#44 Alma Russell Islands

On Friday, with the anchor stowed, we looked for a place to troll for salmon. The guidebooks listed Swale Rock as a optimum fishing spot. The Rock was just 40-minutes away on the Northwest side of Imperial Eagle Channel. We arrived to see several boats with down-riggers and trolling tackle in the water. Each boat moves quite slow at 1-knot or so, back and forth across a 1/2 mile area that shows fish on the sonar. We saw boats taking in more than one of the elusive (to us) salmon, but we experienced "no joy". We used diving planes instead of down-riggers to get the bait dangling in front of the salmon in about 100 feet of water. The radio chatter told us of many fish being hooked up at around 100-110 feet. After 5-hours of no bites, with various baited and non-baited jigs, spoons, squid look-a-like creatures, and bait wigglies, we gave up for the day.

The northeast entrance to Julia Passage is narrow and tricky, far more tricky than the western entrance.

Julia Passage: A unique community.

It took just a 10-minute cruise from Swale Rock to be inside another world: The world of Julia Passage. The Passage is thin, not more than 1/4 mile across, and about 2.5 miles long formed along the Vancouver Island mainland and the Alma Russell Islands. Inside the narrow entrance is an entire float home community. Maybe 50 floating homes scattered along each side of the Passage. Big homes, little homes, year-round homes and vacation homes. There is no road just boat or float plane access.

One of about 50 float homes in Julia Passage.

Many homes have boats inside a log breakwaters, constructed by the owner: a private marina!

Here is a Julia Passage subdivision.

We anchored in the "center of town" with many homes dotting our views. There were no other boats in town. We're not sure if the locals appreciated watching Chef Willie cooking crab legs in Pappy's and frying fresh rock fish in olive oil from their living rooms, but our crew sure did. Once again Willie saturated our taste buds with ocean freshness that included butter, garlic olive oil and wonderful seasonings. Since we couldn't land a salmon, we got even by over eating rock fish!

Wild Blue anchored in the "center of town".