We'll I have to say the experience at Quadra was once again amazing! I have a family friend that hosts me at their "cabin" on Quadra once or twice a summer and it is always a treat. This trip in particular though was great, there with no kids -it was planned as a "boys fishing weekend"! We were there Saturday to Tuesday and we were on the water every day, putting in more than 24 hours.
We put in 2 solid 6 hrs days trolling sockeye around deepwater bay and Plumper bay in Seymour Narrows. I had hoped we would find that huge school of sockeye but unfortunately it never materialized. We ended hooking up maybe 10-12 times and landing 6 socks...it was ok fishing but I must say it was biters sweat to pull in those beautiful fish. EACH AND EVEY ONE WAS COVERED IN SEALICE! I have cleaned literally thousands of fish in my day as a commercial fisher and as a rec fisher. I have never seen fish so covered in lice - all over their bodies, 3-4 generations with of sea lice (ie different sizes) indicates to me a massive lice infestation in the waters these fish frequent. There is no doubt in the joy fishers feel from catching a beautiful fish and indeed sharing that experience often recreates those feelings...once again I feel that undeniable feeling totally snuffed out when I recall seeing these fish covered in lice. I want this post to be a positive one so I think I will leave further comment for another thread. One thing that did make the sockeye fishing fun was that we had a bunch of new fishers on the boat and we only ever had one hit that didn’t turn into a multiple. Most encounters yielded double and triples (hence the high number of escapees)…so it was quite a time!
Another highlight of the trip was the bottom fishing. We found a ling hole that produced fish every drop! Rock cod, Cabazon, and lings all seemed very abundant there. We easily caught our limit of lings each time we came to the hole, it was a true bounty. We had to weed through 6-7 lb lings (barely legal) to find nice 10-12 lb fish so it was a lot of fun. I kept a fish that I wasn’t quite sure what it was, my best guess was a Cabazon…man was it ugly…a cross between a bull head and a ling, no scales to speak of, slimy as all hell…I really wasn’t sure what it was. All I knew for sure is it wasn’t a ling and we had room in our daily limit for it. When we got back to the docks, a local confirmed it as a Cabazon, a nice 7lber at that. Boy was I glad I kept it, that fish filleted up nicely and produce an extremely tasty, firm white flesh. We went back two times to the ling whole and tried to get a Cabazon up after our ling limit but they were impossible to single out from the lings so we resigned to the fact we would just have to treat them like a lucky by catch of our ling fishing.
Oh ya, did I mention the orcas! Tuesday morning, sitting there at a high slack, sun on our faces, jigging up lings….a pod of maybe 20 orcas rolls by. We saw lots of activity, they weren’t just moving by and were in a fairly playful state with lots of activity at the surface. It was quite a mixed group too with lots of calves, some teenagers, and then a few really big dorsals….that too was another pretty amazing part of the trip!
We somehow managed to fit in a little crabbing and oyster picking too and as I sat on the patio at my host’s house, overlooking the harbor and slurping raw oysters with some steamed crab, I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I am to have a friend willing and able to share such an incredible place with me!
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Topic: Quadra, September 3rd - 7th 2010 (Read 1827 times)