Stalking Salmon & Wrestling Drunks. Peter L. Gordon

and handed it to Rae. “Will you take a picture?”

      Rae took the camera and had a quick look at it. “Is it automatic?”

      “Point and shoot.”

      “Got it. Stand in the corner and hold up the monster.” With a bit of a struggle, Cliff lifted his salmon out of the trough and took a couple of steps back. He held it chest high while Rae took some pictures. The camera whirred and clicked loudly enough for everyone to hear.

      “Thank you,” Cliff said. “This will prove to the fellows back home that I really caught a nice one.” He turned to Sten with dancing eyes and a barely suppressed smile on his face. “Did you say it’s thirty-five?”

      Without missing a beat, Sten replied, “At least.” The whole crew broke into laughter and clapped again.

      Cliff fished with us for four subsequent summers, and his legendary status aboard the Kalua only grew because of his charming character and magical good luck. The second summer he booked with us, he had with him the picture of his thirty-one pounder from the previous year. He announced that he wanted its twin. The guests who were sharing his charter chimed in and said they too wanted a fish that size. Sten and I rolled our eyes. They made salmon fishing seem like a trip to the supermarket.

      Well, here comes the spooky part. We cruised out to a can-shaped buoy just past the lighthouse and picked up some nice fish in the eight- to twelve-pound range—delicious dinner fish. They were respectable but certainly not thirty pounders. For a while we stopped fishing, cruising around to admire the lighthouse and drifting quietly while the guests had their lunch. After lunch, we fired up the engine and I put out two downrigger lines. Cliff had already regaled everyone with an improved version of his catch from the previous season. In his account, it had taken “an easy forty-five minutes to land my thirty-eight pounder using twelve-pound test line and a trout rod.” Sten and I enjoyed the story but winked at each other. We had the ship’s log as a witness to the real event.

      With the downriggers in place and the lines attached to them, we began to troll through Race Passage. Sten was at the wheel. I recall looking up at him and realizing he was going to take us over the identical spot where Cliff hooked his thirty-one pounder the previous year. On Sten’s signal I lowered a line into the hot spot and again on his signal, I pulled the line up. Just like magic, the bell on the downrigger shook twice; then the line was free. I snapped up the rod, reeled in the slack line and handed the rod to Cliff, who was already standing beside me. The events were nearly a carbon copy of the previous year. This time Cliff did not need to sit down—his legs still rattled but he had more control. Just like the previous year, everyone pulled his leg while he played his fish. Also like the previous year, the salmon was successfully brought to the net and tipped the scales at thirty pounds.

      This scenario repeated itself the third and fourth seasons he booked with us. The sweet spot where we picked up these thirty pounders became known to us as Dr. Cliff’s Hole. In the ship’s photo album were pictures of his thirty pounders. He would joke that we should pay him to fish with us, an idea I often turned over in my mind when the fishing was slow and the guests were grouchy. Perhaps in an effort not to jinx it, we never took any other guests to that special spot.

      Cliff’s fifth booking happened in an odd way. Sten and I took out an early-morning charter with poor results. We cast off at 3:30 AM and fished the change of tide. The group, though enthusiastic and boisterous, had been poor fishermen. They managed to lose every fish we handed off to them. Sten and I were sure that one of the fish was over twenty pounds. When I presented the bill for the charter to the host of the party, she complained that it had been an expensive “boat ride.” I reminded her they had played but lost five salmon.

      “What difference does it make if we’re going home without any fish?” she moaned.

      Under these circumstances, I usually kept my own council. In this case, unfortunately, I failed to follow my own advice. “Hmm,” I said. “Maybe you could stop at a supermarket on your way home if you want to be sure of having a salmon to take with you.”

      Immediately I regretted my sarcasm. Needless to say, this remark further soured the trip, so after they had disembarked and we had cleaned up the boat, I sent Sten home for some much-needed time with his darling.

      After he left, I pulled out the ship’s log and filled it in. I went through the maintenance records and decided that one of our fuel tanks was low and needed to be topped up. In reality, it did not need to be filled, but I simply wanted a little more time to cool off before going home. The exchange of words from the charter was still with me.

      While I was standing by the boat at the fuel dock, chatting to the young attendant, I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw Cliff. He was a splash of colour in a Hawaiian shirt, yellow pants and white deck shoes. He was also wearing a porkpie hat and prescription sunglasses. I cannot tell you how pleased I was to see him. After we greeted each other, he said his usual stay with Alison was going to be cut short and he wanted to go out fishing before he left the following day. When I explained that the tides were all wrong and that I’d heard orcas were at Beechy Head and moving toward us, he said he didn’t care—he simply wanted to be out on the water. Despite my joy at seeing him, I was reluctant to take him. I was certain we would not have a single strike and the trip would be for nothing. There was also the question of cost—he would have to shoulder the entire cost himself instead of having it spread over a group of people.

      “None of that matters,” he said.

      I had run out of arguments, so off we went.

      On the way out I contacted some of the local charter skippers by CB radio to find out how they were doing. The results were dismal—none of my reliable sources had seen a salmon in over two hours. With this information in hand and the orcas heading our way, I decided to fish directly in Race Passage off a rock we called RON Blasting. The rock was so named because a notice was written directly on it to warn boaters the peninsula was used by the Royal Canadian Navy to explode ordnance. The large letters were supposed to read RCN Blasting, but instead they appeared to read RON Blasting.

      When we reached RON, I pulled out two medium-weight spinning rods with two saltwater spinning reels and attached forty-gram herring lures. I explained to Cliff that we would drift slowly past this rock, fishing at a depth of thirty pulls. A pull represents about two feet. With no other boats in the vicinity we had an unobstructed drift.

      This is one of my favourite ways of fishing. The engine is turned off and each fisherman has his own rod and feels the moment a fish strikes. On this afternoon the sun was hot and the water inactive so our hundred-yard drifts lasted about twenty minutes before we pulled in our lines and returned to our starting point.

      We talked of politics, grumbling about the poor quality of candidates. Religion floated into the conversation, and we both complained about the poor choice all gods had made when they moulded humans. We talked of family and nearly came to tears trying to express how much we loved our children. We talked of death and how final and pointless it seemed.

      We were so deep in conversation I nearly choked on the dolmades I was eating when Cliff snapped his rod up and shouted, “Fish on!” His rod doubled over. “Maybe I’ve just got bottom.”

      “If you have bottom, the bottom is moving.” I put down my rod to check the drag on Cliff’s reel. As I did the salmon took its first run, racing to the surface and heading toward Victoria. We looked at each other. I shook my head, saying, “If this is another thirty pounder, you’ll be on permanent staff.”

      “I think you just hired me.”

      Working a fifty-foot cruiser when you are alone can be a bit tricky. Sten and I were such a team we scarcely noticed how we covered for each other. But today I was on my own. I cranked in my line, started the engine and slipped us into a slow reverse.

      “Watch out,” I yelled to Cliff. “I’ve put her in reverse, so don’t let your line go slack.”

      Cliff was ahead of me, bringing in line as fast as he could.

      “I’ll put us in neutral as soon as it stops running.”