Just for fun / Retirement
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| Fishing in Vancouver is accessible and productive |
The other day, I went fishing out off the mouth of the Fraser River with one of my mates from university. It was a great afternoon out on the water, and only 45 minutes from where the guide picked us up, we had rods in the water. It reminded me of some tall tales (all true, I swear), so I thought I'd jot them down for posterity's sake. I wrote them down on the Facebook, but this is a more easily accessed medium for me. Here goes.
We used to run an annual Sun Microsystems fishing trip with clients and partners, where we'd go up to the MV Salmon Seeker, operated by the Oak Bay Marine Group. We'd fly into this ex-research vessel, anchored deep in Kano Inlet, which was our floating accommodations, restaurant and base of operations. We'd then go out each day to fish in 20' Boston Whalers, and typically would catch many more fish in a day than you could keep.
This was back before I ever fished on the open ocean. Sure, I had caught a salmon with my buddy David, while up in Bella Coola, but that's not like this kind of fishing action. This was 15+ fish per day (per rod) with so much fight that I remember getting blisters on my hands! Most of the Chinook were in the 20 lb. range, but the guides wouldn't typically boat anything less than 30 lbs.
So fishing story #1, occurred on the first of these trips, back in 2000. On one day, we spotted a pod of orcas off in the distance. This was before I had a digital camera, so I quickly swapped my all-purpose lens for a 300mm, hoping to at least catch some dorsal fins or a breach. Meanwhile, our guide, JB, was casually clipping the line onto the downrigger when a Coho snatched the lure and tore the line right out of his fingers!
All of a sudden, a mother and her calf appeared about 50 metres off the back of the boat - they were chasing after the fish! JB frantically reeled the salmon in, literally surfing it along towards us. But mama and baby kept coming, and just as JB unceremoniously hoisted the fish into the back of the boat, the orcas submerged beneath our boat, only metres from the back!
The second of my fish tales occurred in 2006, on my 4th trip to the Charlottes. One of the distinctions of catching a large chinook, is the power of the pull on the rod, and the angle that the line goes into the water at. A coho often runs along the top, and doesn't have the mass to strip much line off the reel. A Tyee however, will start zipping the reel almost the moment it gets hooked, and the line will be at least a 45 degree angle.
So when my fishing partner hooked something and the reel started screaming, we got very excited! This was unlike any other salmon fight I'd ever encountered. After a fierce battle, the fish came close to the surface, and we saw a tall dorsal fin. Wha? (cue the Jaws music) "Salmon shark!" our guide exclaimed. This is not common - catching one of these on 20 lb. monofilament line. Salmon shark have sharp teeth and would normally cut through the wimpy mono easily, but the plug that it had taken, was jammed into the jaws.
While we did not want to keep/eat the shark, the guides did. So we hauled it onboard, and sized up our catch. at about 5.5 feet, it weighed about 95 lbs., easily the biggest fish we'd ever caught on these trips (stay tuned however). Little known fact, is that salmon sharks are actually from the same family as great whites and mako sharks, and you could easily see the resemblance. This was a small one, as they typically are 400+ lbs., but can grow up to 1,000 lbs. and 10 feet long!
Second useless trivia about sharks, is that their meat spoils quickly if you don't clean them immediately; something about how they urinate through their skin or something. To read more about these huge fish that most folks don't even know exist in our waters, have a look
here on Wikipedia. Anyhow, so our guide ended up gutting it right there on the back of the boat, and all of the contents of its stomach and innards were dumped out onto the back of the boat. While washing away the blood, an octopus beak rolled along the deck... at least he had a tasty last meal!
Ok, final fish story. This was on my final trip to the MV Salmon Seeker, so a fitting one to end with.
When we go on these fishing trips, the primary goal is to catch salmon, and lots of them. Your guide tries to get you big chinooks, and during that time you'll typically "limit out" on your coho. In a typical day on a two rod (sometimes 3) boat, you'll end up releasing 12-20 "cookie cutter" chinooks that are 20-25 lbs., keeping the big ones only, and hopefully catching your 2 cohos each. On the odd occasion, you get a bleeder, and since fish blood doesn't clot, you keep chinook even if they're under your Tyee keep range.
But once you've filled the boat with your limit of salmon, and if there's time left, you go get your halibut. Normally, the guides would take us to "Aisle 13"; a GPS marked spot where it is so easy to catch them, the sea floor must be covered in hali. e.g. It's like going to the supermarket, and you go down aisle 13 to get some fresh fish. You lower your baited hook (no flashy things or injured fish imitations required), and once it hits bottom, you start reeling up. A typical "chicken" will be 15-25 lbs., sometimes up to 35 or so. Each guy catches one, and you're “back to barn” for beers on the top deck.
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| Sometimes you are close to other boats |
On this trip, we had limited out relatively early, so our guide took us to the monster hali spot. A further ride, and trickier fishing, but since we had the time, it seemed like a good idea. It was foggy, so the guide, Darren, pointed the nose of the boat at his GPS marker, and we blindly motored off. As we arrived there, the fog was lifting, and others must have limited-out on salmon as well, because there were a few other boats there. One of the other guides let us know that they had spotted a sea lion nearby, so be careful. Huh? Anyways, at Aisle 13, you catch them so quickly, the guides don't bother dropping anchor. Here, it can take an hour or so to link up with one of these "coffee tables", so we dropped anchor in about 200 feet of water.
Our guide set up the hali rods, one on each side of the boat, and we waited. And waited. And waited. This kind of fishing is boring. It might have been about an hour in when my fishing partner's rod started to twitch. You have to let these big halibut really take the bait before trying to set the hook, or you'll just end up losing them. After a brief dance with his rod, the hali decided that it liked my bait more, and started to nibble away at mine.
I pulled the rod out of the holder, and Darren is watching the tip, "wait... wait... wait... NOW!" I set the hook as hard as I could, and we had him. As I started battling this hali, we hear from the other boat, "SEA LION!" The chase was on, and not wanting to be its next meal, the big hali swam for its life, stripping line off the reel like crazy. Remember that we were anchored, so we couldn't chase this huge fish. Darren had the drag on the reel set high for these big hali, and yet it seemed as though it was stripping off line effortlessly. I looked at Darren, and he looked at me, as we watched the line getting closer and closer to running out. He said, "give me the rod". He took the rod, and put his thumb on the reel to slow it down slightly, and gave the drag a last click or two. The hali finally stopped, with what I estimate to be less than of foot of line left!
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| Monster from the Deep |
With the sea lion no longer in pursuit, and the halibut exhausted from the chase, it was up to me to pull all that line back in. Despite the size, it was a relatively short amount of time to do the classic pull up on the rod, then reel down, pull up on the rod, then reel down, etc. Repeat about a hundred times. I think even our guide was surprised when we finally got this monster up to the surface. It was massive! I had heard the stories of fishermen bringing big hali onto their boats, only to have the fish revive itself and destroy the boat flopping around. Some shoot them, but there's always that tall tale of the fishermen that used the gun
after they brought it onboard, and ended up putting a hole through the bottom of their boat! But Darren harpooned it, then hooked it up to a rope and bled it out before we brought it onboard.
That was my last full day of fishing up there, and the last time I'd see the MV Salmon Seeker. The Oak Bay Marine Group eventually sold the ship, and I would move on to other career opportunities. But it certainly was a great way to end my Queen Charlottes fishing career.
Note: On December 11, 2009, the British Columbia government announced that legislation would be introduced in mid-2010 to officially rename the Queen Charlotte Islands to the new name "Haida Gwaii". The legislation received royal assent on June 3, 2010, formalizing the name change.
