"The trouble with most fishing lodges is that the clients are 80 to
85 percent male," says Hideo "Joe" Morita, owner of the King
Pacific Lodge. "I had to make this the kind of place my wife might
like so she would let me spend the money."
The son of the founder of
Sony, the electronics giant, Morita came
to the area seven years ago. "I tried fishing and caught one this
big," Morita remembers, holding his palms three feet apart. "So I
started fishing like crazy, and ended up buying the lodge."
His wife has yet to make the trip from their native
Japan, but the
Americans leaving on the same floatplane I took went home happy.
And the fish must have been thrilled. The group of us, bear
included, left with a total of only one salmon.
FISH TALES
To book accommodations and/or a heli-fishing excursion with
Rosewood Hotels' King Pacific Lodge, call (888) 592-5464 or log on
to
www.kingpacificlodge.com.
Their three-, four-, and seven-night fishing and lodging packages
start at $4,100.
There are a number of other heli-fishing outfitters in the British
Columbia area. Here are three notables:
Nimmo Bay Resort, (800) 837-4354,
www.nimmobay.com
River's Edge, (250) 635-1514,
www.guidedflyfishingbc.com
West Coast Fishing Club, (888) 432-6666,
www.westcoastfishingclub.com
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FIELDS AND STREAMS
Environmentally, there's no real consensus on heli-fishing. Some
would prefer that these pristine areas remain off-limits to all
human visitation, or at least those arriving by machine (although,
by far, the most frequent use of helicopters in the region is for
logging, followed by gas and mining exploration). On the other
side, heli-fishing can bring visitors in and out of places
relatively cleanly compared to the permanent
scars left by roads,
parking lots, buildings, etc. -