460 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

A black bear is never a problem until it’s a problem.

I wholeheartedly agree about the cougar comments. Having once been stalked by one, I don’t care to go through that experience ever again.

You guide didn’t bust a gut laughing at your emergency 22’s?

[AllseeingEye]

/\.....No not at all; he says the bear spray/bear bombs we're taking will be fine.

 

I perused the online 2019 North Island Explorer Guide last night and as expected no mention or recommendation about firearms for those venturing into the back country or dense bush. They offer the usual advice re: wildlife - travel in a group (there are 5 of us), make noise, never run away in the event a wild animal is encountered, make yourself look big (I'm 275 pounds so that's no problem).

 

We will have bear bombs which just for the hell of it we fired off in 2007 while fishing a remote lake deep in the Rockies, which fed into the Athabasca River: they work. I was surprised at the range too, which was in the neighborhood of 20+ meters. Any animal getting a snoot-ful of one of those beauties won't want to hang around. And that area is Brown & Grizzly Bear central; in ten days we only ever saw one bear and that was well off to the side of the Glacier Highway as we whizzed by it at 100kph....

 

Finally it turns out our airBB is owned by a friend of one of my old HS pals from Mt Doug. When I queried her about the possibility of running into an undesirable critter she downplayed the odds of that happening; she's lived in Pt McNeill for 15 years, hiking and kayaking all over the region without incident, so we're good. Now onward....and taut lines!

[Mike K.]

Yeah yeah, you’ll be fine. I’m just pulling your chain.

[AllseeingEye]

/\.....no worries, all good Mike . Stopped by Island Outfitters yesterday and chatted with Ward (one of the owners) and the gang. Several of them routinely hunt in the north island area and they think even bear spray is probably overkill. His suggestion for our party of 5? "Wear bells". Wasn't kidding either. Good enough for me.

 

And naturally I dropped a few bills on a new steelhead rig while I was there as we prep for the trip.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to see an old (very old) brand on hand, namely Penn reels. The standard these days are Daiwa and Shimano. My very first reel, for my 8th birthday, was a Penn although naturally - inevitably - this trusty US reel is now made in China like everything else. If I manage to tie into a feisty steelie we'll see how well it stands up: hopefully better than Chinese bridge welds, dog food or children's toys. For $300 it better be good for at least one northern steelhead...

 

 

 

 

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[AllseeingEye]

This is despicable: that the west coast fishery, specifically the Fraser River Chinook run, one of the most iconic and economically important in Canada, has been permitted to get to this enfeebled, critical state:

 

https://www.cbc.ca/n...eased-1.5100850

 

Is there a more ineffective government organization at any level than DFO? How can a country that stood by and watched a 500 year old cod fishery on the east coast get obliterated then literally repeat history and do likewise here, finally acting in all likelihood with a (far) too little and much too late approach?

 

I fully support any closure that is backed by science. Interior Chinook, Interior steel-head, sturgeon, resident Orca, cod, several coho runs - all them are in a bad spot. And they didn't get there because of bad mojo or voodoo majik. They mostly got there because of human activity and/or indecision and inaction for political or other reasons.

 

Yes a shifting and warmer climate, combined with habitat erosion and destruction are inevitably taking their own toll on this key indicator species, but what is especially galling is that DFO refuses to address the single biggest beast in the water, namely the gill-net. I don't give a damn if its commercial, Native, or non-native: we must get rid of gill-nets on the Fraser river and its estuary. Period. The gill-net knows no boundaries.

 

First Nations need to use fish wheels if necessary so that the by-catch can be reduced, and show true leadership and real stewardship on our local waters in the process. More critically for the foreseeable future there should be no commercial gill-net opening on the Fraser or its estuary. DFO and minister Wilkinson have completely dropped the ball, and who pays the price - lots of (human) stakeholders to be sure, but the fish above all, not to mention ultimately the huge swath of the BC food chain that depends upon this key species. Its appalling and a disgrace the situation has been allowed to get to this point.

[PraiseKek]

Stewardship and leadership? Have you ever been to a reservation?

[AllseeingEye]

/\....I am doing my level best at being charitable...

[Mike K.]

The US is considering permitting the Makah nation out of Washington to hunt three grey whales per year for the next ten years.

The species was once endangered but estimates show there may be as many as 27,000 living along the west coast.

[lanforod]

^ wow. Hunting whales will spike all kinds of emotions in people. Worse than baby seals these days.

[PraiseKek]

So now that recreational fishing is essentially closed on the island for the season... How about those steelies?

[AllseeingEye]

Just got back from four days in the high country around and just west and north of Sayward; for those who think VI "wilderness" starts and ends with Sooke, I suggest you get out there, and by that I mean get really out there, because by God we live on a beautiful island....

 

The locals were extremely accommodating and very friendly. Our group of five stayed at Fisherboy Park, which I would happily recommend. Suspect they haven't seen the last of us either. Its a combination small motel/general store and RV park just three blocks off the main road:

 

http://www.fisherboypark.com/

 

Particularly north of town we saw remote areas of the island that I'd wager 99.999% of VI's have never seen. Took us a day of studying MoF topographic maps to truly understand the back-road network of the Salmon, Adam, Eve and White river ecosystems - all prime steel-head rivers BTW, especially the Salmon River - but once we figured out where we needed to go, wow-eee!

 

Using Sayward as our base, we focused on the Salmon and Eve Rivers in particular, traversing the Salmon Main, Adam and Eve Main fire break back roads respectively, looking specifically for 'off the map' river access to both, and boy did we find it in spades. In every spot we found our group had that area entirely to ourselves to fish how, when and where as we saw fit.

 

Fishing this type of country BTW isn't just pulling up to a river or lake-shore in your rig, getting kitted out and tossing a line in. You have to do your homework and really study those Forestry maps often for hours, and then above all get out and do the physical legwork, much of which is trial and error, in remote and usually heavy terrain. Saturday was more doing this and less actual fishing, but once we found a certain very remote pool on the Eve River, we bagged a steelhead and a a few rainbows within about half an hour.

 

Bottom line among the group we hauled in several smaller rainbow trout and two steelies in all, all catch and release naturally - oh and not a bear or cougar in sight but plenty of elk.

 

Just got in and am pretty gassed so I'll post some pics later. Here is one north of Sayward showing part of the Insular Mountain Range, which are the true westernmost peaks of the Pacific Cordillera. We're at about 2500-3000' feet here and as you can see there is still a fairly healthy snow-pack on these peaks higher up. The sad part of penetrating these remote areas is that you can see up close the horrific logging practices of decades past including vast swaths of cut block TFL's where quite obviously no re-planting occurred and the amount of waste/wood slash that was just left behind was frankly staggering. In those places, if the land ever recovers at all, it will literally take decades if not centuries. 

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Edited by AllseeingEye, 22 April 2019 - 05:41 PM.

[Mike K.]

That area was most likely relatively recently logged (for the nth time) and will be logged at some future date. Tree planters are likely already scheduled in for replanting at some point but there’s only so much they can do every season.

Can’t wait to see the other photos. Sounds like you had a blast.

[AllseeingEye]

That area was most likely relatively recently logged (for the nth time) and will be logged at some future date. Tree planters are likely already scheduled in for replanting at some point but there’s only so much they can do every season.

Can’t wait to see the other photos. Sounds like you had a blast.

I wish that were the case, but sadly not. The entire area had clearly been logged decades ago, one of the group is an environmental auditor with lots of experience in the field; he estimated that particular cut was at least 50 or more years old. Not only was there a thick carpet of slash overlaying virtually the entire landscape, but as the stumps and associated waste wood is long dead and extremely dry, it also potentially provides a colossal amount of "fuel" should there be a lightning strike and resulting fire. Until all that waste wood is cleaned up little to nothing can grow there.

 

Moreover the required amount of greenbelt timber companies were historically required to leave untouched along either bank of the major rivers was in places as little as ten meters. There are many factors that contribute to the stress many fish populations on the coast are currently experiencing, and this is certainly one of them. Higher up on surrounding hillsides second and even third gen trees are clearly visible - its obvious where replanting has occurred. Presumably those were later cuts when forest practices were more enlightened and/or forestry regulations were more rigidly enforced or updated.

 

Another phenomenon were sections of the logging roads where younger trees and saplings by both sides of the road had recently been cut down by chain saws, presumably to widen the roadbed and reduce driving hazards on blind curves; yet in other sections and sometimes extending for several hundred meters, similar trees were all snapped and shredded to within inches of the base of the tree - not cut. We guessed perhaps by logging trucks themselves, whether deliberately or simply because their loads were too wide for the roads and couldn't avoid them. Impossible to know.

 

Attached pics are mostly of the upper and lower Eve River - very remote, you need to work to get to these sections of that river; the last two taken on Saturday which was unusually warm for that place and time of year, is the Salmon River, one of the last great steel head ecosystem strongholds on the west coast. As with the Eve (or Adam or White Rivers), you need to thoroughly review the MoF topographic maps to figure out in advance where you want to go to give yourself a good shot at getting off the grid river access.

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Edited by AllseeingEye, 22 April 2019 - 11:52 PM.

[Mike K.]

It wasn’t logged 50 years ago. Harvesting on crown land requires replanting, it’s a federal regulation. If the logging had occurred 50 years ago that logging road would be near impossible to traverse.

I know the landscape looks bleak, but the flora bounces back within several years. Replanting occurs within several years as well. The remaining material also acts as excellent fertilizer for the soil.

You can easily age clearcuts by seeing what has naturally grown or not grown, and flora moves in very quickly (it’s not like loggers throw salt on the ground as they retreat).

 

If you can provide me with a geo location I can tell you when that cut occurred, if you'd like.

[Hotel Mike]

Thanks for the travelog ASE.

[AllseeingEye]

It wasn’t logged 50 years ago. Harvesting on crown land requires replanting, it’s a federal regulation. If the logging had occurred 50 years ago that logging road would be near impossible to traverse.

I know the landscape looks bleak, but the flora bounces back within several years. Replanting occurs within several years as well. The remaining material also acts as excellent fertilizer for the soil.

You can easily age clearcuts by seeing what has naturally grown or not grown, and flora moves in very quickly (it’s not like loggers throw salt on the ground as they retreat).

 

If you can provide me with a geo location I can tell you when that cut occurred, if you'd like.

No: completely wrong. for whatever reason you seem determined to change this from a simple fishing report to an ideological debate on forest practices.

 

That you are unfamiliar with them is evident from your very first statement Mike - which is wrong, plain and simple. Forest practices in Canada - including governance regarding replanting regulations - are a provincial matter for the 90%+ of forested land in this country directly controlled by the provinces and territories. The feds are responsible for 4% of the total, mostly held in national parks and on DND properties (neither of which is applicable to the Sayward region), and the remainder, roughly 6%, is in private hands. So that you can reference it that is all made perfectly clear on the Natural Resources Canada web page.

 

In BC - again for your information - it has only been since 1987 that BC provincial law mandated that "....100% of the forest harvested on Crown Land be reforested within 3-5 years". Our group all have eyes that work quite well, especially when augmented by glasses and contact lens'. Rest quite assured the cut blocks we witnessed were worked well before 1987, which is barely 30 years ago....

[Mike K.]

Sure, provincial it is. That was a slip of the tongue.

Are you able to pin point the location of this clearcut? In all the years of backroad travels on this island I’ve never encountered a 50+ year old barren piece of former forest land, and I’m perplexed how nature hasn’t bounced back in all that time and why that is.

I’m bewildered by this fluke, to be honest. I didn’t mean to be a jerk, ASE, sorry about that.

[AllseeingEye]

Sometimes its worth getting up at 5am on a holiday Monday. Caught a boatload of rainbow (pardon the pun) this morning right off the dock at Durrance Lake. Only kept this guy who will taste mighty fine tonight....

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[lanforod]

Durrance must be warm. Doesn't that make the fish less tasty?

[On the Level]

Makes me want to go on a road trip!  Thanks for the posts ASE.