Kennedy River - August

After returning from my wondrous pontoon float down the Salmo R I am stoked about making a return trip. But first I need to make some modifications. Basstravaganza fans are aware that when I am on the road I mostly reside in the Volvo Hotel. And that I am world famous as the inventor of the Bullship Boatel, which allows me to set up my tent and camp in my 13’ Gregor aluminum boat. But I can’t take the Bullship down whitewater trout streams, so now I have gone completely berserk. I have invented the Pontoon Hotel. With a few scraps of 1x4 I have fabricated an extension of the metal rack that comes with the boat. This rack allows me to carry a lot more stuff, as long as it is not heavy. Sleeping bag, tent, folding chair, foamy, food, machete, chest waders, etc. Then I can float down a river and camp overnite in wild places.

The side members of the rack are modeled after the rakish tailfins of the 1957 DeSoto. This will give the pontoon greater stability at hi velocity, and should decrease the shock wave if I ever break the speed of sound. And beside that, they look cool.

Pic

But I need to field test the Pontoon Hotel before heading back to the rivers I just explored, so I decide to head back to the Kennedy R for a trial run. On the way I make a side trip to explore a lake I have never seen, and I cross the same washed out ravine that I photographed in the spring. This place illustrates the fantastic resilience of the rainforest ecosystem. The sterile boulder freeway that I saw only 5 months ago is now shaded by a swarm of young alders.

Pic March

Soon the boulders will be home to a new forest, and it will be hard to notice the catastrophic washout that barreled down the mountainside here. On Van Isle the jungle soon smothers everything except bare rock. Sadly, the ecology of the streams involved in these "mass wasting" events is much more fragile. It may take 100 years or more before a river can return to pre-torrent condition.

Farther up on the mountain now, and I get to Gracie Lake. The surrounding ecosystem is almost entirely virgin timber. Only a single clearcut mars the view which is otherwise unchanged since the end of the last Ice Age. You can see the young second growth on the right of the next pic, surrounded by the darker green of the mist-shrouded old growth.

 

Restrictions on riparian logging are essentially non-existent in BC. Unlike the riparian regulations imposed on federal lands in the US under the Clinton era Northwest Forest Plan no logging is allowed along rivers and lakes within a distance of two tree lengths of the largest old growth trees. In a site like this that would mean Douglas firs around 250’ tall. So no cutting would be allowed within 500’ of shore. In BC it is standard practice to log right up to the bank, except for leaving a fringe one tree deep along shore. This gives the impression that the government cares about riparian protection, and gives the loggers time to get out of Dodge and start hacking another big clearcut somewhere else before the inevitable happens. The trees that grow along shore are always unstable. They usually lean out over the water, and their roots are washed and undercut by waves and/or current. Without protection from other taller and better rooted trees in the forest behind, this row of fragile trees is exposed to ferocious winter storms. Within a few years this "leave strip" almost inevitably blows down and falls into the river or lake, making a helluva mess, while the loggers and the politicians in their employ are raking in the cash from the next clearcut.

Here you can see a few gnarled old verteran trees still standing, with the clearcut (now replanted as second growth forest) behind, and the remainder of the "leave strip" blown down into the lake.

 

 

 

Along the unlogged parts of Gracie Lake there is very little blowdown, but along the clearcut shore you can see a snarled mass of trees blown over into the lake. Wood does not rot in fresh water, so this jumble of wood trash may still be here if your grandchildren visit Gracie Lake in another century.

The internet says that this is supposed to be a hot trout lake, but it looks clear and sterile to me, and I only catch a couple tiny RBs after exploring most of the lake with the pontoon boat. Off to the Kennedy!

I return to my CarbeQ campsite by the river. I have brought my bike along, planning to float down to the bike and pedal back up to the car. I load the Pontoon Hotel up with all necessary camping and fishing gear, ready to head downstream.

But it is summer in BC. While the rest of the province is baking under the hot August sun, the W coast of Van Isle is smothered under endless mist and drizzle. Does it ever stop raining here? I don’t wanna go fishing in the rain, so I cancel the float trip. A simple paddle around the pool is sufficient to prove that the extension rack works. No need to spend a day floating down the river in the rain. On the far bank I do a bit of hiking to look for big trees. Along the way I find a couple red huckleberry bushes loaded with berries, so I break off a couple branches and bring them back to my camp.

Now I can pig out on red huck berries all evening around my campfire, and still have enough left over to completely fill my thermos. I take these berries home and mix them in with a couple fresh Okanagan peaches to make jam that is to die for!

Last time I was here there were no fish in the pool except for a couple small trout. But now the sockeye salmon have migrated up from Kennedy Lake. They will be spawning on gravel beds all along the river for the next month. Bright silver when they are at sea, the sockeye are beginning to turn red now. You can see them swimming around in the clear water. Now I can pig out on red huck berries all evening around my campfire, and still have enough left over to completely fill my thermos. I take these berries home and mix them in with a couple fresh Okanagan peaches to make jam that is to die for!

Last time I was here there were no fish in the pool except for a couple small trout. But now the sockeye salmon have migrated up from Kennedy Lake. They will be spawning on gravel beds all along the river for the next month. Bright silver when they are at sea, the sockeye are beginning to turn red now. You can see them swimming around in the clear water.

 

Used to be millions of sockeye in this watershed, but the big runs have been devastated by logging and overfishing. Good to see that there is a fairly strong run coming back to the river this summer. Must be a few hundred sockeye just in this pool alone.
 
The bucks - sleek silver bullets only a few weeks ago – are morphed into fearsome creatures with humpbacks and big hooked jaws studded with fangs, chasing each other around in a ritual of dominance for the privilege of mating with the young ladies, who are more demure. In the mid-depths other schools mill around, waiting their turn.

 



 



Where there were none a few weeks ago there are lots now. A bunch of them are holding in the deep water. You can look down 40 ft and see them. Others are fanning out over the gravel flats, selecting boyfriends and girlfriends, picking out their spots and swiping out spawning beds with their tails.

 



At the tailout of the pool the entire river bottom has been scoured to clean bright gravel, over which the salmon gyre and gimbel.

 







 

 

Many acres of silty river bottom have already been rototilled by fish, leaving bright clean gravel instead.

 

 

Now I lived for 3 decades on the BC coast, and I tried many times to catch these Kennedy R sockeye on rod & reel. But, as everyone knows, the sockeye will not bite once they head up into fresh water. These are wild sockeye, the most delicious and expensive fish that swims in the Pacific Ocean. I am sure that at one time or another I would have scooped a few out of the river for the smokehouse in years past, legal or not, if I could have figured out a way to catch them. But I never could get them to bite, and never heard of anyone else who could get them to bite either once they got up into the river.

But I have my rods with me, and a fisherman can never resist throwing in a cast or two when there are fish around. I throw a big red & silver steelhead spinner way out into the deep hole, let it sink to the bottom, and begin cranking in a slow retrieve. Ka-chonk. I am fast onto a big sockeye! It is a hen, strong and solid, no fireworks or head-shaking jumps. My first ever Kennedy R sockeye. After I flip the single barbless hook out of her jaw she glides back into the deep water, telling all her friends, "I got to pose for the Basstravaganza! I’m gonna be famous!"

 



The sockeye seem to lose interest in chasing the spinner to I switch to a spoon. This turns out to be the magic wand. Another big hen chomps, and after a slugfest comes in to the beach. These fish are much bigger than the sockeye in the Okanagan, from whence I just returned. This one is around 8 lbs.

I would expect the OK fish to be big and powerful, because have to ascend over 1,000 feet in elevation over hundreds of miles of boiling whitewater along the Columbia and OK rivers. These Kennedy fish are only 25 miles up from the ocean, and less than 100 feet vertical above the ocean.

But the sockeye in the Okanagan, which average 3-5 lbs, are only about half the size of these Kennedy fish. Why is that? Must be a reason. Maybe it is a good thing that the Big Guy in the Sky did all the original design work on the sockeye model, instead of me. One explanation might be that these Kennedy R fish swim over one rapids from the ocean into Kennedy Lake in spring, and then spend the entire summer hanging out in the deep water of the lake, waiting, until they are ready to head up the river to spawn in August. They have not had a bite to eat in 4 months. How many humans do you meet that will starve for 4 months just to get laid? Larger body size might provide a larger storehouse of energy to tide them over for the grand finale of the spawning run.

I have brewed up a fresh pot of coffee over the campfire. Sitting in my lounge chair, eating red huckaberries and sipping rum & coffee as I let the pool settle down after the big hen went racing all over it. Hey – I don’t even have to get up. I can cast right out of the lounge chair, and have a sip of coffee while the spoon sinks before I retrieve. Now this is true lazy man’s fishing. The hens seem to be congregated in the slow deep water. Over the shallower gravel the spoon gets chomped by a big buck. The males are much more aggressive, and they fight with sizzling runs and often a couple big flopping airborn leaps. They are the same size and fight very much like steelhead. You can see the humpback and big jaws beginning to develop on this guy.

This is too easy, so I paddle out in the pontoon with my rod. The big sockeye tow the boat in circles all around the pool before I can get them in close enough to unhook them.

 

 

Impossible to catch sockeye from the Kennedy? I could fill a semi truck from this one pool. But I have proved my point. No reason to hassle these fish any more. I spend the evening eating berries and ribs grilled over the fire. I can see some really active fish swirling around the tailout.

 

 

 

So before dark I head across the river, climb up the rockface on the other side, and toss the spoon way out over the tailout. It doesn’t take long before a big buck charges and I am fast into another salmon. This one is hyper strong, a roided out Barry Bonds of a fish. After a couple big leaps the fight turns into a slugfest, and I finally get the fish into the deep slot below the rockface. Must be tired out now, but not. This is the biggest one I have hooked, and I want to get it to pose for the Basstravaganza. But my camera is left on the other bank near the campfire.

No problem. I hop back in the pontoon. No need to paddle. The sockeye always want to stay in deep water, and with the big 8’ steelhead rod I can guide the fish and let it tow me all across the pool back to my camp. Then a couple quick paddles and I am on the beach. I hop out, feet planted in the gravel again so I can fight back. The fish should be tired out by now, fighting against 12lb line on a big rod. But as soon as I try to pull it in shallow it takes off again on a couple mad runs all over the big pool. Five minutes later I finally persuade the big brute to pose for a pic. This is the biggest fish I caught that day.

I released all the fish with no visible harm other than a small hole in the jaw from the single hook. This "catch and release" fishing is legal in the Kennedy. Harvesting and retention is not. Although they were starting to turn color from the bright silver dress they wear in the ocean, all the fish seemed to be in excellent condition. I don’t doubt that they would make superb fillets for a smokehouse. When I lived in Oregon I was amazed by the ragged blotchy fungus riddled salmon people would catch out of the river and take home for the freezer. No one in BC would eat fish like this. These sockeye in the Kennedy are undoubtedly much firmer and fatter and tastier than the scabby chinooks people harvest from the Upper Rogue R. But you are not allowed to keep one.

In general I am much more in favor of a "terminal" fishery for salmon as opposed to an ocean based fishery. If you harvest the fish soon after they return to fresh water they are at (or in this case just past) their peak condition. They are the big and fat. And you do not have to spend days chasing around the ocean to find them. They come to you. And you don’t have to burn precious fossil fuel in you diesel boat engine to chase them down. And you don’t have to buy expensive hi-tech electronics, blast freezers or fishing gear. This is the way the native people harvested salmon for millennia.

Most important, when you are working a terminal fishery you know the size of the run because you can see it with your eyes. If the run is poor you can limit the fishery, or stop harvesting entirely until the run rebounds. When you troll or net in the ocean you never know the origin of the fish you are catching. The 20 fish on your lines may be part of a strong run, or they may be half of the last 40 fish surviving in a watershed where sockeye are on the verge of extinction.

The salmon fishery in BC was long ago converted from a terminal fishery, where native people harvested runs in a sustainable manner, into a frenzied dash-for-the-cash out on the vast Pacific. Increasingly sophisticated technology resulted in the evolution of a killer fleet that literally has the capacity to catch all the salmon in the ocean, and exterminate them from the face of the earth. Now the natives could have trapped and netted all the sockeye out of the rivers, but they realized that only a moron would kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Corporate harvest is dedicated to short term profit. Harvesting the goose looks good on the balance sheet. But sockeye are now extinct over much of their native range, and struggling to survive in many other places. It is good to see these fish in the Kennedy.

This river would provide a fantastic opportunity for a terminal "sport" fishery which is allowed to harvest a small percentage of the returning sockeye – providing that there is proof of a healthy run that year. But this would require a community-based approach to fisheries management, including a database of salmon returns over a period of years on specific watersheds.

Alas, management of the salmon resource in BC is the preserve of a highly centralized cartel of (ocean-based) harvesting industry and bureaucrats that seldom or never leave the office. The eventual long-term (unspoken) objective seems to be to wipe out the wild fish and convert the industry to raising GMO frankenfish in sea pens, like hogs grown in cattle feedlots. Sockeye feed primarily on plankton and small invertebrates. Industry has not found a way to raise them in pens profitably, so they are another species poised to become roadkill on the way a free trade free market utopia.

Catch and release fishing for big salmon with single barbless hooks does minimal immediate damage to the fish. But since they do not eat in fresh water they must live entirely off their fat reserves. Every salmon is like an hourglass. The sand is running out on the fish in front of my campfire. In another month they will all be dead. Blobs of decomposing white fungus lying on the bottom of the deep pools. When you force a big fish thru a long battle against hook and line you are draining more sand from the hourglass. So for that reason alone I do not recommend a "sport" catch & release fishery for these sockeye. I did it once, to prove that it was possible to do what many people (including myself) thought was not. But this river is right next to the hwy, and I would hate to see crowds of people hooking, stressing, and releasing hordes of salmon here.

The Pontoon Hotel concept is a proven success. Time to head back and try it out on those Boundary trout streams.