Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Day 58/August 27th – Ocean Falls to Shearwater

Motored off the dock at 6:20am to catch slack tide for one more spat of fishing.  With Alistair flying back to Vancouver tomorrow, our goal (as was with Mark) once again was to send him back with as many fish as we could legally, with the intention of stocking the freezer for the winter.  Will be sooo nice to pull out a salmon in a few months, and have friends over to help eat it while I think back about this trip!

Fishing started off great for Alistair - a couple of 8-9 pound coho.  I, on the other hand, was busy with “the technicalities”… cleaning the diesel stove once again, and trying to figure out why my fishing rod’s reel was jammed stuck!  Diesel stove cleaning went well – I concluded that it must not have liked the low-sulphur diesel that we picked up in Rupert last week.  Fishing rod was another story, I wedged some washers under one side of it’s face-plate thinking that I bent the spool somehow and managed to catch a nice big 10-11 coho on a half-working setup as soon as I dropped my lure in the water.  I then abandoned the reel completely and spooled line off one of Nordri’s main winches.  It wasn’t 3 minutes after I put the lure in the water that I was hauling another nice sized coho in by hand!!

It can be done.  And after 24 years of sailing, I feel like I have graduated and finally become a true sailor.  Ten pound coho caught by hand.  Any only sliced my finger once a tiny bit with the line!

All-in-all, a very successful day of fishing.  Took 57.5lbs of salmon to Shearwater and left them with the guys at the resort there to be gutted, filleted, vacuum-packed, flash-frozen and boxed ready for Alistair to take with him to Vancouver tomorrow.  A service costing $15 per fish, but worth every penny!

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