and also constantly kept snagging small shakers and perch (and kelp) but never another keeper. Oh well, it was a gorgeous sunny afternoon so not a bad day to be out in the water. The guys at the lodge said nobody really caught anything yesterday so we weren’t alone. So my review of Duncanby from a mariner side of things is this: for the cost of moorage, the services they offer are few to the boater and the ones they do offer are really expensive. For instance, they don’t provide WiFi but they have a community computer in the lodge that you can use for $20/day. They have a full service restaurant, but we would have had to eat dinner at 4:30 so that we are out of there by the time the fishing lodge guests arrive for dinner. They tell us to “ask permission” before using their cleaning station. Most of all, there is power on the docks – they just don’t allow boaters to use it anymore! Just a few of the things that rubbed me wrong – do they want mariners to return here or not? They should make it more welcoming.