James C. Liu's Weblog

Friday August 27, 2004

Super-Natural-Techno-Fishing-British Columbia

Road Trip Weekend to Vancouver, British Columbia

Yee....haw! Friday's almost over, and tomorrow, the Family and I drive up to Vancouver for a week to do some Super-Natural B.C. Fishing, Dimsum, More Dimsum and shopping. And maybe we'll hit up Victoria for our second time this year for the 100th Anniversary of Butchart Gardens to visit my favourite Republican rose - the "Barbara Bush" :-)

I always get this question from colleagues when I talk about driving up to Vancouver: How long does it take? The answer really depends. If I'm the sole driver and we only stop for gas and fast food, it's about 16 hours. If my wife's 27 year old cousin who learned to drive while attending Cal Poly - Pomona is rotating out, we've gotten there from SF in under 14 hours, ticket free. But these days, with a 2 year old, 4 year old, and maybe my Parents heading up with us, we stop in Oregon over night. And it's not so much that we need to stop, except, now that my wife has learned how to operate the Garmin GPS unit in the car. Over time, she's accumulated a whole bunch of waypoints. For example, did you know that 1 mile east of the I-5 exit 253 near Salem is a massive Dollar Store? Never mind that they have a massive Sportsman's Warehouse that carries a huge section of fishing tackle that I'd like to buy, but it's important for the wife, who is a Dollar Store Junky, to note all the dollar stores on the west coast, or at least the good ones. In fact, her number one discovery has been the Dollar Store in Lompoc, CA, a little town along the coast 40 minutes north of Santa Barbara. Killer deals for ANY Junky. That's on the GPS.

And just a couple of last facts - Medford, Oregon exit 27 Burnett Rd is excellent because they have a Chevron station next to a Washington Mutual ATM, next to Jack in the Box, KFC, and a HomeTown Buffet. It's cheaper gas than in California usually, they pump the gas for you, and they get those bugs off your windshield too. Plus there's lots of cheap eats around and it's literally a block off the freeway. Also, there is a Costco in Eugene, OR, off exit 195B to Coburg. It's about 1 mile west. They have cheap gasoline and more square footage, which means they tend to carry more stuff than the Costco out of exit 253 in Salem. I bought 2 toshiba laptops that run JDS/Sx86 fine btw, for just $700 each! Yeah, 256 MB units with 30 GB disks, and DVD roms. Couple that with mis-marked 256MB sodimms for $26 and what a deal! Why the focus on Oregon? Because, they don't charge sales tax. Great for buying laptops, or dig-cams for that matter.

Cumulative distance from Sunnyvale to the US-Canada Border in Blaine, WA is about 985 miles according to GPS. My mom loves one-arm-bandits, especially the nickel machines, and there are three convenient Indian Gaming Casinos on the way up. Northern California, just as you hit Tehama County there's the Rolling Hills Casino, then there's the Seven Feathers in Canyonville, OR somewhere after Sutherlin, and finally, north of Seattle the Tualip Tribes have opened a new Casino next to the Walmart at the Quilceda shopping center off I-5. That's gotta be my Mom's favourite. Wal*mart -next- to a Casino. But luckily for me, the Driver is the King - and I usually get to dictate how long we get to stay...or not stay. After all, why waste quality fishing time in a Casino, right Mom?

US Border Crossing and Homeland Security

Big brother is watching you. Just remember that. It ain't so much the Canucks as it is the Americans. The Canadians practically only need a valid Driver's License to let you into Canada. But if you wanna come back, you'll need a full passport, or US certificate of Citizenship (the real thing... not a copy), or a US Birth Certificate for a child (not a copy). You get passports for kids for $40 at your local major Post Office on certain hours of the week - usually the most inconvenient hours - and they take up to 40 days to run a background check on a two year old child, probably just to make sure it isn't a dog or illegal alien from some Stargate program in Colorado, but the Feds seem extremely willing to buck the thorough background check and expedite service back to you in a few days for a fist full of $120. (Note, prices may have changed in the last 2 years).

No firearms allowed across the border into Canada folks. Usually not a problem for Californians. But if y'all look like you're from Texas, and got your Beater White Pickup Truck with GW*2004 Sticker on the back window, well, best be ready to get mess'd with. Gettin' the picture, pardner? Blaine, WA/Whiterock, B.C. are NOT like Austin, TX.

Limits on alcohol and tobacco too. They don't get Trader Joes up in Vancouver, at least I haven't seen one, and they don't sell liquor/wine/beer at supermarkets - only in licensed B.C. Liquor stores. That means no Two-buck Chuck - Charles Shaw up there, and if you chose to bring some up, there's some limit on the quantity. I like the Okanagan wines anyway, and there's a lot of Australian imports too, and they are reasonable so there's usually no need to bring wine up there. No one in the family smokes anyway, and it'll kill you and your kids, so why smoke? I can find all the wine I need to cook and drink and it's quite good. A treat for Californian Wine lovers - if you like sweet desert wines like Ports, Sherries, Sauturnes, try some of the Okanagan Ice Wine.

No limits on how much gasoline is in your tank in Canada, but there's also seems no limit on the price north of the border. So fill'er-UP! before going across the border, because even with the exchange rate, welcome to Socialist Canada where gas costs like $3/US gallon. And I almost think it's a conspiracy in Canada to mess with American's by labeling all the gas prices in Canadian Dollars per LITER! If you're an engineer like me, at every fill-up, there you are, pumping and thinking... hmmmm...89.5 cents per liter $CDN is like...x USD and 3.78 liters per US Gallon, and what was the current exchange rate? .... Whatever. Only, you end up forking over about $70 CDN to fill up the Sienna minivan from Empty. But watch out. The prices change by 10% during the week. Usually, I try to fill up on Wed., or Thursday evening. Sometimes, they have like a discount evening and for 6 hours, they lower the price of gas by say 8 centers/liter. Then magically on Friday, they jack it all up again and then some. With my luck, I run out the day before they lower the prices that week.

Coming back into the US is problematic. Long delays, fruit and vegetable inspections, homeland security alerts can all add 2 or 3 hours at the border. I recommend taking the Highway 15/Surrey route which is a slightly different border crossing inside the town of Blaine. In fact, I often take that route coming into Canada as well. It can save an hour in line getting into B.C., and about 3 hours coming back because fewer people know about the 2nd crossing. If people are here from Non-Treaty countries (PRC, Taiwan, HKG, MiddleEast) you will need to first apply at the U.S. Consulate for re-entry permits if you visit the U.S. and then go to Canada, only to come back to the U.S. before heading on. I deal with this once in a while because a relative from Hong Kong visits us in San Francisco, but then they decide to head up to Vancouver for a few days and come back to depart from SFO back to HKG. Do NOT bring any food. With every kind of quarantine, SARS, Mad Cow, yadi yadi, the US is paranoid about everything. I even had my Safeway big deli submarine sandwich purchased at Lansdowne Mall Richmond, B.C., confiscated by hungry looking U.S. Customs agents. They claimed that the cold cuts might have beef in them and there was a quarantine. So bring no food.

Drive Slow - it's a KMH versus MPH thing

Silicon Valley drivers beware. We get so used to pushing 85 miles per hour driving on Hwy 85 or Hwy 101 to make our meetings. And the CHP (Calif. Highway Patrol) really don't monitor speed along 101 from Redwood City south to Santa Clara. And they don't do speed checks either on Hwy 85 much north of Almaden Expressway. They pretty much only check for CarPool violators. So, I admit, I sometimes follow traffic at excessive speeds. And I've gotten used to the hustle. In fact, that new offramp from 101 south to 85 south next to SGI/Microsoft in Mtn. View is a big irritant. You get a few drivers who can't handle the narrow turn at more than say 55 mph. But everyone else in their Silicon Valley Audi's and Volvo sedans with over 180 Horses are chomping at the bit to hit 80 mph on the nice curve that unwinds onto a wide and flat Hwy 85.

So, Welcome to B.C. Now slow down! I believe the Metric KM/H speed limits are another conspiracy the Canucks pull on Americans. What's up with putting in these unexpected 50 KMH (30 mph) zone like right smack in the middle of some 6 lane Freeway? B.C. recently passed a referendum where they outlawed all the un-manned radar-camera setups, but the cops are still able to set up manned traps. The worst (or perhaps best revenue generators) seem to be the West Vancouver cops. They monitor Hwy 1 and 99 near Taylor Way (exit 13) and Horseshoe Bay. And having so many transplanted bad drivers from Hong Kong that are used to driving on the Queen's side of the road, they like to nail those folks, especially those ones with embarrassingly Green [N] for Newbie driver signs stuck on the back of their vehicles. I think the West Van Police like nailing transplant drivers so much, it's second only to their love of nailing Drivers with California or Washington license plates! But in general, I've become a sedate driver after crossing the border. I've been nailed twice up there - in a MiniVan for Godsakes! But I did grovel and profusely apologize both times. The first ticket, the guy discounted, and the second time, he let me off with a warning. So I recommend practicing your grovelling. Just don't make it too obsequious or it'll come off wrong.

California Java-Slinger teaching them Canucks a thing about fishing.

If and when I decide to actually stop gorging myself on world-class Chinese, Indian, or Japanese cuisine, I may think about fishing this time of year. Folks like me who fish in California should be used to the near water-rationing desert conditions with 35 Million other anglers, many of them immigrants from cultures that are used to completely decimating fish and wildlife in their countries of origin. But even under those conditions, California provides pretty good sport for the skilled. I might even say that Californians are better anglers than most, at least the ones that can consistently catch fish. And it's due to the natural selection and competition for fishing in California.

B.C. is like a fisherman's paradise. Our vacation house is a townhome nestled half way up Howe Sound toward Squamish. It's overlooking a deep saltwater fiord that is surrounded on both sides by mountains. A golf course lies just behind our complex, and it's almost possible to cast to the water from our balconey. Our complex actually rests on a wide ledge on the side of a mountain that extends 2500 ft toward the sky to more than 1300 ft below sea level. Only, we can't see the ledge because it's covered by water. But the proximity to deep waters means that many migratory species and deepwater species of fish or crustaceans are very close to shore. Casting out 50 meters in some places will put you over waters that are more than 50 meters deep. Our complex is located next to a creek that supports 4 species of salmon - Chinook, Coho, Pink, and Chum. Sockeye do come by I'm told but I haven't caught one yet, and probably won't since they're supposedly filter feeders on plankton/krill. We have 2 types of char - Dolly Varden and Bull Trout, and lastly we have Steelhead. And the waters just a bit off shore host migrations of hundreds of thousands salmon a year that spawn in the Squamish river basin system. We also have a number of other great seafoods like rockfish (genus Sebastes), Lingcod, and Greenlings, halibut, rock sole and English sole, surf perch, dungeness crab, mussels, sea cucumbers, sea urchin, and spot prawns. Orca may infrequently visit us in the fiord, but seals, otters, black bears and bald eagles are residents. That's why they call this place Super-Natural British Columbia.

Fig. 1. Bull Trout - A type of Char, belong to the family of Salmonids. Caught on chromed 4" buzz bomb.
 

The complex is new, with the first units completed September of 2000. The last of 79 units in this phase were just finished mid 2003. There are still some discussions on a marina, boat launch, and some landscaping. And the rec-center is almost finished. We bought our unit Christmas of 2000 and were to first to get DSL and wireless within 12 miles December 2003. Up until last year, only about half the residents did any fishing and most took boat trips, heading back south to Vancouver to take a charter back out to the Straits or at the mouth of Howe Sound. Few fished the shoreline because regulations made it impossible to keep salmon in that zone. But beginning April 2003, Dept of Fisheries and Oceans Canada predicted a massive oversupply of salmon in the lower mainland system. They were predicting over 3 million salmon returning into river systems (Fraser and Squamish) that could at most support 2.7 million salmon. So they opened up the take of salmon in our near shore waters. Well, DFO's estimates were wrong. Last year, more than 5 million salmon returned into the lower mainland. It didn't drop the price of canned salmon at Costco (those bastards!) but it sure made fishing a lot of fun. For a California resident, the annual $200+ tidal/non-tidal non-resident-alien license was hefty. But the ability to head out 3 evenings in a row, toss a little piece of pink painted metal and nail salmon after salmon after salmon made the price of the license a pretty decent investment. I released the vast majority of the catch and only kept one to eat - which was delicious. But because the salmon returned at different times, Pinks first, then Chinook, then Chum, and then Coho... it was continuous fishing for the neighbours living there from July through October.

Moreover, I began a trend in the technology of fishing. It had three phases. The first was to get the proper equipment. Shore casting for fish is different than boat fishing. Instead of dropping a lure over the side and dragging it behind a slow moving boat (aka Trolling), anglers need to cast out and retrieve constantly. The fish can get spooked and move off shore when humans approach the edge. This isn't a big problem in California because we have big surf and waves that pound the coast. The fish are living in a loud disco-washing machine combo drive, and couldn't care less about humans. But inside Howe Sound, there is very little surf and tidal action. The water is usually calm, unless we have a big Tsunami. And it has to be a BIG Tsunami. The recent Seattle earthquake a few years ago did a little water-hammer action on the toilets, but that was all. We had mysterious blue-spots from dried toilet bowl cleaner on the undersides of our toilet seats when we arrived back up. But none of the neighbours saw any tidal action in the Fiord itself.

The tides raise and lower water by as much as 3 meters in a day, but with little surface disruptions and smooth and steady currents only. Under these conditions, we can expect schools of salmon to only be drawn inshore during high tides and seasonnally when there are fingerling Chum smolts or baby Coho salmon in the shallows to feed on.

What's needed is equipment to cast precisely upto 100 meters out and to retrieve quickly enough to match the blistering speed of a 25 lb chinook salmon, which can swim in bursts in excess of 12 knots or so. A distance surf casting rod for upto 3 oz of metal lures, and a fast gear ratio levelwind are what I specified. I actually built a number of rods for both boat and shore fishing for salmon fishing in Howe Sound, and they performed fairly well. I experimented with building rods that had more guides or less guides, longer, shorter, and with different tapers. I wrote a Java applet to compute the guide spacing on the rods.

I supplied Abu Garcia 5600c4 reels with 6.3:1 gear ratios as standard equipments. These reels are 19% faster on retrieve than the Abu Garcia c3 series of reels with only 5.3:1 gear ratio. This is a small difference on the surface, but knowing that the regulations require barbless hooks and single shaft hooks means that any sustained slack in the line may give the fish an opportunity to spit the lure out, the extra gear ratio means that I can crank faster and keep up with the fish. Especially if a chinook swims towards you. Results on the fish concurred with hypothesis.

Fig. 2. Custom-Built Spinning rod for B.C. Note the Blue-Gold colour scheme. Cal Berkeley - Go Bears. Eat your hearts out Stanfurd.
 

I also introduced 20 and 30 lb test line made from very high-tech Spectra fibre. Yes, the same stuff they use to make the new generation of bulletproof vests. This is roughly 4 times the strength to cross-sectional Area ratio of nylon monofilament and has zero stretch. The 30 lb test spectra line has the equivalent diameter of 8lb test mono. In addition, at 80 meters out, if a fish bites, nylon monofilament has too much stretch to provide any real way to exert much hook-set power on the fish. With spectra fibre braid, that changes the name of the game. Technology allows us to set the hook and exert power and with less fear of line breakage. The only problem with this line is the cost. Because it's imported into Canada, the costs are about twice that of the US, where most of the gel-spun fibre fabricators are located. NAFTA helps us here, because the tax-free stuff I can buy in Oregon that has a "made in USA" sticker on it can be imported into Canada for private use in any quantity with no duty. Don't get me wrong; the stuff is still expensive down in the U.S. Expect to pay $15 for 300 yds of the low quality stuff and about $23 for 150 yds of the good stuff. You can get spools of bulk premium mono for $8 per 1000 yds.

Tackle alone doesn't catch fish. Doing some research on local forage was useful. Using the internet and scouring websites on Salmon lifecycles, I learned that other species of Salmonids, like Dolly Varden, Bull Trout and Steelhead, often take up residence in saltwater estuaries for baby salmon. Trying out chromed and painted lures that matched the current size, shape and colour of salmon smolts immediately caught Dolly Varden and Bull Trout. Some as large as 36 inches! The above picture is a bull trout (a type of Char), released. It topped out at over 30 inches.

Lastly, I introduced the neighbours to my Tide Server. It's free software that uses Xtide, from David Flater. There is also a Palm OS version called "TideTool" that is based on the same software. There's a 600kB database that includes datum for the entire N.America West Coast. These tools have made local tide prediction much better than a crap shoot using newspaper almanacs that report for too wide an area. Because I live so close to the water and it's less than 3 minutes from walking out the door to wetting my line, having this tide technology lets me target the most productive 45 minutes in the tide cycle and catch fish. That's more fish in less time, leaving more time, of course, to head down to Richmond, B.C. for Dimsum!

So is all this high-tech fishing an unfair advantage for this ex-Canuck now turned California Boy? Yeah, but the edge has been short lived. I was competitive until my neighbours got their DSL hooked up, started hammering my servers, and put in orders to have me build a half dozen salmon casting rods. In addition, they're out there now in float tubes and kayaks nailing 24 lb lingcod! But being the landlubber that I usually am, I joke with them about getting swallowed by Shamu one of these days. It's remote, but it could happen! :-). In exchange, they have dropped off some vigourously pinching dungeness crabs and buckets full of flapping spot prawns. August 27, 2004 03:49 PM PDT Permalink