I'm no fisherman. Just ask the ones that got away.
I'll settle for anything larger than the bait. But here, tossing in the petulant Pacific at the mouth of Vancouver Island's Clayoquot Sound, something is about to happen: My reel -- fishing guide Chuck Aldred doesn't call it "the knuckle-buster" for naught -- spins in a blur.
"About 150 feet!" Aldred shouts. I stay with it. My arms feel they're going to jump out their sockets. But this baby is mine: I watch the silvery torpedo approach the boat. "A Chinook, big one," Aldred says, swinging out the net. And here she is: what fishermen call the "Tyee," a salmon weighing more than 30 pounds. My baby weighs in at 34 pounds. A 34-pounder? Me? An urban wimp in the Pacific wilderness?
Such is the magic of Clayoquot Wilderness Resorts, which succeeds at marrying wilderness camp, fishing camp, dude ranch, eco-experience, state-of-the-art spa and the best restaurant between Tofino and Tokyo. Its miracle is bringing out the wilderness man, woman or child in the most reticent among us. The resort -- "retreat" is as good a word -- straddles two locations on the once-controversial sound. If Clayoquot (pronounced "clack-wot") is a familiar word, it's because of the showdown a decade ago between environmentalists and the loggers and their lackeys. Thankfully, the good guys won. Clayoquot has been protected as an international Biosphere Reserve since the 1996 World Conservation Congress.
Now, due to that victory, you can hike among the thousand-year-old cedars of one of the last, great temperate rain forests on the planet.
But there's more than one way to skin a city cat. The resort connects you to the wilds through half-day trail rides, mountain-biking, deep-ocean and freshwater fishing, kayaking, sailing, swimming, scuba diving and whale-watching. As I reel in my salmon at the mouth of the sound, a distant whale is spouting on a Kodachrome horizon.
Last season, the resort adopted an all-inclusive pricing policy, covering everything from trail rides to deep-sea fishing and all meals with drinks, the spa being the only extra. Guests, inhibited by the à-la-carte approach, hadn't been participating much. The all-inclusive ploy is proving successful at getting people to do things for the first time.
Both sites operate on the small-is-beautiful principle.
The first is a floating 16-room hotel in Quait Bay, half an hour from Tofino by boat. Its newest component is the adjacent Healing Grounds Spa, a gorgeous cedar-and-slate palace filled with natural light and set among swirling mists and rain forest. Embracing its locale, it brings into play indigenous products from 14,000-year-old glacial clays to basalt stones from Clayoquot beaches. The spa menu runs the gamut from massage to salt glows and hot-stones treatments. Afterward, guests curl up in duvets on the deck.
Accommodations at Quait Bay are simple and comfortable. The high note here is the restaurant. The open kitchen qualifies as dinner theatre. Chef Mitch Kmiecik has a way with West Coast oysters, massive Dungeness crabs, thick slabs of tuna seared just-so, Cowichon Bay Farm duck -- a candidate for sweetest, juiciest duck in the world -- and polenta lashed with truffle oil. Superlative B.C. wines are poured into top-of-the-line stemware. If this is wilderness, pass our beaver hats, Bunky.
But if Quait Bay is a remote pleasure, the sense of remote wilderness prevails at the 25-guest Outpost camp at Bedwell River, 20 minutes away. A horse-pulled wagon transports guests to an archetypal valley flanked by low mountains and frosted peaks. The setting recalls the movie Shane, only the lone rider approaching is John Caton, former music-industry entrepreneur turned man of the West, trail boss, head honcho, chap in chaps -- Kevin Costner meets Tom Selleck meets Gabby Hayes on horseback.
