The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 14.4
DOING A WAVE THING: Around Vancouver Island in 102 Days
Words: Rob Lyon 2023-06-16 10:36:47
“A drizzly morning at the mouth of Dakota Creek, approaching Cape Scott at the very northernmost tip of Vancouver Island, BC. This photo and others shown here were taken on subsequent trips around Vancouver Island, as all the photos from my inaugural circumnavigation in 1994 were unfortunately lost in an office fire.” Photo: Rob Lyon
I began to feel constricted, hampered by increasing crowds and regulations, by the linear, repetitive nature of rivers. Asleep at water’s edge, I dreamed of bigger, wilder adventure.
It was mid-July 1994. From my home in the San Juan Islands of Washington state, I was 10 days into a kayaking odyssey that would ultimately deliver me completely around the largest island along the west coast of the Americas, Canada’s 12,000-square-mile Vancouver Island, BC. The idea had come about during my years on the Deschutes River while guiding and fishing and getting my first taste of drifting away from worldly trappings into remote, roadless, primitive terrain.
On the Deschutes, I’d relished handling a McKenzie dory in brisk currents and the hunt for summer steelhead on the fly was nothing short of a holy grail. We took the better part of a week to bring anglers through the roadless sections of canyon, then a busman’s holiday for the likes of us as we hit the river again on our days off. But after five or six years of this the bloom had come off the rose. I began to feel constricted, hampered by increasing crowds and regulations, by the linear, repetitive nature of rivers. Asleep at water’s edge, I dreamed of bigger, wilder adventure. Ocean, sandy beaches, a kayak to travel just off the surf zone and to ride the waves into camp at day’s end. And, of course, to fish.
Fast forward five years and I had moved north to Washington state’s San Juan Islands and met a woman named Pamela. There was no arguing with this gorgeous blonde who introduced me to ocean kayaking. In the summer of 1993, she invited me on a trip, an annual three-week pilgrimage for her and her compadres north to the western shore of Vancouver Island.
For this trip, we crossed the coastal mountains and paddled out a long inlet and headed north, stopping to camp on outlying islands along the way and arriving finally at a beautiful, long, crescent-shaped white-sand beach with a freshwater stream issuing from beneath a temporal rainforest canopy. The vibe was primordial.
Pamela and her friends were artisans and musicians. We ran naked on warm sand in fresh sea breeze and dove into the surf to cool off. We paddled out daily to catch enough fish to feed a crew of 12. We played baseball. The carvers set to work on a totem pole and the sound of mbira and drum and song mixed with the cough of waves and whoosh of wind around a fire each night. We made an ad hoc hot tub from a tarp placed in a hole in the sand and built a smokehouse chinked with seaweed to smoke the surplus salmon we caught. But unlike everyone else, after five or six days of this I was itching to explore, to trek—not hunker down—and vowed that someday soon I would.
That night a chorus of thousands of leaping fish—the splashing susurrus like rain on a metal roof—waxed and waned with the cycle of tide, an eerie, haunting sound.
The following summer, during the first weeks spent paddling north along the busy inside waters off the island, I lined out drills and practiced technique. I was new to kayaking and had only raft and river dory experience to parlay. Blisters on my hands had begun to callous over and a nicked wrist joint was responding well to a pre-trip cortisone shot and daily ibuprofen. Currents and wind were often challenging, and I learned to ride eddies and paddle in the lee of structure. My boat was long and watertight with a molded seat, a sit-on-top craft derived in part from the surfboard concepts of my southern California roots. It had the added benefit of making self-rescue a simple matter of turning the kayak back over if flipped.
After working out the kinks, I was eager for the relative solitude of the north island a week away.
Late one afternoon, about midway up the island’s east coast, I caught sight of fish activity at the mouth of the Oyster River. I went ashore, dragged the boat well up onto the beach, threw off my PFD and walked around to get the blood flowing. Meanwhile, I could see a guy walking down the beach toward me.
This was Rory Glennie, who with his wife and family and a dozen other fishermen, was waiting for the tide to bring the fish within casting range. Friendly as a hound, he walked right up and said: “Welcome to Vancouver Island,” and stuck out his big hand.
It was a fortuitous meeting and Rory and I became good friends. Rory contacted his colleagues in the BC Steelhead Society further north in Campbell River, and when I showed up, they had a room for me at the Campbell River Lodge, a hallowed destination for local guides who row their dories up to the weigh station on the back lawn where the big king (or Tyee) salmon are weighed in. Roderick Haig-Brown had been a member of the famed Tyee Club and lived just upriver. I walked out through the bar onto the patio and stood on the riverbank, looking out on the water. After so much unfettered liquid presence it seemed strange, channeled as it was.
The town of Campbell River has always been a layover on island visits. Over the years I’ve spent exploring the island, I’ve had the pleasure of staying at Haig-Brown’s farmhouse, now a bed-and-breakfast or Writer in Residence facility depending on the season. The basement was Haig-Brown’s keep—a quiet, bunker-like room with ground level windows, bookshelves and a desk replete with tying vise and tools neatly kept up. During a later stay I awoke in the middle of the night to a loud crash in the orchard; come morning, Sandra Chow, the docent, told me a black bear had ripped down a pear tree.
Arriving in Port Hardy a week and a half after my stay in Campbell River, I did a quick interview with the local paper and slept under the ramp on the government pier. It was a rough night, having scraped out a site for my sleeping pad between seagull shit and mummified salmon offal, but the worst was awakening well after midnight when the bars closed to the sound of drunken fishermen tromping down the ramp—a foot above my face—while several bereaved and equally drunk women screamed curses at the top of their lungs. The next morning, I could not get on the water soon enough.
I paddled out of Hardy Bay through a raft of breeching sea lions and headed northwest down the long, glacier-scoured Goletas Channel and the last leg out to the tip of the island at Cape Scott. Several hours into the day I caught sight of jumping salmon near shore and more sea lions popping up. I nosed up onto a steep cobble beach at Songhees Creek and set to work.
I threw towering back casts up the steep beach then fired out to a cove full of fins and tails. It was fine fishing throughout the evening, and I had a little pink grilling over a driftwood fire by dusk. Beyond Port Hardy the vibe grew distinctly wilder. There would be no more towns or cities aside from one tiny ghost fishing village for many weeks ahead.
That night a chorus of thousands of leaping fish—the splashing susurrus like rain on a metal roof—waxed and waned with the cycle of tide, an eerie, haunting sound. A week later it was the hollow flute of gray whales blowing in a little cove throughout the night. And a week after that, the boom of surf and whoosh of sea wind soughing the rainforest canopy.
I had been over a month paddling up the inside, learning the ropes, buffing out the body, and I felt ready—more than a little scared, but committed and eager. I suspected the open water just around the Cape would up the vibrancy to a new level, and I was right.
I inched around the tip of the island a few days later and my jaw dropped. Swell boomed like cannon fire against rocks and over hidden reefs, tossing great plumes of white foam skyward. I was terrified to think I had to paddle through it. With my heart in my mouth, I weaved my way through the crashing. Not a minute later, in the middle of this chaos, I glanced to my left to see a couple in shorts and hiking boots sitting together on a rock, doing lunch and smiling, waving at me as if I were on stage.
This juxtaposition was too much, and I did not give them a second look, let alone return the wave. I made it through the gauntlet unscathed that day and gradually, over the next couple months, I got more comfortable. As long as I stayed loose in the hips and reacted smoothly and intuitively to the variety of pressures to the boat, balance was seldom an issue. Often, I would think how fear and excitement are two sides of the same coin. As I came to discern what was actually a threat from what was not, I had a much better time.
The entire north coast had a vibe all its own. The shoreline was bare and rocky with scattered places to safely get ashore, sometimes miles apart. The legendary north Pacific swell was deep and heavy, like riding a merry-go-round. I saw few boats; most steer well clear of the dangerous inshore waters.
I was well offshore one day when I spotted what looked to be a drunken shark swimming toward me and sporting a three-foot-tall fin that flopped back and forth like a luffing sail. It was a mola mola, or giant sunfish, of 500 pounds or more. I paddled alongside it for a while and the big fish swam beside me, completely nonplussed.
As I paddled from camp to camp, I often trolled a six-inch tandem hooked bait fish pattern not far behind the boat for salmon, a practice the Canadians called “bucktailing.” Every so often I would check for seaweed on the hook by making a forward cast; I could tell by the sound alone if it was fouled—a flutter meant seaweed.
I relied on fresh fish for my protein. If I hadn’t trolled up something by the time I approached the beach each day, I’d look around for a likely spot, bite off the fly and tie on a metal jig. Turns out a fly rod is ideal for jigging. Around kelp beds and rocks the fish—rockfish, bass and lingcod—were plentiful. When I was weathered in, I’d harvest goose barnacles which, dredged in olive oil and tamari, were tasty, a kind of poor man’s clam. Mussels and oysters were off the menu because of the threat of red tide, but I did catch my share of Dungeness crab in a portable crab trap.
There was deep satisfaction in fishing for sustenance. Most often, I fished more to meet that biological imperative rather than for the thrill. Excitement was a given sitting in a small craft at the ocean’s edge. But there were moments. Sight casting to coho at the surface was ultimate for me, a kind of dream come true. The sudden shriek of the reel while trolling followed by the splash of a salmon behind the boat always raised my pulse. The violent jerk at the end of the line while jigging and watching the deep, graceful darting of the rod in response was a daily pleasure.
At Winter Harbor I picked up a box of supplies at the tiny post office, open only a few days each week. I posted dispatches for various magazines and the local newspaper. From there it was about 10 miles to Brooks Bay at the northern side of the great cape.
October came along and the weather began to change. Increasing sou’easterlies made travel problematic. Storms were on the increase, and I loved them.
British explorer James Cook tagged Brooks Peninsula the Cape of Storms. At six miles long and three miles wide, it’s a nasty piece of work if you don’t time it right, but with a pair of orcas accompanying me, I arrived safely on the south shore, the lee side of the cape, and made a beeline for a beach where I found my girlfriend and 15 of her friends. They’d come for a reunion trip and leaving them behind a week later was an emotional nadir for me.
On September 23rd, about two and a half months since I’d left my home on Lopez Island, WA, I was encamped in a nameless cove a mile south of Cape Beale. I had just sat down in the sand to nurse my evening ale and enjoy the sunset when I noticed activity on the water. I pegged it for a herring school, then I saw a fish roll, far bigger than any herring, and I figured it for a school of black bass. Might be fun, I thought. I stood up and tipped the last of my ale and caught a glimpse of a black back and a silver flank, then another. Salmon!
I ran to the kayak debating whether to rig up my trout rod and do the scene justice or grab the salmon rod that was already set up. I took the high road and anxiously strung up the lighter rod, glancing repeatedly at the schooling fish and praying they didn’t move further offshore. I dug out my fly book for something big and bouncy to splash down and get their attention. If I could get these guys chasing a sofa pillow like a Tom & Jerry cartoon, I would have to pinch myself.
I had to drive a tight loop to get that hairball to the fish, but it didn’t take long to get their attention, like tossing a bone to a pack of hungry dogs. I struck the first fish that closed its mouth over my fly. He bolted west as I cupped the rim of the reel and gently braked the run.
Later, as the oil dripping from my salmon fillet sizzled in the embers of the fire, I cracked a second beer in celebration, dug my heels into the cooling sand and felt just about as satisfied as I could ever remember feeling. The 4- to 8-pound class is my fighting weight and the evening’s action had felt so distinctly climactic that it seemed some lifelong angling criteria had finally been met. Indeed, casting barefoot in the sand to surface-feeding salmon on a wilderness seashore was my perfect storm.
October came along and the weather began to change. Increasing sou’easterlies made travel problematic. Storms were on the increase, and I loved them. It validated that rare experience of sanctuary, huddled comfortably in my roomy The North Face dome. I had a traveling library, including the epic Mists of Avalon. And I had some of BC’s finest spirits gifted by my new Canadian friends to help alchemize the moment and create a level of unprecedented immersion. I tried not to be done before I actually was. One of the sweetest aspects of the journey was duration, and how there, how suspended in the present moment I felt with no drive toward arrival nor longing and preparation for return. But nearing journey’s end it became harder not to begrudge the opportunity to accelerate the end game.
One day, in the middle of a tedious stretch of water, my extraneous thought train wound to a stop, like a roulette wheel slowly coming to rest. I had nothing much to think about that I hadn’t already thought about to death...
It was cooler in the mornings and often drizzly, and slipping naked into a skanky wetsuit required considerable willpower. I remained in good shape, but I was running lean and scruffy and a little rummy at times. My glasses were taped together and there was sand in everything. While the rummy-ness was infrequent, a pervasive state of languor remained with me throughout the end of the trip. I once thought it was due to living so close to breaking waves and the nitrogen released, but now I’m not so sure. It was reminiscent of a lack of sleep, but I slept long and hard most every night. Whatever the reason it was not at all unpleasant, and so I call it languor; I could nap in a heartbeat, something I’d never managed before in my life.
At this point, the paddling felt slow and laborious; it was a large and heavy boat as kayaks go. Though I had a spinnaker I would throw up from time to time, mostly it was a one speed pony. One day, in the middle of a tedious stretch of water, my extraneous thought train wound to a stop, like a roulette wheel slowly coming to rest. I had nothing much to think about that I hadn’t already thought about to death and I realized how completely I was lost in the throes of a mentally projected life at home. Looking back now, the existential transition from compulsive thinking to simply being became the surprising, spiritual leitmotif of my journey.
Paddling offshore around this time, I glanced out at the waves rising up and breaking ashore, but this time I saw them differently. Where before I’d seen a wave, I now saw ocean doing a wave thing. The wave was not a wave so much as an expression of its root source. I was stunned and knew somehow that every form, every thing, every being was in the same boat.
I had increasing civilization on the chart ahead and would soon enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca, leading like a birth canal to the San Juans tucked up neatly at the head of the passage like a womb. The final leg provided a tour of BC lighthouses. From a visit at Cape Beale the night before my encounter with the salmon I made my way to the light at Carmanah Point, where I stayed a couple nights in the Coast Guard auxiliary building and shared Canadian Thanksgiving with the lighthouse keeper and their family. I taught the family’s boys how to play Horse and Around the World on their basketball court/helipad. Finally, I made the lighthouse on Trial Island, a tiny bit of rock and sand off bustling provincial capital Victoria, which looked like Oz all lit up at night.
A few days later I surfed ashore at the same beach I had launched from 102 days earlier. I had been unable to contact the Marine operator and so Pamela had no idea I was back. I dug around in the hold of the boat and found one last can of ale, sat down in my stinking wet suit, leaned against a log and drank the beer down. Before long, a couple out for a stroll found me and called in the cavalry.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.