In early April I make a trip down to Victoria to visit friends, and make a quick pass to a few lakes. It is dry and almost sunny all the way down island until I get over the Malahat, where there is a single huge black cloud hanging over Langford Lake. It starts raining as soon as I get to the launch. Why is it only raining here, and nowhere else in Victoria? The longer I fish the harder it rains. I manage one nice 2 ½ lber and then the rain turns to sleet. Finally the cloud drifts off a bit, and a bright yellow disc appears in the sky. It starts getting warm! I take my sweater off. And bang bang bang – 3 good fish in a row over 15 minutes. The last one is the first good fish of the year, just under 19".
I head over to Elk Lake. Cold drizzle. Cannot get a bite from a bass. Water temp is 46-47. Same at Prospect Lake the next day. I leave when the drizzle turns to sleety snow.
April 5
Great news! Judy Gallant, travel agent in Toronto for the Che Brigade, has checked and found that it is legal for me to bring an inflatable kayak with me to Cuba. Last year when I lived in the US I paid $175 for a kayak, and another $75 for a used paddle. Thought it was a good deal.When I checked around Nanaimo last summer the cheapest inflatable kayaks I could find were $450 and up, plus who knows how much for paddles. I am planning to order by internet from the US again when I decide to check Canadian Tire. Yikes – they have one on sale for $159. So I go down to look at it, and want to buy it, when the clerk tells me he has the identical kayak at home, brand new, never out of the box, and he will sell it to me for $100. And throw in a Coleman electric air pump as well. Too good to be true!
So here is the new flagship of the Inflatable Kayak Nation. What a deal - Kayak + 5 piece paddle + pump – all for 100 bucks.
April 9 - 14After 2 trips to Spider Lake the weather is still miserable, and the bite is still slow. I do manage to get one bass over 18". Second lake this year to produce a good fish for me.
Also make one good early trip to Quennel, where I catch s number of nice fish up to 19". But 2 later trips, including one with my friend Mike, are very slow.
Later make a third attempt to get into X2 lake – this time with my pontoon and electric motor on top the Volvox. Creeping over the potholed logging road in the dark I get to the top of the hill overlooking the lake after midnite, sleep in the car, and then drive up along the lake after dawn. Beautiful morn, and I learn that there is no place where the road gets near the lake except at the top end. There are 2 campgrounds here, one on each side of the inlet river. I drive down into the first one. A very pretty spot where you park right inside the towering old growth forest. Three guys are already camped here. Pickup trucks parked back to back with a big tarp hung between them, and a huge propane burner like an outdoor oven under the tarp. They have hot coffee, and booze to mix with it, and they are preparing to meet the new day. We talk about fishing for a while. They are from Port Alberni, here for a week. Tell me they have been coming here for over 20 years. They have 2 boats tied up on the beach.
They are here for the big trout this lake is famous for. I ask about steelhead and they tell me there are none. There is a huge falls below the lake, and no fish can get up here from the ocean. The big fish in this lake and upper river are all native landlocked RB. One of the man says he once caught a trout here that weighed 27 lbs.
I drive around the top end of the lake, looking for the other campsite. Must cross the upper X2 River, which looks very fishy. Closed to all fishing at this time of year. Then I must drive along the N side of a hill, and suddenly the road is covered in snow. One truck drove thru earlier, and then it snowed again. So there are ruts to follow, but they are covered in a few inches of snow. I have no snow tires. I take a chance, slipping and sliding along until I get past the hill which blocks the sun. No more snow now, and I follow a side road that ends at the river, just above the lake. In fact, if you do not stop you drive right into the river. This is a gorgeous spot, made all the more special cuz I have been hearing about it for over 40 years, but never got in here to see it. The guys camped across the lake and I are among the very few people in the world who have gotten in to connect with these fish this year.
The sun is out, and the big lake is like glass as I set up my camp chair and get a fire started. The campsite is surrounded by huge old growth cedar, fir and hemlock, and the nearest people are over a mile away. A big fir next to the campsite must be nearly 9 ft in diameter, and there are lots of 7–10 ft cedars scattered thru the rainforest. Sadly it turns out that I have bumped some button by accident, and reset the camera to lowest possible resolution, and did not know it. So all my pics turned out tiny bad.
At the river mouth in the distance I can see fish swirling. I put on my neoprene waders, get on the pontoon boat and slip silently down the slow current. Big fish are boiling in the lake, right where the flow slides over the dropoff, between 2 big parallel sunken trees. I get out of the pontoon and start wading, sneaking up to the action spot, staying low. Well, the river I have been wading in is closed to fishing, but the lake is not. I cast a couple times along the beach, and then throw over the 2 big tree trunks and reel back. Like bonefishing, I can see the fish rise to the surface and grab my spinner. Big fish. Biggest wild trout I have ever caught. Very lean and very strong, it is a long battle on 10 lb test line.
I made up these pics after I got home, when I thought I was catching landlocked RB. That is why they say "Landlocked RB". Then I talked to a friend in Ukee who told me the reality. This an example of why local "knowledge" is often contradictory, and why a solid database like the BC Watershed Atlas is much better. The 3 guys I talked to this morn at the other campsite were wrong. The falls below the lake are impassible to any fish in the Province of BC or the Pacific Ocean – except one: the mighty steelhead. My friend DH says he has been to the outlet of the lake, which is just a crack in the bedrock. The water shoots out of the lake over a big dropoff like a huge firehose, at extreme velocity, and the only fish that can get past this spot is one that can leap high into the air and then dive into the gush of the firehose of the lake outlet, and swim up thru it. So the big trout in the lake are not landlocked fish at after all. They are big RBs that came here from points all over the N Pacific, and each one had to jump thru the high velocity eye of the needle at the outlet of the lake to get here.
I make a few more casts around the shallows. No bites. Then back over the big trees again, and I am into another fish right away. It gets off. Then another at the same spot – this time while I was casting from the pontoon boat. The fish are all very similar about 2 ft long, lean and mean. Beauty steelhead to be sure, but not the trophy class fish that a landlocked RB of this size would be.
I quit after a few fish. Partly because it is so lazy and peaceful here I don’t want to bother fishing, and also because I foolishly tried to lead one of these trout into the beach by grabbing its jaw, as I would with a bass. It took me half an hour to stop the bleeding in my thumb.
After the find a dry piece of leaf and stuff into the deep slice the steelie's canine has cut into my thumb. Back to the sunken logs. One cast. Fish on!
Next morn I decide to rig up my flyrod. I was never anything more than a crude flyfisher, and now I am much worse, and I have not even rigged up for a couple years. But it is another gorgeous day, and I decide that this is the day I will devote to being slow, precise, accurate, and also the day I will devote to consuming the little flask of overproof rum I brought with me. Things start going wrong. I have to rig the flyrod 4 times before I do it right, and by then I have lost my fly, a beautifully tied steelhead ugly bug. Then I get onto the water, but things are starting to fall out of the pockets of my waders, and I see them floating down beside me. Little problems become big problems when you are drinking. I finally manage to get onto the fish, which are still there. And I lay some casts with a leech fly over them, but get no bites.
Then I look down and see that my camera is hanging on its string around my neck, and the bottom inch is under water. I have been drinking, and not paying attention, and I have been wading for maybe 15 minutes with the camera dangling at the water’s edge. Good thing I did not wade in an inch deeper. Too bad I was drinking and forgot about the camera around my neck. Amazing that neither the camera or the pics on it were damaged.
I give up with the flyrod, and switch to throwing a big croc spoon along the beach with the big steelhead rod. Bang! First cast. Big fish. This one is over 10 lbs, and I am intimidated more by all the mistakes I have already made this morn than I am by the fish. I keep feeding it line, afraid to trust my drag and afraid of my own impaired skills. The big fish runs deep, wraps around something, and breaks off.
The purpose of going fishing for me is not to catch a lot of fish, but to learn how to master a discipline that makes you able to catch fish. I have disgusted myself today. Great fun to sit around the campfire after a drink and watch the lake wake up, but a waste of a golden morn with trophy fish in a place few people ever get to for me. I head back to my camp without making another cast, load up, and head back home. 2 hours of gravel before I get to pavement. From now on, if I bring any rum along it will be for the evening, not the morn.
April 16
After more than 25 years since my last visit, I finally make it back to the world famous Eddy Lake Lodge. Most fishing lodges in BC advertise heavily, but the Eddy Lake Lodge is different. So exclusive that the guestbook, sitting on the big table at the picture window that overlooks the lake, lists this as requirement as #1: If you are talking to someone who does not know about the lodge, or where it is, you are not allowed to tell them.
So I am breaking that rule here, and I will now break the second by providing the location. It is north of the equator, south of the Arctic Circle, east of the International Date Line, and west of Newfoundland. After lots of pounding gravel I get to the little road the ends at Eddy Lake. There is no butler or chauffer to meet you at this lodge. I load my pontoon boat with camping gear, cast iron frypan, sleeping bags, rain gear, machete and all sorts of other crap. Looks like a floating junkpile. Then motor out across the lake and around a point. Yes! The lodge is still there.
(Sadly, I will take no pictures on this trip. Turns out I had put the battery in backwards and didn’t know it. Or maybe some higher force did not want me to take pics of the lodge?)
The cabin is empty, and I see the previous guests have fulfilled requirement #2: Always leave fresh split kindling beside the wood stove. It has been a long time since I have been able to warm my toes next to a wood stove, and this feels real good. I motor over to the river inlet. Should be hopping with steelhead here. But I get no bites in the afternoon or evening. Or the next morn. Maybe the fish have all left the lake and headed up the river to spawn?
The rockface in front of the cabin is covered in driftwood from the winter floods, and I spend hours loading firewood up to the cabin. I write a note of thanks to the proprietors of the lodge (which is a non profit organization), and mention what a great time I had even if I caught no fish. Then I load up again and head back to my car. On the way I stop for a few casts off the gravel bar at the mouth of a big creek. Big enough creek to make a gravel bar, but not big enough to hold a 2 foot long trout now that yesterday’s rain has drained out. Sure enough, my spinner gets chomped, and I am pulling on a 10+ lb steelhead. Or rather it is pulling on me. Pulls my pontoon around the lake in circles. But it made the mistake of heading out to very deep water, so it cannot wrap around any bottom debris and break off. After 2 big jumps and a long fight I get it into the boat.
As I suspected, the fish is spawned out, probably spawned yesterday, slid down the creek to look for food in the lake before starting the long retrograde migration to Barkley Sound, and perhaps Alaska or Kamchatka. A pretty fish now with its metal head and bright rainbow stripe. Very flat and thin, because it has just lost 25-30 % of its body weight in an explosion of sperm. Wish I could have had a camera. It is a very quick and clean release.
On the way back to the hwy I stop at the bridge and look down into the river. I can see a big steelhead fanning lazily in slow current ahead of a big boulder. It is white, not dark, as the salmon get after spawning when their body rots away from its bones. Then I look closer and realize that what I am seeing is only the back half of the fish – which is white and scabby – while the front half is still dark. The whole fish is enormous. This is one giant steelhead, must have been way over 20 before spawning. Fighting for its life now. May not be able to recover for another run to the ocean, if the fungus that is infecting its tail half cannot be cured. Life is not easy for these fish. She is probably a huge hen that has beaten herself badly against boulders and waterfalls. The males can jump a bit higher and farther, so it is the big females that have the hardest time getting back to the most extreme habitats. First time the come back to jump all the falls they may be a 5 lb fish, young and bouncy. Now she is old, and had to crash 15 lbs of meat surrounding 10 lbs of precious eggs over the same bedrock and boulder torrents. She looks horrid – worse than the after side of the before/after pics of crystal meth addicts who were beaten by their husbands. She has had a tough week, and won’t be biting on any lures, and may not make it back to this river again. Hola, valiant warrior!
She never moves from in front of the rock, so I decide to try to sneak down and get some pics. I take my little 6 ft bass rod loaded with 10 lb line down too. (The tip guide on my steelhead rod has worn out, so I can’t use it.) Sneaky as I can be, I am not sneaky enough to get any pics of the big fish. She sees me coming and is long gone, hiding beside another rock, when I get near the water. But there is a splash in the deep water, and then another. There is a hot fish in this pool.
I make one cast across the pool with my spinner, and get chased by a big fish, just about to chomp when the spinner gets to the shallows. The big fish spins, flashes and dives back into the dark heart of the canyon. Hot fish indeed! Then I cast back, and let the spinner sink deep before starting to retrieve. Chomp. Big fish on!
I pull hard as I can, and the fish comes in slow and steady under the huge boulder I am standing on. Wow. This fish is way over 10, and this is no spawned out kelt. This one is bright silver, fresh from the ocean. The water is very clear today, and the fish slides in under the boulder and stops, 10 ft down, staring up at me as I am staring down at him. We eye each other for a while. Does he know how overmatched I am with my flimsy rod and line? I try to act calm and superior. I am a mammal and he is but a lowly fish. But I know that the odds of me landing a fish like this on rinkydink gear are very slim, even if I do my part exactly right. Any slightest mistake and he is gone. Can he see the worry in my face?
The fish pulls out a few feet of line, just to prove he can do it, and then stops again. Looks back up at me. Then bolts all the way across the pool on a screeching run, hits the shallows and erupts like a cruise missile with a guidance malfunction. Four big leaps before heading down the slick at the tailout of the pool. If this fish gets into the rapids there is no possible way I will ever land it. It will either spool me or break off. Must stay calm and let the fish think I am in control. The big metalhead is sideways in the current now, evaluating his options, before he decides to head back up into the deep water of the pool. Round 1 goes to me!
Rounds 2, 3, and 4 are identical. I have never seen a fish jump like this. Clears the water at perhaps 15 times, ends up sideways in the tailout after every run, and decides against running down into the rapids. Could have KO’d me on any of these 4 runs, but tiring now, and can’t pull hard enough to reach the rapids any more. I finally lead the big fish into a little beach between 2 boulders, and he rolls onto his side on the gravel. Now you can see why they are called steelhead. Maybe aluminumhead would be more appropriate. Looks not like a living thing but rather an ingot of shiny metal fresh from a foundry. This fish is 3 miles upstream from saltwater, but he must have raced up here like a rocket, because he is a stainless steelhead. The brightest silver I have ever seen for RB trout, even the steelhead the sockeye fishermen caught by accident the summer I was a government certified observer on their trollers.
This is the fish of a lifetime for me. Longer than my arm. Perhaps 16 lbs. Wish I had a camera, but it is not meant to be. Let it be a lesson to me in learning how to put the camera battery in correctly. And some fish and fishing lodges are not meant to be photographed. I flip the hook out with my pliers and watch the big fish turn and head for the deep water, turn and head back up to the Volvo without making another cast.
Steelhead season is over for me. Time to head for a tropic place where no steelhead could ever survive, and where they use the term trout as the word for the fish the rest of the world knows as largemouth bass. Trucha Cubana!
April 19
I drive down to Victoria with my Cuba luggage. Will leave it at my friend Mike’s, and he will take me to the airport. I am also trailering my Bullship, and I stop at Shawnigan Lake on the way. It is cold and windy, but I do manage to get about 8 decent fish, including on of 19". Then I try Elk/Beaver Lake in the afternoon. The bite is very slow, but I need this lake to produce in order to get a Van Isle grand slam of 5 lakes with fish over 18" before I leave. Not to be. I get 7 bites. The last 2 are very big fish, Elk Lake slugs, hooked well, pulling hard, then gone. I end with 7 good hits, and no fish caught. Like a baseball hitter in a slump. I need some time on the bench. When I was a kid some of the Cubs players would go down to play in the Cuban league in winter, to keep their skills sharp. Maybe that is what I need.
