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Super, Neighbours in BC: First halibut of the season with Cleanline in Tofino!

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia! Last summer during Tofino's Feast BC celebration I went out on THIS salmon fishing adventure with a premium outfit cal

Last summer during Tofino's Feast BC celebration I went out on THIS salmon fishing adventure with a premium outfit called Cleanline Sportfishing who offer every type of guided fishing trip you could want. The previous April I went on what I deemed THE ULTIMATE FISHING EXCURSION with them. Cleanline has taken me on a couple of unforgettable trips on the water and this last one was no exception; here I learned that "ultimate" is entirely relative. This trip was actually the ultimate family fishing excursion in Tofino, which was also great from a sportfisherman's point of view.

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia!

Our Christine McAvoy was in Tofino this past weekend gathering a Feast BC story to share, so I fiugured I'd better hurry up and write part 2 before we overlap!

So in PART 1 I brought you along with my wife, our 4 year old son and I as we brought up a crab trap then also a bounty of spot prawns. A couple of hours was all our little guy could muster, so we dropped him and my wife (and the haul of prawns and crabs!) off out the dock and headed back out onto the seas to drop some lines.

Our guide Blake on Cleanline's primary vessel, holding a couple of our crabs

This was the second day that the halibut fishery was open for the year, and so far none of the local guides had reeled any in with their clients. There had been a gale warning for the area the previous day, and the same warning was in place the day we went out, so nobody could even get out into the deeper water where the halibut lurk. It's my favourite fish to eat and I really wanted to bring one home but instead of risking a shipwreck we put out some lines for salmon fairly close to shore.

And then something beautiful happened: a rainbow appeared.

And not five minutes later (I confirmed by the date stamping on my photos), a 19 pound halibut had somehow made its way onto my line and I hauled it into the boat after a great fight!

Stranger things have happened as Blake told me that halibut do sometimes hang out in shallow water, but in my eyes it was a wee miracle. We called it a day, parked the boat and he hauled my fish up to Trilogy Fish Company right off the dock. They cleaned it, fileted it into single pounds then shrink-wrapped them, flash froze them and we brought it back to Vancouver in a cooler, feeling incredibly lucky.

Thanks to Tourism Tofino, Tourism Vancouver Island and of course Cleanline Sportfishing Tofino who have now delivered 3 for 3 on fruitful fishing trips off of Tofino. If you're heading out for a trip and you want to have an incredible experience on the water, look them up at cleanlinesportfishing.com and tell them I sent you.

For more from Tofino stay tuned for Christine's upcoming series on Feast BC!