the Walnut Diary

Sockeye fishing is well worth doing, though the learning curve is steep.

The sport is conducted on sandbars and from anchored boats when the fish run up the river in enormous numbers. Sockeye are fine fighting fish, prone to using the fast current for leverage, and bursting into unpredictable leaps when they see shore approaching.

Of course the water is too murky to see anything, so one must cast on the assumption that the river is full of the things. Sometimes it is; most times it isn’t, so fishermen tend to herd into areas where others are catching fish.

After a placid morning with a single sockeye, my beginner’s luck fish, we got wind of a hotspot and crowded onto a sandbar eroded by what seemed a powerful current. Chad worked hard to beach the 20′ jet boat and keep it from dragging the 60 pound anchor and chain right back into the river.

But the fish were there, and fishermen on all sides of us were hauling them in. Jim and Molly fished from the boat while Jamie and I preferred the coarse gravel of the bar. We started getting hits, and some came to the boat, to be netted, bled, and put on a stringer to keep them fresh in the cold water.

All afternoon we made long casts across fast, shallow water with a 4 oz sinker to anchor the hook, followed by a little, floating plastic egg.

Chad taught us to bounce the sinker down the current, with 12′ of mono leader behind it before the hook, feeling for anything that isn’t rock. Strike instantly.

The fish get hooked around the mouth, and so they call it flossing, or bottom bouncing. Fights are impressive.

The strenuous part of the fishing, though, is cranking in the heavy sinker back against the strong current. It’s like landing a fish each time you retrieve.

I grilled two fillets for supper. Words fail to describe the eating quality of this fish.

UPDATE: 26 August, 2014

Day two of sockeye fishing began quickly with a series of hits which had Curtis, our guide of the day, sprinting up and down the sandbar with a large net to land fish. We kept him busy.

I asked him to rig my favourite bait-casting reel, an old Shimano Calcutta, in lieu of the spinning reel he provided. Things improved dramatically after that, though an occasional backlash would send the 4 ounce sinker and accompanying tackle halfway up the nearest mountain.

But I averaged two good fish per backlash, and I didn’t complain when he missed a particularly fine sockeye at the net. It just became another of my many remote releases.

The problem with the spinning reel was that everything was out of whack. My body just wasn’t designed to crank that thing. Tony told me it was because I was turning the handle with my right hand and making my left do all of the strength work. He may be right, but my skeleton had nothing good to say about the series of spinning reels which passed through my hands Monday.

I had managed the odd backlash with the spinning reel, too.

This morning the more experienced fishermen made good use of the wave of fish passing the bar and we filled our limits quickly. Then we lazed in the sun while the inexperienced member of our party struggled to find a sockeye, any sockeye, so that we could finish up and go chinook fishing.

Chinooks were scarce today, so we came in early to sort out the fish packaging for one group in our party. Before we could find our beds, Tony, Sean, Sharon and I cleaned, packaged and froze twenty-three pristine sockeye salmon which ranged from five to nine pounds. They are beautiful fish.

Three years ago a day of sturgeon fishing on the Fraser River with guide Dean Werk was doomed to failure because I was in the boat. Two large fish nearly jumped aboard, but none would take a hook. The variable in the unaccustomed rout of a lucky guide was my presence on the boat and I quickly earned the title “Jinx.”

Today for a trip up into big sturgeon country in the Fraser River Canyon I presented my ultimate gift to the Izatt Family: I boarded a different boat. So of course Dean’s boat had a great day with all crew catching fish and one tagging an eight foot, three inch monster. I filmed from afar.

Chad’s boat produced one fine fish and a smaller sturgeon, and then my turn at the stern came up. The rods grew still. Time passed. A nibble. The fish failed to return. Another nibble came to nothing. Our guide Chad hooked a fish and handed me the rod, but the fish released itself in mid-transfer. I tried to hook a nibbler myself but it dropped the bait. And so on.

The Jinx had found me, so I resolved to experiment with its effects. Because the fish were active this did not take long. I waited well back from the rods until Chad had set the next hook and said, “Rod!” The line went slack the instant the guide incanted my name. Twice more a sturgeon dropped Chad’s bait as I stood back, testing the power of the jinx.

Meanwhile Dean’s crew was waiting around for the eight foot, 420 pound sturgeon on Ivan’s line to give up. Jim and I decided that the jinx had more than done its work today, so we pulled up our lines to enjoy the scenic return trip without interruption.

We even noticed a group panning for gold along one sandy stretch. It’s a magnificent river.

Tony and Sean Izatt and I arrived at Sharon’s farm in Yarrow in the middle of the night. We devoted the morning and early afternoon to settling in, shopping for lunch materials for the upcoming four days of guided fishing on the Fraser River, and an unsuccessful search on the black market for an early-season sockeye.

By afternoon when members of the group dropped off for naps, I found a flat pan and wandered across the road to the neighbour’s to inquire about the “Organic Blueberries – You pick” sign on the driveway of a trim mixed-farming operation on 10 acres. From the looks of things they raise a few cattle, sheep, grapes, blueberries, and a principal crop of squab, my hostess told me. Honest, there’s a ready market for large quantities of baby pigeons, year-round.

The owner Jacob directed me to a corner of a 2 1/4-acre field of blueberries and set me to work, muttering that he didn’t think I would pick many.

This was my first encounter with a domesticated blueberry bush, though as a little kid I had earned my first cash by selling wild blueberries to passing cottagers.

The berries hung in plump bunches on the shrubs and I dug in with a will. Catching the clumps of berries proved trickier than I expected. First of all, two hands would be much better than one. The flat pan soon found itself nestled in the grass below the bush, and I gently dropped berries into it. Many were overripe and squished when I touched them. These, of course, were eaten. What could I do? Delicious flavour. Oh yeah, the dish. Seems it was easier to squish them and then eat them by the handful than bend to drop them into the pan below.

I blamed my bifocals and considered removing them, but the berries were actually accumulating quite well in the pan by the third bush and I had well exceeded what I could eat over the next week. Besides, I only had four dollars in my pocket and the stated price for pick-your-own was $1 per pound.

But then our hostess Sharon Izatt showed up to add $2. to the kitty and even pick a few berries. Before long a cat came along to supervise and Sharon was lost in that wordless communication that some people have with felines. Damned thing was trying to roll in my berry dish, but Sharon was in heaven.

At length my human supervisor called a halt to the harvest and we walked up to the owner’s deck to pay. Mrs. Jake looked at the pan, smiled, and said “$2.00.”

Sharon whispered, “$4.00.”

I handed over four loonies and grinned at Jake. He quipped: “From the looks of his face and tongue, he’s eaten about a pound, so they’re not far off.” I gaped. He continued: “How you tell that blueberries are really organic is that they turn your tongue and teeth blue. If your tongue doesn’t turn blue when you eat blueberries, they’ve been sprayed. They’re not organic.”

Then I wandered off into a conversation with Jake’s guest from Illinois about bass fishing in BC until Sharon had finished her neighbourly chat. Away we went with our haul of fruit for a picnic up in the Fraser River Canyon tomorrow.

After supper I tried to catch the sunset and discovered Rider, Sharon’s rough collie, is as skilled a photo-bomber as I have met.

Rider inspects the day’s crop of blueberries.