James C. Liu's Weblog

Friday September 14, 2007

Awesome BC Salmon Fishing

It's been a while since I had time and inclination to blog. But it's a relatively quiet Friday, so I thought I'd share some fishing stories from my fishing exploits last month up near Vancouver, British Columbia.

During the end of July and first half of August, in the midst of a couple of major bug escalations on some NIC drivers, I took 3 weeks off and headed up the B.C. to do my annual salmon fishing pilgrimage. Of course, my excuse was that I had to take the kids during this time period since they have school the rest of the year, so it's now or not until next year. In reality, the timing of the trip could have been a few weeks shifted either way. I chose those particular weeks due to a culmination of research gathered over the last 7 years on the annual salmon run. Specifically, the end of July and first half of August are when the fishing heats up and salmon can be caught from shore - which is just a 30 second walk from our home up there.

I've always debated internally whether this was good practice - to take work along on a vacation. Some folks like to unplug completely. Others prefer to always stay connected. I'm more of the latter kind of person, since the work really doesn't go away. It just piles up while we're gone and I'd rather return to work and hit the ground running rather than spending yet another week dequeuing the hoards of emails and requests I've gotten while I was out. I also love my job - tinkering with hardware and software - and to get paid for it is a bonus. And secretly, I use long vacations like this sort of to test the possibility of working remotely for extended periods, not that I'd ask my manager about right away.

The picture above should provide a small clue that the fishing was a blast. And the scenery was gorgeous. I was fortunate to catch many species of fish. Notable were the rock sole, which are really tasty steamed, and fresh sea cucumbers, which are a Chinese delicacy when used in stews. But the real big catch were the salmon. And they run during a select time of the year. I'm now referring to the end of July and first of August when the first large schools of pink and chinook salmon moved in close to shore.

Our vacation home is on the edge of a salt water estuary, and the salmon come back annually and use these waters as their last feeding source. From May through October, schools of salmon migrate through the estuary and then up river to spawn. There are 5 species. Chinook, pink, coho, sockey and chum. There are millions of fish and over the summer months, many will stop briefly and then move past our shoreline. Some remain and spawn in our creek, waiting for the next big rain that will provide them sufficient water levels to migrate upstream to the waters from where they hatched. Once salmon enter freshwater, they stop eating. Many still hit a lure, but it's primarily for instintive or defensive reasons and not hunger. The end of July and first half of August signals the Pink salmon run. Most salmon live 3 - 5 years and then return to spawn. However, Pink salmon live only 2 years before returning. Due to accidents and rockslides on key rivers back in 1952 or some even numbered year in the 50's, most of the even-numbered-year Pink salmon were wiped out. 50 years later, due to conservation efforts and some human efforts to restore pink salmon runs, we now have some pink returning in even number years. But this is 2007, an odd-numbered year. And that meant some massive pink salmon runs.

I remember July 30th. The pinks had been showing up in small numbers since the 25th. But a massive slug of them arrived on July 29th right on queue the same as two years ago. They were abundant to catch, and I was releasing almost all of the fish, since the limit was just 2 pinks, in a total of 4 salmon bag limit per day of all species, with 8 fish total in possession at any time cumulative. On that Thursday evening, July 30th, the pinks settled in at high tide inside the cove adjacent to our homes. I walked out to the shore and sat down on a big log at 5pm . I met up with 3 other neighbours who had all decided to wet a line. The cove, which was less than 6 ft deep at high tide, was thick with jumping salmon. Many fish were in just 1 ft of water chasing food. And from 5 pm - 8:30 pm, I counted personally, 39 salmon caught, landed and released. Regulations required us to use barbless hooks, but these can be treble hooks which have 3 points. After the sixth fish, it was taking too long to release the fish, so I switched to a single-point Siwash-style hook. I did lose a few more fish due to the hook, but the salmon were everywhere. Most times, there were at least two of us that had fish on simultaneously. We even had 4 fish on briefly at the same time. Two of my neighbours - Larry and Mauritzio joined me on that big log that had washed onto shore in previous weeks during a high tide. As the tide moved in, the big log started to float up. I sensibly got off and moved back a little onto some rocks and kept hooking more fish. But Mo and Larry lost track of the time and remained on the log, hooking ever more salmon. We were all whooping and shouting out, "Fish On!" nonstop while the log slowly floated up and out to the middle of the cove with Mo and Larry still on the log.

Larry then went silent for quite a few minutes as he struggled to haul something in. After 12 minutes perched on one end of the floating log, a big black and silver flash surfaced and started jumping. It was a massive Chinook. As Larry tried to work it closer to the log, the fish suddenly turned around and started swimming toward him. The fish dove under, went behind and around, then jumped up and over the massive trunk of this log. Larry's line was now wrapped around and there was just too much friction on the line and move the fish. A break off was imminent. Larry instinctively opened the bail and let the line loose, preventing a break-off and so the salmon continued to struggle. Meanwhile, Larry looked over at Maurice who had brought a small landing net. Larry shouted over Maurice for help with landing his fish. Mo seemed clumsier than usual as he knelt down and tried to swat the net at the fish. It was beyond being bad technique. It almost seemed like a comical attempt to intentionally knock the fish off the hook. And as I watched thinking about Maurice's bad form, the fish appeared to have swam up to the log and rubbed its mouth against the trunk. One of the points of Larry's treble must have embedded itself into the log. Since the points were barbless, this must have allowed the big fish to twist and back off the hook. And POP! The fish was free. But it quietly laid on the surface of the water for a moment before it made a small splash and disappeared! "Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!" came the cries from both Mo and Larry and they looked dumbfounded first at the water then at each other. But that only lasted about 30 seconds before they were both casting again and hooking their next salmon. Eventually, another neighbour came out in a canoe and ferried each man, one at a time in two trips, back to shore.

My elbows were seriously injured by the onslaught of fish. Mind you, these weren't smally dinky trout. Even the smallest pinks are full fledged salmon weighing 4 lbs and upto 9lb with enough fight for a fish that can swim 100 miles up river to spawn. Occasionally, we would hook up with some chinook salmon which get much bigger. One fish stripped me of more than 70 yds of lin in about 7 seconds, and then headed into deep waters where it dove then cut the line cleanly probably on the sharp rocky ledge about 40 yards from shore. With such powerful fish, a typical fight lasted for at 3 - 5 minutes, and we were averaging about 1 fish every 3 casts with our metal lures. By the time the 20th fish had been caught and released, I switched rod types and tried to switch from right-arm holding the rod, left hand cranking, to left hand holding the rod and right hand cranking. It helped a little during that evening, but next morning, the tendons near boths elbows were paying a painful price.

The fishing was great for the kids too. Because the fish were that plentiful, it wasn't hard to head out, walk to the shoreline, make a couple of casts, hook the fish, then hand the rod over to my son or daughter to then fight and land the fish. And if they had a lapse in technique where they left slack in the line and the barbless hook fell out, well, not much of a problem. I would hook up soon after and give them a second chance and a third or a fourth, until they got too tired.

Speaking of kids, while we were up there, we invited the family of one of our son's classmates to stay over for the weekend and fish. Mark and Tracy have two boys, Jake and Kyle who both attend the same elementary school here in Sunnyvale. We've known them now, for about 2.5 yrs. Mark is an avid fishermen. He claims Tracy lets him head out on some pretty good fishing trips, like long range boats out of San Diego, or offshore tuna trips around the world. I'm not a big boat fishing guy, but that sounds like he's got a good arrangement. Tracy teaches at the school, and doesn't really fish much. But she's a Vancouver native with relatives still there. So she visits them often. Naturally, when I mentioned we'd have a great salmon run this year and we could just catch them from shore, they made plans to be up there around the same time and meet up to fish (well, at least Mark made arrangements with me via email).

The Friday afternoon that Mark arrived with the family, we were just on the way out the door to pick up my wife's sister at Vancouver airport (YVR). The sis-in-law was stopping by to visit from Alaska. The drive to YVR, by my guess, was going to take more than 2 hours due to weekend traffic and Highway 99 construction for the upcoming winter Olympics. So as I was leaving, I gave Mark a quick tour of the garage, the rods/reels and the tackle. I also showed him key shoreline fishing spots. Then we left them alone with a house key if they needed to get in or out.

We did successfully pickup my sis-in-law at YVR, but we decided on dinner first before heading back. It wasn't until after 8pm when we got home, after which time, Mark, Tracy and the boys were not to be found. It wasn't long before they came back and we found out that Mark and his 2 boys had gone out fishing just after we left. In just 1/2 an hour, he hooked and Jake landed a 12 lb Chinook, and he hooked and Kyle landed a 9 lb pink. They remained in an ice chest in the garage awaiting instructions from me on how to fillet them. At that point, I think Mark turned to me and said this was the best shore line fishing he's ever experienced. Then he turned back to Tracy with a grin and said, half seriously, that they should buy a place up here. Tracy responded, with a negative; they'd simply just come up and stay at our house, to which we all laughed.

Because of the all the folks with licenses and valid salmon stamps, I ended being able to keep quite a few salmon in the freezer. But that presented a problem because there wasn't room in our small frige/freezer. The solution was to head to the new Home Depot in Squamish and pick up a new chest freezer (aka "Trophy Case" in Alaska said my sis-in-law). But after accumulating that much salmon, I ended up getting buying a smoker as well, after which we bought a vacuum packing system for the smoked filets. I found out that our next door neighbour's wife, Yelena, makes salmon roe caviar that is just blanched in modestly hot brine, and separates out the eggs from the sack material using a badminton racquet.

It was tough coming back after that kind of vacation, but I had to save my arms. If I had stayed up there, I'd probably been needing surgery and multiple cortisone shots into my elbows. Even with all the swelling on the last day, I took some some Aleve in the morning and then headed out to fish. It wasn't more than 6 or 7 casts before I hooked a very nice chinook which I landed and released. Then not long after, I hooked and released 3 more pink salmon. I had to head back in after that to really save my arms. But before leaving, I was able to test install the new Solaris Developer Express release on 4 machines and provide feedback to the Nevada team. That wasn't painful at all. September 14, 2007 03:47 PM PDT Permalink