Raining Fish
Wednesday Aug 13th – It poured down rain all night sitting at the docks in Victoria. We woke up to cloudy skies and the rain continuing. A lazy morning hoping it would let up. Realizing it wasn’t going to, I prepared the fishing gear to try and catch a salmon in the Strait of Juan de Fuca just outside Victoria harbor.
Still pouring rain we left the Victoria docks at 9:50am – no set destination in mind – just the determination to catch a fish. Just outside the harbor – rain still coming down hard – we lowered the downrigger.
5 minutes in – Julie driving the boat, me and Skylar watching for a bite, I see the rod go crazy! I grab the rod – Julie goes to neutral and grabs the net – up with the downrigger, all is ready to land the fish. He wasn’t coming in easy though. Just as I get him 20’ from the boat he would take off time and time again. Finally I got a good glimpse as he rolled on the surface just 10’ from the boat. Then he made another run out to sea. He looked huge! Julie started freaking out saying she can’t believe how big he is and she has no idea how to net him. Finally he comes within a couple feet of the boat, lays sideways on the surface and heads right under the swim step. I knew that if he got under the swim step he had a good chance of getting tangled in the boat, so I gently pulled him away from the swim step closer to the net. Luckily his head goes right in the net but Julie can’t get him up in the boat. I set the pole down while the two of us lift him in the boat. We couldn’t believe our eyes – he didn’t even fit in the net. For the next 10 minutes we all celebrated like crazy people!
We fished a little more with no luck then decided to take our winnings and get out of there. The Royal Victoria Yacht Club was just 10.44nm away down the coast so we decided to use our reciprocal moorage privileges. A great place to clean the fish and stay the night. Once docked Skylar and I cleaned the fish – the fillets were huge! We didn’t have a scale but the fish was 38” long – a really nice King Salmon.
