FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



In the far Northern waters, the "tyee" commences to run quite early 

 in the year, but it is usually the first week in August before they appear 

 in the neighbourhood of Campbell River and adjacent waters; then big 

 fish may be seen jumping clean out of the water in twos and threes 

 together. Most unfortunately they have the bad taste to prefer the spoon 

 to the fiy, indeed it is quite useless to try the fiy on a fully-grown tyee. 

 Occasionally small spring salmon of ten to fifteen pounds are caught with 

 fly; but, even so, very rarely. 



Most of the fishing in Campbell River is done in a comparatively re- 

 stricted area. South of the mouth runs a long, low, shingly beach, on 

 which an Indian reservation is situated. Along this beach, and two hundred 

 yards from the shore, for about half a mile, some of the best fishing is 

 to be had. North of the river the shore is thickly timbered with trees, 

 many of them two hundred feet high. The boatmen seldom take one more 

 than three-quarters of a mile in this direction; so it will be seen that the 

 fishing is confined to about a mile and a half along the Vancouver Island 

 shore. The salmon go up the river to spawn after waiting near the mouth 

 for varying periods, and are never caught legitimately in the river itself. 



The tackle generally used is a stout twelve or fourteen foot greenheart 

 trolling rod, with two hundred yards or more of heavy '* guttyhunk " 

 line with a trace of wire or the strongest treble gut. However, any ordinary 

 strong English salmon rod and tackle to correspond will serve. The 

 spoons used are about six inches in length. The best killers are the copper 

 and silver, all copper, all silver, and all brass. The wobbling brass spoon 

 probably accounts for more fish than any other, the next best being the 

 copper and silver; the Indians and white men fishing for the market 

 hardly ever go beyond these two. It is a sine qua non with both the wobbler 

 and ordinary spoon that they must be made to wobble and revolve as 

 slowly as possible, for the tyee refuses to take any lure that spins 

 quickly. Another most important detail is to keep one's lure highly 

 polished; some anglers even take out some sort of metal polish so as to 

 furbish up the spoons when they get tarnished by the sea -water. Two 

 heavy weights are usually fixed on the line some way above the trace so 

 as to prevent the spoon catching in the bottom as well as to sink it deep 

 down. 



It is a curious fact that the fish seen playing on the surface never seem 

 to take any lure; I have several times taken off my weights and harled 

 the spoon right through a school of fish jumping all round the boat, but 

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