A Long Day of Fishing

A Long Day of Fishing

May 5th (Tuesday)

On Tuesday morning we decided to head out fishing for the day.  We headed out around 09:30, but unfortunately although it had been fairly calm at home, it was blowing with enough outflow wind in Wallace Bay that we could not bottom fish.  Since the tide was going in and the wind was blowing out it meant that our lines were pulled one way by the current, and Jason and I in Kiki were being blown the opposite way, which pulled our lines out on too much of an angle.  We reeled up and headed over to the point at the mouth of Cousins Inlet called Barba Point. Here, in the chop of the converging winds and currents we trolled for Salmon.  Ken, our manager at the fish-fry farm had caught the first Chinook Salmon of the year out here on Monday, so the salmon were starting to arrive. 

We trolled for a couple of hours, but as the wind seemed to pick up and the chop got worse, we headed into one of the little sheltered beaches.  We enjoyed the sun and had a lovely picnic on the rocks.  

When the wind seemed like it was calming off and the tide had turned so that it was going out with the wind, we headed back out to try some bottom fishing.  Because of the breeze and our accelerated drift rate, I decided to use one of our Halibut rigs instead of a jig as I normally do.  The Halibut rig consists of a two-pound weight, a spreader bar, and a set of two hooks that we bait with a herring.  I used this setup instead of the jig because it was much heavier and so it would help to hold us up from drifting to quickly.  With both Jason and I both using one of these setups we drifted at a nice speed.  

In the mid afternoon Jason got a good bite!  “Yay”, we thought, “we aren’t going to go home skunked”.  The fish fought, it pulled out line and bent the rod over.  I quickly reeled up my line so that I would be ready with the net and as a reeled up, about half way up, my line got heavy.  “Oh know”, I thought, “I hope I am not wrapped around Jason’s line”.  I could not feel any of the fighting, however, so I kept pulling up and a little while later the weight was gone.  That was odd.  With my line up, I had the net in hand, and I was ready.  

Jason continued to fight the fish, him reeling in, the fish pulling out, but slowly Jason was gaining and he was about halfway up when the fish took off again.  This time it pulled out some line, and then it was gone.  The line went loose and the fighting stopped.  Disappointed, he continued to pull up his line so as to re-bait the hooks.  When his Halibut rig got up to the surface, however, his double hooks were still perfectly baited.  The herring was in pristine condition and totally untouched, there were no bite marks or any sign of an attack or a struggle.  Weird!!  How could he have fought the previously presumed fish for so long with out the bait having been disturbed?  How could something have been hooked, it seemed impossible and we were left to wonder.  Was it an octopus or a seal just messing around, but if so why wouldn’t they have taken the bait?  We were left to wonder.  

At around 13:00 we saw the Shearwater Barge coming up Fisher Channel in the distance.  At around 14:30 it passed us heading into Ocean Falls.  Because we had food arriving on it, we had to be back in to sort out the food and collect our boxes. We figured it would take the barge about an hour to get docked and then about a half an hour for the food to get unloaded.  That gave us one more hour to fish before we had to head back.  Since we had gotten nothing worth keeping all day, we decided to stick it out to the end.  

At 15:10, twenty minutes before we had to pack up and head home, I got a bite.  It was not massive, but it definitely felt like a size that we could keep.  It ended up being a decent-sized Pacific Cod.  Yay!  We weren’t going to be going home skunked, and we had dinner for the night.    

We headed in to meet the barge and when we got home I walked over to the common sorting area while Jason stayed home to deal with the fish, and to clean up from a day of fishing.  I got our two boxes of groceries, and after putting everything away, we relaxed.  A long day of fishing can be very tiring.