Fishing
I was planning on holding a grand scale BBQ for anyone that wanted to come, but I had to be an ass and revoke my invitation 1 day after it was sent. This is why: my brother, Aryk, called me that day and asked if I would like to go salmon fishing on the west coast of Vancouver Island with him and his friend, Dave, for the weekend. After some rationalizing and healthy encouragement from my brother, I cancelled the BBQ and went. I felt bad, but I assure you, only for a moment. 🙂
Day 1 was awesome. We did tonnes of stuff! We left bright and early, and caught the tail end of a ferry we didn’t even know left at that hour. When we landed in Nanaimo, we had a nice casual drive interluded with a stop at Cathedral Park and a swim in a beautiful lake. We finally got to the cabin in West Bamfield, and even went fishing in the evening! I think we caught a wild sockeye, and threw him back.
Day 2 was a long day, but at least we each caught a fish. Both my brother and I caught the biggest fish of our lives! Mine was 16 lbs and Aryk’s was 23 lbs. Yeah, his was slightly bigger… >.< Dave also caught a 16 pounder, but he’s caught much bigger fish before. Anyways, we were out in the boat pretty much all day, and rested up in the hot tub after gorging on a massive meal. It was a good day because we each got a fish. We were content.
Day 3. From here on, it seemed something was out to get us. It started with spilt coffee… We had barely left the dock when Dave’s coffee took a swan dive off the dashboard. Dave really like his coffee in the morning. Dave wasn’t happy. After seeing that, I made sure to put my coffee in a one of the cup holders. Then a cloud decided to fall on us, and it started raining like crazy! In a mad rush for the little cover the boat provided and to put on the rain gear, my coffee was knocked off the low dive. Shit. Neither of us had even taken a sip. My brother doesn’t drink coffee, so he wasn’t really affected… and I was just disappointed: it was good coffee! Dave was definitely the most affected.
Anyways, we weren’t gonna let a little rain and a couple spilt coffees detour us; we were going fishing! We turned off the big motor, and had just started trolling with the little one. Nobody seemed to be catching any fish, so when Dave’s dad flew by us in his friend’s boat and telling us to follow them (it actually went something more like, “What are you fucking around here for? Let’s go fishing!”) we thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. Kill the little motor and start the big one! … *ahem* “start the big one!” …It wouldn’t start.
Lovely.
Gee, look at how foggy it’s getting… can’t even see the land, anymore.
Perfect.
So we putted around in the fog until we found Dave’s dad, and after a while got the big motor to start with a manual starter. I just watched this process, for the most part; didn’t want to get in the way. 🙂 We were determined to make something of the day, so we continued fishing, starting the big motor manually when it was necessary. However, the day did not get much better: there was zero fish action all around us. People were heading back wondering why we were still out there. We were wondering the same thing…. Finally, as we were on our last leg, I was reeling up my line to switch over to a halibut jig (a sure measure of our despair) and a salmon stuck my line. So that was the only fish we got all day, but thank god we got at least one fish!
Day 4. The next day was better. We still had our share of problems: lost down-riggers and down-rigger leads, having to do ad-hoc down-rigger surgery on the boat (again, I watched). The fishing was starting to pick up, and we caught 2 more salmon. Plus, we saw a whale! That was really cool, I’ve never seen a whale in the wild, before. Big. Whales. Unfortunately, I was holding a fishing rod at the time, and my brother doesn’t quite know how to use my camera, so the pictures aren’t nearly as awesome as what we saw.
So that was just a half-day. Things started getting good, then we left. 🙁 Bye bye, Bamfield. Dave’s dad gave us each an extra fish, so we each took home 3 salmon. On the way back to the ferry, we stopped for a swim in that lake (which I can’t remember the name of), once again. We also stopped in Port Alberni to put some air in the tires. Oh wait, things weren’t finished going wrong. Not only did we stop at an air station that said “Out of Service,” but the truck wouldn’t start again. I’m dead serious when I say it was really unbelievable!
So, I’m getting tired of writing this belated story… long night short: We had more starter troubles, this time with the truck! Dave tried various jerry-riggings, and we even got help from strangers, but we had to talk to a mechanic to get a part. No mechanics were open by that time, so we had to sleep in the truck. During the night, a bunch of drunk, punk kids decided to hang out in our parking lot and throw each other against our truck. Get lost. What a fucking night.
Day 5. It wasn’t supposed to last 5 days, but the mechanic was finally available, the part was easy to get and install, and when all was done, we were glad to say goodbye to Port Alberni. The best thing about Port Alberni was, I would have to say, the pizza we ordered. That was damn good pizza.
No more terrible events happened and we got home later that day. Despite all the bad things, it was a good trip. =)
