Browsing “Fishing”

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia! After coming out publicly as a sportfisherman in my recent Creative Mornings lecture (HERE) I figured it was time to start sharing angling adventures with you more regularly. I brought you on a RIVER DRIFT in Tofino, then to the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s 25th Anniversary GALA as well as showing you their accompanying VIDEO, then I had a hankering for getting out onto the ocean and catching salmon and sharing the awesomeness in that. I contacted Oak Bay Marine Group (a BC company celebrating their 50th anniversary this year) to see if they might be interested in doing a Super, Neighbours series on one of their nearby properties and I was thrilled when they agreed to host us at April Point Resort & Spa on Quadra Island.

Started by Bob Wright in 1962 with a mere $600 investment, OBMG now operates eight holiday and fishing resorts, as well as marinas, restaurants, tourist attractions and gift shops. They’re considered the leader in the holiday and sport fishing industry in North America. We’ll get to some of the reasons why once we actually get to where we’re going but first, as has become a tradition: the Getting There post!

Getting to Quadra isn’t as quick as getting to any of the Southern Gulf Island like Galiano but it’s equally worth it. Located just west of Northern Vancouver Island, you board the ferry at Horseshoe Bay (which you can see waaaay in the distance in the photo above) and once you arrive in Nanaimo drive a couple of hours north to Campbell River. Along the way you’ll be distracted by quaint little towns like Fanny Bay. Pull over. Explore.

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Last week I WROTE about the Pacific Salmon Foundation‘s 25th anniversary gala & auction, hosted by Tony Parsons. Below is the video that they produced for the occasion, narrated by the iconic broadcaster, giving you a look at their history as well as the power of community volunteers and their involvement. It ends with Rick Hansen and PSF President, Brian Riddell, discussing the future of the organization and their work. Very inspiring. Please watch!

The Pacific Salmon Foundation held it’s 25th Anniversary Gala Dinner and Auction Wednesday night at the Vancouver Trade & Convention Centre and I had the pleasure of donning a tie and attending along with more than 500 other supporters. I’ve told you about them before but in case you don’t know, every year this incredible Vancouver-based foundation puts millions of dollars towards projects that help ensure the future of native salmon in Western Canada.

I’d never been to one of their galas before so I wasn’t sure what to expect but I knew it would be a great time. One of the pleasant surprises of the night was Tony Parsons’ entrance, fresh off this salmoned-up Helijet and into the hosting position!

Tony welcomed us all and then talked briefly about the Foundation, passing the mic to PSF President, Brian Riddell, so he could thank everyone and talk about the past, present and future of the PSF. And then the biggest and most awesome surprise of the night came when Chuck Jeannes, President & CEO of Goldcorp, delivered a speech announcing that his company is donating $1,000,000 over the next 3 years. This will be the single largest corporate donation made in the Foundation’s history and will mostly help address a funding shortfall that occurred due to the BC Living Rivers Trust initiative expiring last year, leaving the PSF with a $2,000,000 annual gap in their funding to make up for. The foundation reports they typically can only fund about half of the good salmon projects they get asked to support, and the Goldcorp donation will also be used to address that un-met need. This is an unprecedented give on Goldcorp’s part. Very awesome, and I hope that we see more corporate donors stepping up like this in the future.

Before Tony gave the mic over to the auctioneer (in fact before Tony even arrived), we had an opportunity to …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia! In this series I took you on a trip to Tofino to stay at the iconic and lovely Wickaninnish Inn. The first post was about GETTING THERE via BC Ferries and a wonderful drive, the second was about THE ACCOMMODATIONS and storm watching, the third was a DINNER at The Pointe Restaurant (which yesterday was named “Best Resort Dining 2012″ by Vancouver Magazine!) with the Inn’s co-founder, Charles McDiarmid. Last week in my CreativeMornings/Vancouver talk I came out publicly as a sportfisherman, tying creativity in with the Pacific Salmon Foundation, the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society and a backyard trout project I’m helping Bodega Ridge Resort with. This fourth and final post about my trip to Tofino came about thanks to another person involved in the world of sportfishing who makes a living creatively: Blake Klopfenstein from Cleanline Sportfishing.

When I was first put in touch with Blake through our mutual friend, photographer Jeremy Koreski (who shot the amazing photos below), I was super keen on going out onto the ocean and catching a halibut. My favourite type of fish to eat, and one that I’ve never caught myself, I had big dreams of coming back from Tofino with 50 pounds of meat for my family to live off of for the next 8 months. But instead of heading out onto the high seas, Blake pitched something else at me: a Wilderness River Drift Experience.

Yes, it’s as wondrous as its title suggests and, yes, this photo below captures much of the awe that I felt as we were about to land on this remote lake on Vancouver Island in a 1955 de Havilland Beaver floatplane. As the lake is in a protected park that only a few people are granted permission to access by the local first nations and BC Parks, I’m not even allowed to tell you the name of it because they don’t want people flying into it. There are no halibut up here but I wouldn’t trade a thousand pounds of them for the memories I brought back from this adventure.

All photos: Jeremy Koreski

We landed on this unnamed secret lake and waved goodbye to the Beaver and watched it disappear over the mountain as it headed back to Tofino. Then? Just silence. Blake set up the raft at the mouth of the river leading out of the lake and Jeremy set up his underwater housing unit that he uses for “over/under” photos. I can’t tell you how fortunate I am that Jeremy came along with us to shoot. If you’re unfamiliar, he’s known internationally as one of the best surf photographers in the game, as well as one of Patagonia’s roving field photographers. View his work at JeremyKoreski.com.

After we were all set with the raft, we set course on an 8 hour drift down the river, getting out and wading in the water flyfishing for steelhead at different points and at time throwing a line from the raft. In this photo I have an 8 pounder on the line. I didn’t land any during the trip but not matter; it’s catch and release in these waters and a major part of it is just being out there and experiencing the drift, breathing in the air and absorbing the beauty of this place that few will ever see.

Some of the best 8 hours of my life, to be certain. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Wow! What an incredible experience I had last week as the monthly speaker at CreativeMornings/Vancouver. If you missed it, below is the entire presentation I gave along with a Q+A about creativity, fishing, and the past, present and future of Vancouver Is Awesome.

Thanks to everybody at CreativeMornings/Vancouver, especially Mark Busse and Hilary Henegar. Thanks to everybody for coming out, participating, and for asking engaging and thought-provoking questions. Thanks to Irwin and his crew at W2 Woodwards for hosting. And last but not least thank you to Jo, Kate and Tom at Arc’teryx for coming through when I asked them to sponsor (read: pay for) the delicious breakfast that was provided to all of the guests at this FREE speakers series that is truly doing a great thing in building community within the creative culture of our city. See you out at the next one!

Oh, and here are some links to the subjects/people/things I talk about:
Sonora Resort
London Air
The Pacific Salmon Foundation
Tony Nootebos/BC Sportfishing Group
Rick Hansen
Bodega Ridge Resort
Talent Time
Michael Green Architecture
Bjarke Ingels Group
Unsolicited Vancouver

Location: Tradex Trade & Exhibition Centre, Abottsford BC. I went out to the BC Boat & Sportsmen’s Shot / BC Hunting Show at Tradex in Abbotsford this past weekend. The 21st edition, this annual show is BC’s expo of fishing retailers and manufacturers, boats, motors, trailers, camping gear & outdoor products, lodges and resorts, ATV’s and all sorts of guns and equipment for hunting. A bit of a departure from our Unplugged features where we take you on an outdoor adventure, this was just a great show with all sorts of consumer products for fishing, camping and hunting.

There were over 250 exhibitors plus a boatload of seminars, contests and prizes and I gathered a few images and posted to Instagram while I was there:
- Sweet knives
- $200 pump action shotgun
- Crazy tank quad
- Freshwater Fisheries live trout display

But really, I captured a single image that I feel encapsulates the awesomeness of this show: the absolutely incredible $1,600 rooftop tent from ARB at the Cap-It booth! A truly great invention, not only is it handy but it keeps you safe if you’re way out in the middle of nowhere and there are bears and/or other predators around. I love this.

Click HERE for more info on the show and HERE to learn about this crazy tent on Cap-It’s site. And see you at the 22nd annual show next year!

Welcome to the latest series of Super, Neighbours blog posts where we highlight incredible travel destinations in British Columbia! This is the last of 5 posts on our trip out to Harrison Hot Springs, a 90 minute drive from Vancouver. To break it down: PART 1 – Getting There PART 2 – Accommodations PART 3 – The Food PART 4 – The Spa I hinted about the awesomeness of my fishing adventure in almost all of the first 4 posts because it’s such a cool story, far beyond getting out and reeling in a big fish, though I will admit that’s a large part of it. If you look beyond this photo of us holding a 150 pound fish as a trophy (which we let go seconds after this photo was taken) you’ll see a story of conservation and of people coming together to help save a species.

I caught this 150 pound sturgeon. It’s about 75 years old. Wowza!

As a lifelong hobby fisherman of freshwater lakes, over the past three and a half decades I’ve spent what would amount to months of my life with a line in the water. Mostly pulling out rainbow trout that weigh less than a pound, fishing for sturgeon is something I never really put much thought into pursuing. I admit that up until I started researching for this series I didn’t see a point in sturgeon fishing because the white sturgeon of the Fraser (and Harrison) River is an endangered species and if you keep one you go to jail. Hell, not only did I not see a point in it but I saw it as a disservice to these prehistoric beasts; I wondered that why after we’ve pushed this species close to extinction that we now have to add insult to injury and pull them out of the water just to get our pictures taken with them.

Tony Nootebos, the proprietor of the BC Sportfishing Group which has a fleet of 22 fishing vessels, changed this entire perception I had of sturgeon fishing. As one of the many supporters of the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society, along with chairman Rick Hansen (yes, the Man In Motion), he’s not only out on the river to make a livelihood but he’s there for the sake of conserving and restoring this fish stock.

The society is a not-for-profit dedicated to the conservation and restoration of wild Fraser River white sturgeon and it’s made up of charter operators, commercial fishermen, first nations and others. At the heart of what they do is tracking every single sturgeon that they reel in, and they input all of their stats into a database so that they can track their growth, their patterns, and how well they’re doing as a whole. If not for this not-for-profit nobody would be tracking this fish, the fish that is on the top of the food chain which reflects the overall health of the river system itself.

And not only do they track the fish but they build awareness as well: they introduced curriculum into a number of schools in 2005, teaching kids in the Lower Mainland about the history and the importance of the Fraser River white sturgeon. The hard costs of all of their work is paid for by donors and the provincial government and the lions share of work is done by volunteers, those who are basically re-investing in their own future by helping ensure the future of the white sturgeon.

I went along to catch a huge fish but I also went along to help Tony gather data which would then be input into the database. I went there (mostly) on a conservation mission.

So that’s the backstory. Let’s introduce you to the experience now, shall we?

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“Did anyone see the flying fish floating over False Creek today? Can’t tell where they were coming from. The insides were painted red. From a distance they looked like fish swimming in the air. Closer they looked like soap bubbles. I caught one and as soon as I touched it it dissipated. The red colouring was then all over my hands. They were amazing. No idea how they were molded and from where they were launched.”

That was a status update I saw on a friend’s Facebook wall on the day of the Pacific Salmon Foundation‘s biennial Pink Salmon Festival a few days back. HERE‘s a leadup post I did about the festival and the importance of the pink salmon as a sustainable food source, and HERE‘s a video of what the heck’s going on with those floating pieces of fish-shaped foam you might have spotted (or caught) all the way on the East Side. I heard some of them made it past Main Street that day and if you don’t want to watch the video on how they’re made I’ll break it down real simple: eco-friendly, helium-filled, coloured bubble shapes made by some crazy patented machine called a Flogo maker. It was so rad to see pink salmon love spread far and wide over the city that day, beyond all of the booths and free food and fun contained at the festival in Hadden Park.

Pink salmon Flogo

I headed down to check out the festival with V.I.A.’s youngest blogger, Arlo, who quickly made his way to the Stream Of Dreams booth to colour himself a magnet to put on the fridge.

Stream Of Dreams is the organization that’s responsible for all of those fish that you see swimming in schools on the fences of schools around the city. They go in and do …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>