236 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Salmon Fishing In British Columbia 
By BONNYCASTLE DALE. With Illustrations by the Author and Others 
time I passed the lancewood rod over my head 
as the big fish made a complete circle around the 
craft. Now I began, for the first time in an 
hour, to gain. My reel willingly coaxed him 
in. Foot by foot the stout linen line was re¬ 
trieved, and then a mass .of shining silver slid 
slowly up out of the clear water beside us and 
lay, without a motion of a fin, inside the canoe. 
In an hour-and-a-quarter we had vanquished the 
king of all the salmon, the Spring or Tyee. 
“Sin-a-mokst taht-le-lum,” grunted the guide. 
“Ikt-tak-a-mo-nuk,” laughed Fritz, to show his 
knowledge of Chinook. 
“I think you are both too high,” I answered. 
The Indian had guessed seventy pounds and 
Fritz, in his boyish enthusiasm, had hazarded a 
hundred. But the cold-fact scales gave us sixty- 
one pounds when we got ashore. This is a big 
catch, but nothing in quantity. Look at a friend 
of mine with over a hundred and twenty-five 
pounds for four hours' work; and they have been 
taken almost thirty pounds heavier than our big 
silver beauty. 
Anywhere in the Gulf of Georgia where the 
rivers debouch—Cowichan, Campbell River, off 
Victoria, Near Race Rocks—in a dozen places 
within ten miles of Vancouver you may troll for 
and catch these monarchs of the Salmonidae 
during January, February, March and April, and 
Cohoes in September and October. Then comes 
the glorious fishing of the Steelhead, here called 
a trout. In fact it is the pure Atlantic salmon 
in Pacific waters, and all the other so-called sal¬ 
mon that die at maturity every four years are 
a species that might well be called Pacific sea- 
trout. One look at the tails will confirm this, as 
well'as will the general habits of the fish. 
If you love the gentle art, follow faithfully 
the “cut-throat” trout. 
In front of the little bungalow that I built on the 
harbor edge of Sooke rose a big glacial boulder, 
O y POOTS was at the stern. Fritz amiably- 
lolled in the bow and I was very busy 
amidships of the big cedar war-canoe, 
controlling a very restive- spring salmon. We 
Why that fish did not get off puzzles me. I 
perforce gave him his own way, as l felt sure the 
canoe must turn over in those huge wages of the 
Princess. Then—oh. then! I felt him tugging 
Cut throat Trout Running up the Rapids. 
were off the harbor of Victoria, right in the 
path of the giant freighters, the huge Californian 
passenger vessels, the giant floating hotels of the 
C. P. R. and the G. T. R„ called common ferries, 
in the most travelled waters of the Straits of 
Fuca. Tugs screamed to the right, great 
“swifters” of logs swirled past on the left. 
“Tramps” loomed up ahead in the dense fog, 
fishing power boats “put,-put-putted” past, but, 
as I heard one fishing tug captain remark, as he 
swept by on the tide with twenty thousand sal¬ 
mon in the three scows behind him, “Look out! 
Can’t you see the man’s fast to a fish?” He 
had 19,999 more than my one prospective spring- 
salmon, yet I wager he would have happily ex¬ 
changed places with me to have the chance of 
landing the big animal that was boring away 
down in the greenish blue water. Three times 
already had be broached, a great shining beauty, 
and perhaps he did not rattle the two copper 
spoons that projected like a jaw fin. 
"Wah-hoo-!! Wah-hoo!!!” yelled O’poots, the 
Kwakiutl guide, as a great white hull, throbbing 
with the power of her huge engines, reared over 
us like the side of some huge white house, and 
slid by in the murk. We rose and fell and tossed 
on her “wash.” We stook up almost on end in 
her "drag,” and I thought surely the fish was 
gone then. We leaped so straight up in the 
surge and fell off so terribly on the ebb that even 
the case-hardened Indian grunted and grabbed 
the gunwale, and Fritz squealed like a puppy as 
he pitched headlong into -my arms, rod-encum¬ 
bered as they were. 
A Good Catch of Spring Salmon Taken off Denman’s Island, B. C. 
away ten fathoms below me, starting to swim carried who shall say how many thousand miles, 
in -a great circle about the canoe. Time after how many thousand years ago, and placed di- 
