by David Giblin
“What about speculating on the size of the fish before it’s in the boat?”
“Hell, no, that’s the worst! That kind of arrogance is sure to be made an example of. I’ll rap them on the knuckles with my fish club if they even look like they’re going to do anything so disrespectful.”
There was a lull in our conversation. Then Lucky Petersen added, “Spitting’s good. I always spit in the water when we hook a fish. If we let it go, I spit again.”
twenty-two MR. CARRINGTON
AS I SAT in my boat at the gas dock waiting to start the party with Wet Lenny, I thought about the conversation Lucky and I had had. There was no getting around the fact that he could catch fish. I had to wonder if I would ever catch one again after being so long in Wet Lenny’s company. While I sat thinking about this and other important questions, I was privileged to witness one of the rare appearances of Mr. Carrington on the gas float. That he should concern himself with the coordination of a fishing trip was an indication of how important the people on this yacht were.
“Who do you have working the yacht that came in this morning? The one the Brelands are staying on?” he asked Troutbreath.
“I’ve got Leonard and Chief on the boat,” he answered. “I hope that’s all right with you, Mr. Carrington.”
“Oh, that should be fine, just fine.”
I wasn’t used to hearing Wet Lenny called Leonard; I had to think whom they could be talking about. “Chief” was another of Troutbreath’s shell games; hiring outside guides was a tricky business for him, as quite often the independents were only available for one or two days before they had to start working somewhere else. Mr. Carrington hated changing guides in the middle of a party; it was one of the few things he got strange about. To get around the problem, Troutbreath started calling us all Chief. He even marked the name down on the time cards. We could use the nickname whenever Mr. Carrington was around, which wasn’t often (he never paid much attention to us or our real names anyway). Dressed in baseball hats, survival gear, and old fishing sweaters, we all pretty much looked alike to him. Just as long as the same name appeared on the time card, he didn’t seem to care.
Carrington was a strange one to be manager—or owner—of a fishing resort. I never saw him go fishing, not once. I don’t think he even liked fish. He never seemed to understand why people wanted to spend their time doing it. But if it made his guests happy, it also meant they wouldn’t be around the resort that much. With no interruptions he could spend more time at the one thing he really loved: restoring old wooden boats.
He spent almost every waking hour in the boathouse. He’d built it for himself at the far end of the docks, as far away from the gas dock as possible. He was currently restoring a retired Fisheries patrol boat. There used to be quite a number of these boats working the coast, but the federal government replaced them with more modern and efficient vessels. The one Mr. Carrington was working on had been built in Vancouver back in the thirties. It was forty-eight feet long and put together with the finest materials available. The planking was yellow cedar laid over clear-grained Douglas fir ribs. It was finished out in teak and mahogany. All the fixtures were intact and made of heavy brass.
Mr. Carrington sanded and polished and rubbed away the years of abuse and neglect. His tall, patrician body was always covered in a light dusting of finely sanded mahogany. Under his hands the boat would come alive again. You could almost see it take new pride in its appearance. Mr. Carrington’s reverence for boats afforded him a level of appreciation from the guides that made allowances for his lack of interest in fishing. They could also overlook some of his other more eccentric behaviour.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Mr. Carrington yelled back over his shoulder as he headed back to his beloved avocation. “Make sure you give them the herring from the Reserve Box.”
twenty-three THE RESERVE BOX
THE RESERVE BOX was also one of Troutbreath’s innovations. All the herring used at the Carringtons’ resort were netted by Troutbreath and the house guides. They rowed out at night to the front of the gas float in a specially designed skiff. Piled carefully on the stern of the rowboat was a large seine net with a very fine knotless mesh. Called a purse seine, the distinctive mesh allowed the herring to be caught with as little damage done to the delicate covering of scales on their bodies as possible. Not only did this help them live longer in the wooden holding pens, but their intact coats of shining scales made them more attractive to the salmon. Either live or cut-plugged, herring were the only bait the guides used.
The net was dropped quickly but with care as the boat was rowed in a circle around a school of herring. The purse was closed and the trapped fish carefully dipped out into the holding pens using a long-handled dip net called a brailer. Then the wooden pens were tied up near Troutbreath’s office. The guides that worked for the resort got their herring for free, and the rest were sold to the outside guides and tourists.
Troutbreath didn’t make much on herring, at least not compared to some of his other endeavours. Most of the money he earned there went on maintenance: the upkeep of the net, replacing tow rope and tie ups, repairs to the wooden pens (especially when they got hung on a rock in the tide), and results of storm damage in the winter. It all added up to a break-even proposition. From time to time, dogfish trapped along with the herring chewed through the mesh, and Troutbreath would have to sit down and do some careful repairs. Keeping up with the maintenance was time-consuming and didn’t leave much money for the little extras like cold beer after the work was done.
Then Troutbreath hit on the idea of the Reserve Box.
Netting the herring and filling the holding pens was always done late at night. The herring were distributed among the pens indiscriminately, but only Troutbreath and the guides knew this. One night he singled out one box and put a sign on it that said RESERVED.
Troutbreath then let it be known that this box was filled with a more select choice of herring, carefully hand selected from the middle of the school and dipped only a dozen at a time to keep them in pristine condition.
The tourists were immediately interested, but when they asked Troutbreath about buying them he politely turned them down. The herring in that box were, after all, reserved.
This only made them more desirable, until the status of having bought from the Reserve Box became more valuable than the herring themselves. People started bidding the price up. They lined up with money in their hands; soon Troutbreath was selling the reserve herring, “just this one time,” for more than twice the normal price. Business was so good he had to sneak down at night to switch more herring over from another box.
It was a happy solution for everybody; Troutbreath was wise enough to spend the extra money on the guides. They now had free herring and all the cold beer they could drink. The tourists believed they were getting the best herring money could buy and could even brag about how much it was costing them. Mr. Carrington heard no complaints from anybody, so he was happy.
Troutbreath was the only one less than pleased; all that sneaking around at night was one more thing cutting into his fishing time.
twenty-four CUT-PLUGS
A NUMBER OF people were ready to take credit for cut-plugs. Old-timers from Powell River, Campbell River, Cowichan Bay, and the Seattle Yacht Club all had claims to the distinction. It was the subject of surprisingly warm debate where fishermen gathered. There was no argument about how effective they were. The local pub kept track of all the tyees caught over the course of the summer; some were caught with live bait, but by far the majority—and certainly all of the biggest—was caught with a cut-plug.
Each guide had his own variation and insisted it was the best. Basically, the process is this. After wetting down the cutting board, a herring is singled out by hand. It’s held in the left hand just behind the gills and given a squeeze by the thumb and forefinger to stun it. The head is cut off with a razor-sharp knife and the body cavity cleaned. The cut starts at the gill plate an
d goes from one side to the other, as well as back to front. The sharp knife cuts it cleanly, with no raggedness that would affect the spin. The two hooks of the leader are threaded through the body to make the herring spin in a straight, tight spiral. It is meant to resemble the movement of an injured herring.
Keeping the board and hands wet during the procedure helps preserve as many scales as possible, so they flash and sparkle as the bait spins through the water. The spin creates the illusion that the bait is moving like a crippled herring.
The variations are endless and subtle. There came to be a great mystique surrounding the perfection of the most effective cut-plug: a guide catching more tyees than average would be pestered by other guides for a demonstration of their technique; guides had even been known to tangle with someone on purpose, just to get a look at the way they hooked up their bait.
twenty-five THE GUCCI LOAFERS
WET LENNY JOINED me at the dock, but fortunately for me our party was soon seen leaving their yacht. There were four of them: the owner, his wife, and their two children, a son and a daughter. The owner struck me as a forthright and vigorous man. He shook our hands enthusiastically and introduced himself as Douglas Breland.
“But please, call me Doug.”
I’ve noticed over the years that the people who make the greatest display of their wealth are usually the most insecure with it. Someone who feels they have to impress me with how much they have always bemuses me. What does it matter what I think? It often turns out that the guy with all the gold jewellery and the expensive and obvious watch, who has to boast about how much he has and how big his empire is worth, is either a con man or close to bankruptcy.
It’s the quiet ones, the guys sporting worn flannel shirts, an old pair of jeans, and several days’ beard growth, that turn out to be the serious money. The guides learn to watch for them; they are the ones who mean steady business and substantial tips.
Doug was one of these guys. If you didn’t see the yacht he’d arrived on, you wouldn’t pay him much attention. You might even think he worked for the resort, perhaps a gardener or something, and you might even make the mistake of asking him to do something for you. But look down at his feet—at the only thing that gave him away—his footwear. He had on a pair of those buttery soft, buckskin-coloured Gucci loafers.
His son told me the story, after I got to know them better, of how his father had bought the boat they were on. He had been looking for a larger yacht for the family and heard this one was for sale. A wealthy and famous man had owned it, and there was a great deal of interest from people wanting to buy it. Most of them were scared off by the price, but the yacht was worth much more: the previous owner had spared no expense to outfit it and spent lavishly on the maintenance.
Doug and his son went down to the yacht club where it was moored to have a look at it. They stopped in to the sales office to make some inquiries of the agent handling the sale. They were dressed much as I have already described. Their intention was to get inside and really inspect the boat—get down in the engine room and the bilge, really poke around. That kind of inspection couldn’t be carried out in a business suit or designer casuals.
However, the agent took one look at them and came to the wrong conclusion. When they asked to look at the most expensive yacht on the dock, he laughed at them and offered to show them something more in their price range. He pointed out a couple of sixteen-foot runabouts. He really thought they were joking and became quite obnoxious with these two people he thought were wasting his valuable time. The man had neglected to look down and notice their footwear.
The guy’s attitude rubbed Mr. Breland the wrong way. So the very next day, with his accountant and lawyer in tow, he and his son paid the office another visit. He chose a different agent, but made sure the other one saw what was going on. He wanted the man to know who was buying the yacht and why he was losing out on a very hefty commission. He paid cash for the boat out of a suitcase full of money, like a cocaine dealer or an oil-rich Arab sheikh. He even had them throw in a sixteen-foot runabout to go on the top deck.
twenty-six THE ENFORCER
DOUG AND HIS wife climbed into my boat and Lenny left with the son and daughter. We stopped at the Second Hole to start. The flood tide was running strongly but fishing was slow. No bites came our way and we didn’t see any fish being caught by the other boats around us. Doug and his wife, Claire, enjoyed themselves regardless, taking in the scenery and the water rushing past. The current in the channel was moving at peak speed, and the whirlpools gaped open up to fifty feet across. The boil, a severe welling up of water that formed over the reef at the downstream end of the hole, spewed water five or six feet in the air.
We were surprised to see a small inflatable dinghy leaving the shelter of Big Bay to battle its way toward the fishing hole. It was occupied by a lonely looking figure. He sat at the stern in a posture of grim determination. His hand was on an outboard motor that seemed inadequate to fight the currents. The dinghy was immediately caught in the tide and swept below the Second Hole, and the occupant had to spend several minutes gamely struggling his way back up the tide and into the fishing hole.
The boat was a bright orange that made its progress easy to follow. It reminded me of the inflatable toys made for children and swimming pools.
“As for that motor,” Vop observed later when we had a chance to compare our impressions of the incident, “he would have been better off with an eggbeater.”
When the guy had finally won his way back into the hole, our boat was the closest to him. He came toward us, his face fixed in a rather odd grin. As he got closer I noticed some distinctive patches on the shoulders of his jacket.
“Hello there!” he called out as he pulled up beside us.
I realized the grin was meant to put us at ease in the way of a friendly greeting; the man’s terror had turned it into a grimace.
“I’m with the Department of Fisheries,” he continued. “I want to check your licen—”
Before he could finish he stalled his motor trying to put it into reverse. His boat’s momentum carried it into mine. It bounced off the side of my metal boat like a child’s ball. The force of the collision knocked him off-balance and he fell forward onto the floor of his boat. Before he could regain his seat and start the engine he was caught by a small whirlpool. It spun his boat around like a rubber ducky caught in a bathtub drain. The centrifugal force pinned him to the floor, and he was sucked out of the fishing hole and sent off down the tide once more. This time he wasn’t able to fight the tide.
We watched the bright orange boat as it bobbed slowly out of sight.
“What a curious little man,” Claire remarked after he had disappeared. “What was that all about?”
“That was a Fisheries patrol officer in one of their brand new inflatables. He wanted to check our licences, you know, to make sure we weren’t breaking any of the rules.”
“How odd,” was her only comment.
twenty-seven THE NEED FOR EXPERTS
THE FISHING DIDN’T get any better after the curious little man had left the hole. There wasn’t any further entertainment either, so we decided to try our luck somewhere else. The tide was starting to back off, and it was the right time to run the Arran Rapids and check out the fishing at the Log Dump. Big Bay and the Second Hole are well sheltered from the westerlies that blow quite often in the summer. When we rounded the Nearside and shot through the Arrans, a strong wind from that direction was blowing across the mouth of the inlet. The wind and the tide were coming from different directions, which threw up a short, choppy sea. This made fishing the place very uncomfortable, and we were quickly soaked with a bitingly cold spray. None of us wanted to stick it out, so I suggested we try some cod fishing instead. There were some good cod holes behind the mid-channel islands, and a high slack tide was the best time to be there.
Mrs. Breland didn’t want to join us on our cod expedition, preferring to get back to the yacht and a hot mug of tea. I
t was a simple matter to swing past it and then head across the bay.
Cod fishing is very straightforward, cod not being nearly as fussy as salmon. After you take up a position over a hole, you drop a line baited with a live herring. When it reaches the bottom you reel it up about ten feet. If the cod are there, you get instant results; if not, you simply change locations until you find them. I use a level-wind type of reel, in which a mechanism operated by a system of gears inside travels back and forth across the face of the reel and lays the line onto the spool smoothly and evenly. This mechanism can travel as fast as the line goes in or out. There is a lever that releases a brake, allowing the line to run freely off the spool. You use your thumb to control the speed of the line as it goes out. It prevents the line from creating a “bird’s nest.” The lever is reengaged to stop it.
After baiting his line I explained cod fishing to Doug and handed the rod over to him. He was a bit awkward releasing the freespool lever, and the line got away from him. It raced off the reel, out of control, the level wind flying madly back and forth. Doug thrust his finger into the works to stop the line. He knew enough about backlashes but not about the reel. The finger and the level wind tried to occupy the same space, and the level wind slammed into his finger, squashing it against the side of the spool. The reel came to an instant stop. The line snapped. Doug let out a loud howl.
Doug’s finger was stuck solidly in the reel. Though he was being stoic about the pain, I knew how much he must be hurting. The mechanism of the level wind can travel in only one direction; I couldn’t just back it up to release the finger. I sat down with some tools and stripped the reel to extract him from it.
We did manage to catch some cod afterward, but I’m sure the throbbing in his finger must have spoiled his pleasure.
