Fishing
A very good weekend, although not quite long enough, as per usual.
On Friday, Mark and I ended the day be stopping in at Le Baron -- a camping/fishing/hunting/outdoor store here in Ottawa in Bells Corners. Unlike Canadian Liar, they sell fishing licenses there. Mark and I also geared up with rods, reels, tackle boxes, lures, etc. etc. I have a bunch of fishing equipment back at my parents' house on Bowen, but it is all saltwater stuff. Other than occasionally dangling a rod in the water up at Deka Lake, I've never really done freshwater fishing.
It's much harder than fishing in the ocean, I find. In the ocean, there seem to be many more species of fish, and they all seem to feel good about taking a nibble out of most things. There, I can grab some mussels, use those to catch "shiners" (a type of perch, I think also known as "dock perch", that only grow to be about 10cm), which then in turn get cut up for bait.
We were fishing in the St. Lawrence, around Cardinal, where Rob and Laura live. The fish there seem to be finicky. Apparently there are yellow perch, walleye, crappie, muskie, and channel catfish there. We spent most of the day not seeing any fish, not even minnows. It started off cold and blustery, so we headed to an island and tried our hand at shore casting.
An hour or two of that, and we moved slightly to the other side of the channel. Here, we actually saw fish. I think they were probably muskie, since it was about a meter long. Kate saw a few shorter ones, about the length of her arm, which might have been walleye. I also don't really know any of these species, so don't know even what they look like in real life.
I guess I kind of always took knowing the ins and outs of fishing in the ocean for granted. Or maybe it's simply not that hard to catch what are primarily bottomfish -- tommy, ling, and rock cod, flounder, dog fish, etc.
So, final tally was zero fish. Really not even any bites. But, it was fun. So many thanks to Rob and Laura for hosting us, and Rob for playing captain on the Boston Whaler. Even if Luke ate all my snacks...
Comments
Great fishing memories.
I haven't fished seriously for many years now, but had many years of fishing, all of the fond. River, lake, saltwater, casting, flycasting, trolling, I think I've done just about everything there is to do short of using a net.
Off the waters of Port Alberni, my biggest triumph was a 25 lb Chinook that was a wonder to catch and play.
My funnest day fishing saw me catch about 12 Coho around Port Alberni. My father and uncle were using identical lures, identical depths, but neither of them caught one fish, and I caught mine so fast that I limited all three of us out.
The worst days fishing were spent on the Chilliwhack River watching my dad and uncle try to fish, one time my Uncle nearly drowned, and we never caught a thing.
Another great memory was with family friends at a high plateau of lakes along the BC-Washington border that was only accessible by jacked up Ford F350 Diesel trucks with 30" tires and a good three feet of ground clearance. Between the four Father/son pairs, not a single family caught anything, but we met for a lunch by one of the nicer lakes. I had finished lunch while the rest were having a few beers, and with the lake shore a very few feet away, I took up the rod and made a cast. That cast landed me a 2 lb lake trout, right in front of everyone.
Those, and many other fishing trips, gave me my early love of water, fresh and salt, and surfing took care of the rest - when I can get near it, I'm a water fiend.
Lake fishing has one killer lure - a Mepps Spoon with the triple hook. It's a lot of fun, and has provided some of the eeriest feelings I've experienced. In BC, when the evening comes on, the sky begins to darken. Along a lot of high lakes with all other higher land obscured by the lakeside trees, you can look up and get the feeling that there is nothing higher in the world. Not even Mount Everest gives that feeling, it has to be deliberately forced by its climbers, but in many lakes in BC, it is eerie and beautiful and awe-inspiring to feel that. That, and the pure silence, is enough to make you long for it again and again. It's as if the hum of the earth is the only sound, and is so refreshing and scary to hear at the same time.
Another eerie feeling is parts of the Kennedy River on Vancouver island, which is a small river of waterfalls and deep, deep pools of water. I've never fished the river, but swam in it, and these pools are very, very deep, perhaps 15-20 feet deep. The water is green and the rocky edges cast shadows at the bottom of the pool. Again, looking down you feel a compelling urge to go and explore the bottom, see what rocks lay down there, and search out all the cracks and crags. But you also feel a certain danger, the danger of uncertainty about water that deep and quiet, I think.
Back to fishing memories, another Vancouver Island reference. The Oyster River exits into the straight a short drive from Cambell River, and there is a series of resort lodges, where my family went up to for several years. The Oyster river is only perhaps four or five feet deep and runs slow as it enters the straight. It runs slow enough that fishermen can wade out into the boundary between the fresh and salt water, where they can fish for Pink Salmon. It's quiet something. You have the crystal clear green water from the Oyster River, which is very cold all summer long because its source is the snow and glacier mountains nearby, so it is perfect for swimming, but the fishing at that point is an incredible experience. You are standing in water you can see clearly through, casting to water that is a darker green and opaque, and all about you are flashes of bright pink and silver, the salmon milling about you. It puts you right in the middle of vibrant nature, with eagles soaring overhead, salmon swiming about you, and crystal clear water moving past you.
Fishing and those rare areas to do it, or swimming, is amazing. I hope you catch lots of fish!
On a side note, I was just watching a show on the Birge Al Arab, a hotel in Dubai that is the world's largest tent, at over 300 feet high. One side of it, not a load-bearing feature mind you, is a sail of kevlar material. They have the largest atrium in the world - 180 floors tall. And one of the curious elements of the hotel - when they first turned on the air conditioning, there was such a difference between temperatures in the atrium, that a rain cloud formed and began raining down lightly on the construction teams below. It's quite a structure, very beautiful, too bad I don't have $7K per night USD. :(