Sea Wolves and More Fishing

February 8th (Saturday)

This morning dawned a crisp and beautiful day. The sun was burning off the low clouds that hung around the mountains, and the sky was blue. 

We headed out early for another try at fishing. The day was a perfect, early-spring feeling day, and after about 10:00 we were floating in the sunshine. Although the sun was still not strong enough to make black material feel warm, it was strong enough for us to feel some slight warmth on our backs. The view of the snow-covered mountains was beautiful. 

Because there was barely a puff of wind, we were both able to fish, and once again we tried both jigging and fishing with bait. As we were gently drifting along, trying many new areas, Jason saw something moving on the shore across the channel. Two animals came out of the forest and onto a sunny rock; they looked like wolves. However, from the distance that we were at it was hard to tell for sure, and since they were both tan coloured we wondered if they might be coyotes. They looked too big for coyotes, so as we doubted ourselves that they were in fact wolves, we speculated that they were deer, although they sure did not move like deer. We watched as they settled down in the sunshine on the rock, and I started kicking myself for not having brought along my big (good) camera. Because the weather here had been so wet of late I had gotten in the habit of bringing my small, waterproof camera, instead of my DSLR. As soon as we saw these animals I was wishing that I had the zoom and photo quality of my larger camera.  

A boat was coming out of Cousins Inlet, and it was clearly going to pass on the side where the animals were. We decided to keep fishing, and to see if the animals moved in reaction to the boat that was passing by. When the animals seemed unconcerned by the passing boat, we made the decision to go a little closer to try to get a better look at them. We reeled in our lines, and started the outboard. 

Sea wolves on the rock. 

We headed slowly towards shore, but on an angle away from them so that we would hopefully not scare them. As we got closer one of them stood up, and it became obvious that they were definitely wolves. The other one got up too and walked into the forest, but the first one remained on the rock looking at us for a little while longer before it turned and disappeared as well. We were sorry that we had scared them away from their sunning rock, but we were also very excited that we had gotten to see wolves!! We headed back out into the channel to give them their space in case they wanted to come back out onto the rock again. So Cool! It was the first time that we had seen wolves on the Central Coast, despite having seen many playful tracks in the sand at Calvert Island.  

We fished for a total of six hours, and ended up going home with enough food for two dinners. We caught three smallish, but decent-sized Pacific Cod, and we also kept two small Walleye Pollocks. The Walleye Pollocks were only about trout sized, but we decided to fry them whole instead of filleting them, to see what they tasted like. 

It sure was a treat to have fresh fish for dinner, and the Walleye Pollocks turned out to be quite good. It was just too bad that they were not bigger.  

For much of the time that we had been fishing we were in fairly deep water, 150-300 feet. It was amazing how tired we both felt after we got home after a six-hour day of sitting in our small tender, fishing. Reeling up repeatedly in 300 feet of water, with a small fish on the hook, or just to check the bait, also got tiring.

The sky remained clear all day until just before sunset when a band of clouds came up over the mountains to the west, and as the sun set, the clouds lit up in a beautiful band of pink. 

As the full moon rose over the mountains in the east, the stars started to come out, and we hoped that it would remain clear. Unfortunately the clouds continued to build, but we did get a chance to look at the full moon and Venus through Jason’s stargazing binoculars. The view of Venus was not great because of the light from the moon, but the view of the full moon was spectacular.