A Fish Story

What if we switched blind people to brooms? Wouldn’t it make the world a much cleaner place? Don’t answer that. It was just a random thought that flashed across my mind, a sign of my German fascination with cleanliness. Or is it a sign of my advancing dementia? It has nothing to do with what I want to talk about. But the idea does seem to have some merit, doesn’t it?

What I really want to tell you about is a fishing trip this past summer off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Fishing seems to be a guy thing, even though my wife has the uncanny knack of reeling in fish after fish, when no one else has any luck at all. Anyway, a bunch of us, 12 in all, got on the ferry to Swartz Bay, convoyed up to Port Renfrew and chartered three fishing boats and off we went looking for salmon and halibut. Our motley group consisted of my friend John and his four sons and one prospective son-in-law, three geezers, including myself, from Old Point Farm, my son, who flew up from Los Angeles to hook a big one, my niece’s husband, Dave, who winged it over from Germany and my cousin Tim, who is not really my cousin and who jetted in from Toronto.

My nephew-in-law is an ex-pat Brit and retired Royal Artillery Sergeant Major. He happily lives in the land of the Hun, but suffers from an acute case of aviophobia and hadn’t been on an airplane in years. He is an avid North Sea cod fisherman. So the prospect of visiting with the colonials and hooking into some sizeable salmon persuaded him to overcome his dread of aviation and get on an airplane. Let me clarify, he does not dread flying as such. He just doesn’t want to be on the same airplane with some loony-tunes mid-eastern terrorist who has picked that particular plane to blow himself and everyone else to kingdom come. Dave has spent time in the military serving in places like Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus and the Middle East and he is not fond of crazies, especially not the Muslim kind, looking for frolicking virgins in paradise. In any case, it took some courage for him to fly.

It turned out, there were no terrorists on his overnight Berlin Air flight from Düsseldorf, only a group of drunken Austrians in the row behind him, who were off to a holiday in the Yukon. They spent the entire flight drinking and playing hearts, a card game that seems to demand that each trump be played with as forceful a thump as possible of the trays in front of them and, of course, attached to the back of Dave’s seat. They spent the night arguing at the top of their voices with each other and continuously played musical chairs, using Dave’s seatback to rigorously pull themselves up when switching seats. Sleep was impossible. As he tells it, those Austrians were pretty close to getting severely biffed by the time their plane landed in Vancouver. And if you had seen the size of Dave’s wrists, this would not have been an idle threat. But to his credit he restrained himself. It must be that proverbial British restraint. Stiff upper lip and all that. Or maybe it was the fear of being tackled by air marshals and being led off the plane in handcuffs for disturbing the peace.

Dave was fretting about his return flight, because besides the threat of unhinged jihadists, he was afraid those Austrians might be back on his flight as well and he might do damage to them. They were not, but by a stroke of bad luck, there was an unruly Austrian child seated behind him, who vigorously kicked Dave’s seatback for fun during entire flight back to the fatherland. I got to say that I admire Dave’s resistance to violence, because I probably would have lost it and smacked that kid upside the head. I don’t know what it is about Austrians, but ever since Adolf, I look askew at them, expecting them to break into patriotic song, throwing out a stiff-arm salute or claiming to be victims of their erstwhile landsman.

My cousin Tim and I are old hunting buddies from Toronto, going back to the early 80’s. Here is how we got to be cousins. He and I were both in the advertising business there. He still is. Every year in July about 10 or 12 guys from varying advertising and rep shops around Toronto got together for a boy’s weekend at Tonch South on Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay. We’d motor up to Honey Harbour, rent a boat and towed one or two canoes behind us, loaded to the gunwales with beer – one of our group was the account manager for Labatt’s – and head out to our camping spot in Georgian Bay National Park for a weekend of drinking and carousing in the bush and doing stupid guy stuff.

We shared this spot with numerous Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes, who considered our campsite their favorite hang-out. The solution to this potentially precarious dilemma was beer. It turned out the rattlers loved Labatt’s as much as we did. We shared our stash with them in the lid of one of our plastic containers. They left us alone as long as their supply was sufficient. I call that elegant solution a case of Canadian ingenuity.

Everyone in the group seemed to have cousins and uncles with cottages scattered around the area. They were always talking about visiting cousin so-and-so or stopping by uncle whatever to try some of his home-made cider or relieve him of his stash of whiskey. This was particularly true of one of our group, a loud-mouthed Lugan named Eugene, who seemed to have a horde of cousins with cottages nearby. It made me feel somewhat of an outsider, since I had no cousins within 5,000 miles of the place. That’s when the McEachren brothers, Tim and Steve, came to my rescue and took pity on me. They decided to adopt me as their honorary cousin. We sealed the adoption with a two-four of Labatt’s Blue. Ever since, I am Cousin Bernie and they Cousin Tim and Cousin Steve. We’ve been friends for close to 30 years.

Oh, yah, the fishing trip. It was great. Everyone maxed out on Halibut, Coho and Springs, except for our boat which was one short. Our captain was not very good at basic arithmetic. He couldn’t count to eight, which was the allowed limit for springs for our party of four fishermen. He insisted on heading back prematurely because he was sure we were over our limit, but when we got back to the dock, we discovered that we had only seven Chinook on board. We decided to spring for an abacus for our captain, if we couldn’t get rid of him next year.

The Coho were at the height of their run and we caught some substantial hatchery-raised ones, including one the captain estimated at 20 lbs. The rule off southern Vancouver Island is that only Coho reared in a hatchery can be kept, wild ones must be released. We released some very respectable wild ones. When I reeled in that 20 pounder I was sure no one else could have hooked into anything bigger, but the captain, in his infinite wisdom, decided to tie up to a floating dock which didn’t have any scales, instead of the main government dock where we could have weighed our fish. One of John’s sons claimed the prize with a weighed 17 ½ lb hatchery Coho.

On the second day the seas got pretty rough. 10 to 15 foot breakers pitched the boat this way and that, hitting each trough between swells with a whack that jarred your spine. And on top of that the salmon wouldn’t bite. Everybody pretty much held his own and didn’t get seasick. Then the captain decided he had to have a smoke and the fumes from his vile cigarettes did in Cousin Tim. A reformed smoker, Tim can’t stand the stench of tobacco. He turned green around the gills, when the captain’s cigarette smoke enveloped him, and hurled over the side of the boat, chumming the waters. And like a miracle the fish started hitting our bait. Of course, we invited Cousin Tim back on the spot for next year. When you’re fishing and you find something that works, you hang on to it

The highlight of our outing was John reeling in a beast of a 43 lb Tyee, which beat anything on the dock. In fact, it was the third largest Chinook caught this summer at Port Renfrew. He crowed about his monster catch all the way back to Saturna. Not that I can fault him, I would have done no less. We all had a great time, despite the weather and the doofus of a captain. Next year we will switch boats. In addition to the captain’s smoking habit and his lack of counting skills, he deprived us of bragging rights at the end of the day. That was unacceptable and was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Three strikes and you’re out.