The Parochial Angler Abroad

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Published on Sunday, 14 November 2010 12:50

Written by Graham Owens

It would be fair to say that I am the archetypal parochial trout angler; always afraid to venture too far just in case I miss that perfect rise in that one corner of the river I know (or think I know) the monster trout lay. I often leave the house armed with a carefully researched and well though-out plan to try other waters. Unfortunately all those good intentions come to naught if I happen to spy the local river; its allures provide too much temptation and will, more often than not, derail the planned expedition.

 

It came therefore as a bit of shock this June to find myself with a rod being bent by a very angry trout in the heart of the Strathcona Provincial Park (almost dead centre of Vancouver Island) and it was not even meant to be a fishing trip!

The circumstances leading to this bombshell, from an entirely personal perspective, were rather special.  To cut a very long story short, in the early 1950’s my mother in her late teens abandoned her job at the loco works in Doncaster and ended up as a teacher on First Nation reservations on two small islands off the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island. After a few years she went home, studied to be a nurse, got married and headed back across the water this time to Ottawa. Here there was a bit of a small accident; me !

Eight months later, having survived the extremes of an Ontario winter, I was exiled to West Yorkshire!

A plan emerged over a bottle of wine last year to travel with my now quite aged parents and spend a few days in Ottawa to explore the places I spent the first eight months of my life before heading west to Vancouver Island to touch base with family and see the places my mother lived and worked.  On a whim as I packed I sneaked in wee 8’ travel rod, reel, a basic selection of flies, a scoop net and a few basic tools.

Ottawa was spectacular, one of nicest cities I have visited in North America, but in no time at all we were heading to the airport for a flight to Vancouver. After the breathtaking ferry ride to Vancouver Island, we had a brief stay in Victoria to catch up with my aunt and a few cousins, a wonderful couple of days around Tofino taking in the magnificent ‘Long Beach’ of Wickaninnish Bay in the Pacific Rim National Park and then letting my mother reacquaint herself with the town and the wee village of Opitsaht (on Meares Island across the Clayoquot Sound where she had lived and worked).

Next stop was the forestry town of Gold River; a cracking spot sitting above the famed Salmon and Steelhead river of the same name and it’s rather swish Fishing Lodge. The town’s situation is absolutely stunning with the long fjord of Muchalet Inlet at the bottom of the hill and surrounded on all other sides by native forest crowned with magnificent still snow covered peaks. By contrast the town itself turned out to be BC’s own version of Corpach (a company town built in the 60’s to service a know redundant mill) but was a friendly place to stay.

The primary reason for staying here was to take the twice weekly cruise on the MV Uchuck III, a converted minesweeper that doubles as a ferry and cargo boat, which would take us down the Muchalet Inlet to Yuquot (or Friendly Cove) on Nootka Island. This was a journey of a life time. We left on a perfect day chugging along the magnificent fjord and out to the perfectly beguiling island of Nootka. It is a place I have known about all of my life; but it was an experience to see all of my mother’s well thumbed black and white photos of her time at Yuquot come alive before my eyes. So many of the landmarks were familiar; the catholic church, the pier, the cove and the lighthouse (where my mum lodged for a while). Sadly just like some of our own western island these communities went into terminal decline in the 1960’s and just one Nuu-chah-nulth family and the lighthouse keepers remain there.

It’s a place alive with history (visited by Captain James Cook and it was the only Spanish settlement in  Canada resulting in routine tension between Spain and Great Britain leading to the Nootka Conventions’ of the 1790s being signed) and is absolutely stunning!

It was a perfect day

Anyway this is supposed to be a about wild fishing not a travelogue!

My parents had anticipated that I would want to disappear for a cast, so they could not be more obliging in releasing me from my tour guide (organiser and driver) role from time to time!

By contrast to our own wee Island, permission for fishing is an absolute doddle ......... a trip to the local Sears Catalogue agent in Gold River provided an 8 day pass for Freshwater BC angling for a mere $50  (there are additional surcharges for steelheads and salmon) and seemed to cover just about all the water on the Island!

For my first cast, my parents had disappeared up a trail to find a waterfall on a creek that fed the Elk River. I headed in the opposite direction to find the mighty Elk River; after a bit of bush whacking I found myself on a high bank above a mighty piece of huge, powerful and deep water. I really felt out of my depth and hopelessly lacking in gear and never even tried a cast. I retreated back to the confluence of the creek to find a perfect piece of crystal clear water. It came as a shock to see ranks of trout lined up, occasionally snapping at passing invertebrates, so clearly in the perfect water:

I tried, the full arsenal of nymphs, wets and dries; upstream and downstream without a jolt of interest. It would have been dispiriting were it not for the incredible spectacle of been able to see huge fish holding effortlessly in the swift moving water that was perhaps eight to ten foot deep.

On my next opportunity we parked at the edge of the gloriously situated Buttle Lake, a huge loch surrounded by native forest and  with a backdrop of magnificent peaks . Unfortunately its feeder burns are closed to fishing (for conservation reason) which you can imagine is a wee bit frustrating when you see a river and backdrop like this:

Once again my parents were happy to go wandering up another one of the provincial park’s trails, while I had a go at the lake. I am not really a loch angler, but was keen to give it a go, so I tied on a teal and green fly to the point and a silver butcher to the dropper. I worked my way along the shore concentrating on the margins where a series of wee burns tumbled into the loch.

Just as my parents reached the beach from their ramble, my rod was bent over. My initial reaction was to assume that I had snagged a piece of lumber, however the first violent headshake told me that at last I had my first Canadian trout on. It took a quite bit of an effort, but in a matter of no time I had caught a cracking kyped Rainbow Trout:

An absolutely superb fish, that bore no relationship to most of its podgy mutant British cousins.

A few days later I followed a trail up through the forest, constantly worrying about cougars and bears, to the headwaters of the Elk River. I should have been more worried about the river as every fishable stretch of water required at least one crossing of the mainstream. With the speed and depth of the water, it would be scary in Scotland, but with every pool tail being covered by fans of fallen lumber I spent most of my afternoon in constant fear of taking a tumble in the water! It was, however,  easy to for a time to forget the fear of being trapped below tumbled trees when the situation was so absolutely awesome:

Despite spying fish in the crystal clear water, I never even so much as managed to tempt a trout anywhere near my flies.  It really did not matter; after five hours hiking, wet wading and casting I ached all over, was fishless but was smiling from head to foot!

My final fishing opportunity came late one afternoon. With a couple of hours to kill before heading to Campbell River, I fancied a final cast in the mountains, my mum was content to settle in the sun to read her book and my dad was equally content to follow my fishing progress from the bank with his pipe for company. Having been frustrated earlier, by the trout of the first creek I had visited , I decided that a return visit was in order.

At the creek, my Dad and I bumped into a local guide and his client, flogging the water without success with heavy nymphs. Once they had finished and we had a wee natter (nice lads and typical of every Canadian angler I met; friendly, full of advice and generous enough to give me a few of their heavy nymphs) I let the water to rest for twenty minutes getting more and more excited as I watched the trout cruising by in the perfect water:

In the end I ignored the heavy nymph option and opted to cast with a traditional American parachute Adams. This was studiously ignored at the head and best part of the pool, however at the tail the trout eagerly snapped at the fly. I have never fished in conditions like it; it was incredible to be able to see  30-40 trout clearly within twenty foot of me, then watch as one of them trout rolled back to inspect the fly and then take my breath away from me when one of took it upon itself to snap at my passing fly!

My first trout caught was an absolutely perfect example of a Rainbow Trout.

In the following hour or so I was blessed with another five perfect fish (all between 1lb and 2.5lb) and a horribly sun burnt nose. These fish hit the fly casually, but as soon as they felt the tension of the line they just explode in to the most incredibly energetic and frantic of fights.  Even at the net, they kept on fighting; their powerful squirming as they were de-hooked made them an absolute handful to deal with.  

Then sadly it was time to go, wake my now slumbering mother and wave good bye to the Strathcona Provincial Park; that was the end of fishing on this trip. We still had a few days exploring the east coast of Vancouver Island, touching base once again with family and a grand morning wandering about Vancouver’s superb Stanley Park

Thinking about this trip five months later just makes me smile. It was fantastic to spend such quality time with my parents, understanding properly their story (my mum’s life on the west coast and both of their time as freshly married couple in Ottawa),to at last understand the true allure of waters beyond my local river and particularly to understand the true allure of fly fishing for Rainbow Trout!

 

 

Graham Owens, Yorkshireman or Canadian depending on the debate, began life as a course angler before at last getting to understand the pleasure of the fly. Now a resident of Kinross-shire of twenty years, devotes his spare time to trout angling on local burns and rivers but has yet to cast a fly on Loch Leven