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.

While in these small towns you might come across something you didn’t know existed, like discounted farm/boat gas that has a purple dye in it and is not taxed as heavily, allowing industry that we all rely on to survive.

You never see these pumps in the city obviously because there are no farm vehicles filling up at Main and 2nd Ave, but stop in a small town like Fanny Bay and you might chance upon a tractor filling up at one of them.

At the end of the 2 hour drive from Nanaimo to Campbell River (or 4 hours, depending on how many stops you make) you’ll get yourself onto a small ferry which takes you on a ten minute trip across Discovery Passage to Quadra.

This sign means that you’re looking at an island that’s relatively close to Vancouver Island, and that they’ve run a large electrical wire from the larger island onto it, as they don’t produce their own power on-island. Neat, huh?

Get off the ferry, drive a few minutes down the main road and you soon find yourself on OBMG’s property, on this shrouded and peaceful road down to April Point.

Big thanks once again to BC Ferries for getting us over to the Island to bring you this story. Stick around for Part 2 of this series on April Point Resort & Spa as I show you around the property!

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 peruse items in a silent auction that filled tables throughout the room. From fishing rods and reels to sweet pieces of artwork like this sculpture below, many generous donations of goods and services were made so that supporters could bid on them and help the Foundation raise funds.

In the silent auction was also this sweet woven pillow set. One of my favourite items.

My absolute favourite item in the silent auction would have to be this framed collection of every DFO Salmon Conservation Stamp ever released. If you’ve ever fished for salmon in BC (or you watched MY CREATIVE MORNINGS TALK) then you’ll recognize these as the stamps you buy to put on your license in order to keep salmon you reel in. A great deal of the money generated from the sale of the stamps each year goes directly back into the PSF – more than $6 million since the stamp was created in 1989.

Big ticket items in the auction handled by professional auctioneer Greg Rollo with Richie Brothers Auctioneers included a trip to Langara Fishing Lodge in Haida Gwaii, many other incredible trips as well as tangible items like a Laird paddleboard and a totem pole. Yes, a totem pole!

And of course the dinner itself was absolutely delicious, and of course it was supplied by the aforementioned sponsor, Goldcorp. Apologies for not shooting any photos of the meal we enjoyed but I was busy… well… enjoying it! Here’s an overview of the crowd to give you an idea of what the room felt like at least.

And last but certainly not least, another surprise of the night! The PSF’s Brenda McIntyre got up on stage and thanked their over 30,000 volunteers as well as their unsuspecting (and generally shy of praise) board of directors (pictured below before dinner). While they need a generous amount of cash to work on restoration projects and to keep their organization afloat they simply would not exist without the help of a town-sized group of volunteers who should be applauded.

Learn more about the Pacific Salmon Foundation at PSF.ca and stay tuned as I’ll be posting a fantastic video that they produced for this event shortly. Also, I managed to squeak in an extra special 50 Coffees chat during the gala, so watch our for that as well.

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.

Here’s Blake and one of those “over/under” shots where you can see where the steelhead lurk as well as our view. It was actually snowing at this point, but we were dressed for the weather; Jeremy and Blake were head to toe in Patagonia and I in my trusty Arc’teryx.

At the end of the day we were spit out into the ocean by the river, and we had a chance to pack up the boat, finish the fishing lunch that The Red Can Gourmet had generously packed for us and to talk about the incredible experience we just had on that river.

Whether you’re an experienced fisherman or someone interested in dipping their toes in and being exposed to the natural beauty of a secret forest on Vancouver Island, I can’t make a recommendation for a better trip than this one when you’re visiting Tofino.

Special thanks to acclaimed chef Tim May at The Red Can Gourmet for supplying us with an incredible lunch, Lana at Tourism Vancouver Island for helping with the charter, Jeremy Koreski for the photos and of course a huge thank you to Blake at Cleanline Sportfishing for taking me on an unforgettable trip.

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

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!

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?

Tony took me out on the boat pictured above, and we went a few miles up the Harrison River which drains out of Harrison Lake not far from the resort. It eventually connects with the Fraser and the sturgeon from both intermingle. They are the same fish. Below you can see outlines of some of them lurking on the bottom of the river on the fishfinder, and on the right a ball of salmon roe we put on our lines to attract them with.

The way it works is that you drop anchor at a good spot (Tony knows all the good spots) and then you cast your line out and let it sink to the bottom. Then you wait.

While you’re waiting there’s no shortage of scenery to take in. At one point these 7 bald eagles were sitting in some trees to our right. So crazy, and apparently this is nothing compared to what it’s like when the salmon are running… but it was 7 more eagles than I usually see on the weekend so it was pretty great.

Before long you might see the tip of your rod go down a bit, at which point you set the hook and reel/haul in. You can’t tell by the look on my face that it took an entire half an hour to reel this thing in, and that it was the most intense battle I have ever fought with another living thing in my entire life. Or can you?

Depending on its size, after you get the sturgeon to the boat you either bring it up into this hoist thing or take it to the shore. The one pictured below is actually a 70 pounder that I caught, the huge one in the first photo is a 150 pounder that we couldn’t haul up so we had to go to shore to measure him. The little guys go in the hoist. That’s where they’re measured, and where they use that fancy white microchip scanner to detect if it has a chip implanted in it yet. Who is responsible for the system in which the chips are implanted in the fish to track them? Why the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society of course.

Here’s all of the data that we collected on the fish that gets turned in. They use it all to cross-reference where and when the fish was previously caught, how much it’s grown, etc.

And had there not been a chip installed in the fish we caught, we would have used the needle pictured below to inject one into them. Both of the fish had chips in them already.

Here’s the microchip close up. It’s about a centimetre long.

Lastly, a peaceful shot of another eagle that I photographed while we were returning from our outing and I was reflecting on what an incredibly positive experience it was. It’s hard to put it all into words but this fishing trips sit really high on the list of “The Best Things I Have Ever Experienced Ever In My Entire Life.”. Just wow.

And that wraps up our series on visiting Harrison Hot Springs in the winter. Huge thanks to Tourism Harrison Hot Springs, Spectacular Ink and of course Tony Nootebos and the BC Sportfishing Group.

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 workshops with kids about the importance of taking care of our water sources and each one of them gets to paint their own life-sized fish, which they then hang on the fence outside of the school.

Here’s one of the free pink salmon dishes they served us. To be honest I had never had this variety before so a large part of my excitement around the event was trying it for the first time and weighing it against the sockeye and chinook we usually get for the BBQ at home. The verdict? It ranked right up there and the next time we’re BBQing, before this weather turns, I’m definitely going to opt for the pink.

Overall? Super glad we went down to celebrate the return of this sustainable fish stock that was there all along. HERE‘s a gallery of photos the PSF shared from the day, showing all of the different booths etc. See ya next time!

What does this have to do with the Vancouver Is Awesome Inc office and artwork, you ask? Well, while I was working on that piece I linked to above I inquired to our new friends at the PSF about their gift shop that I used to frequent on my visits to the Capilano River Hatchery (1, 2, 3, 4 blog posts as proof!). The gift shop closed down a few months back and the only things that remain are these cardboard cutouts of salmon, hanging in the window of the potentially-forever-closed store, taunting me. When it was open they hung from the ceiling and behind the cash register, and on more than one occasion I had asked the people working there if they’d be able to sell me one. Of course, as they were essentially pieces of the store itself and not products for sale, the answer was always no.

Cut to the chase, I asked the Pacific Salmon Foundation folks what the chances were that I could have one of these cutouts to hang in the room at the V.I.A. office that I lovingly refer to as The Library but in reality is more like our small meeting room where we keep our book collection. They replied with “Would you prefer a sockeye or a chinook?” and I fell off of my chair. After I picked myself up off of the floor I responded with “Sockeye, please!” and a couple of days later I found myself pounding a nail into the wall so I could mount this fine piece of artwork above the bookshelves. It now hangs there proudly, held up by a piece of fishing line, of course!

The piece of artwork serves three purposes. First as a conversation piece for people who visit us and meet in out meeting room, so we can tell them how awesome the Pacific Salmon Foundation is. Second, it’s a daily reminder for us that we should do more features about this fantastic resource that has so many Vancouver-centric stories to be told. Third, I’m the Executive Director and I personally love fish and fishing, I personally love screen-printed gems from the 80′s and I am personally spending more time in that meeting room than anybody else… so it’s totally self serving!

Join me in being self-serving this weekend and head down to Hadden Park to eat some free salmon at the Pink Salmon Festival!

Fishermen flock to the Fraser River near Agassiz, BC on Sunday August 14, 2011

Last year we brought you the ongoing STORY of the record breaking 2010 sockeye salmon run, the biggest one to happen in 100 years with a jaw-dropping almost 35 million of these fish making their way up the Fraser River! We even travelled all the way up the Adams River to share with you THIS FEATURE about their final destination.

This year the numbers of returning salmon are expectedly lower, somewhere between 1 and 7 million sockeye are expected to make their way up the Fraser to spawn, meaning that sportfishermen will likely only be given one small window by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to catch some. They’ve given 3 days to fish the Fraser, and the first day was Saturday, meaning if you’re a fisherman and you didn’t hear about it until right now then I imagine you’ll be taking the afternoon off to try and find a spot on the Mighty Fraser to reel one in!

Fishermen on the Fraser River near Agassiz, BC on Sunday August 14, 2011

A fishermen reels in a sockeye salmon on the Fraser River near Agassiz, BC on Sunday August 14, 2011

Check out THIS feature in the Province that our friend Sean Patrick Sullivan wrote about the opening. And I suppose I couldn’t find a better time to remind you once again about the Pink Salmon Festival that the Pacific Salmon Foundation is putting on on the 28th of this month. Pink salmon is returning in serious numbers this year (projected 17.5 million) and is perhaps the most sustainable stock of salmon. Learn more in THIS POST I made about the festival and be sure to come out to Hadden Park near the Maritime Museum at noon on August 28th for free pink salmon prepared by a chef.