OMED: A wilderness odyssey in which the protagonists are men of stout demeanor paired with boyish enthusiasm for piscatorial pursuits; and subsequent to an incautious decision to set forth on an ill-conceived essay for genus salmo giganticus get the bird (twice!) and go straight  to the dogs.  The only flaw in the lugubrious narrative concerning the peripathetic photographers to which you are about to be exposed is that Fred did not write the tale under the pseudonym, Prince Rupert; for no man alive is more like unto a pirate, nor better displays in pantaloons.  
 
 It was an opportunity to join a wilderness cruise on the west coast of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island…a jaunt organized by a Portland yachtsman seeking  photo coverage of his diving expedition to locate the bones of a British frigate sunk by Indians almost three centuries ago.  Myself and a partner in our modest  movie and still photo studio signed up for the trip…which whetted our salmon fishing interests beyond any fascination for artifacts-diving.

We flew to the 65-foot treasure-seeking yacht’s anchorage in Barkley Sound and then our craft proceeded northward into a labryinth of coastal inlets unsullied by civilization.  Diving, and pictures thereof, were the order of the day. Though we were amidst waters which should host some of the north Pacific’s prize salmonoids, our host insisted upon photo coverage in lieu of any angling attempts.  After several days of shooting the divers’ excitement in finding the British wreck and recovering relics, the end of the expedition loomed.  My partner and I schemed that we would not be deterred from at least one attempt to snare a mighty Chinook before returning to civilization and less promising fishing opportunities.

A providence of fog

Our chance came when heavy fog rolled in off the ocean the night before our scheduled departure and continued to inhibit our mother ship’s sailing as dawn approached.  My partner and I had spotted a likely looking waterway two miles from our anchorage…the outlet of a river which should be home to salmon due to return for spawning. We rolled from our bunks at 4 a.m., intent upon borrowing one of the two 14-foot outboard runabouts on our yacht’s deck.  It was dark, it was damp, the fog was cloying, but we had figured a compass heading to our destination and we quietly launched forth.

 "Der Fallschirmjäger" (or "Die Bonkinzenoggin")

Our navigation proved accurate.  As a dawning sun began to thin the fog somewhat, we found the river mouth and motored our way slowly toward what we foresaw as salmon Valhalla.  The riverbanks began to narrow and we stayed midstream, passing through a silver thicket of dead cedar snags reaching into the mist.  Then our reverie was shattered by an impossibly loud shriek from above.  An eagle’s nest crowned one of the passing snags, and the maternal occupant sprung into the air.  In disbelief we hit the floorboards as what resembled nothing so much as World War II footage of German Stuka dive bombing attacks terrorized us.  After several screaming passes with talons outstretched within inches of our cowering selves, mama eagle decided to return home.  

Onward to our reward

We pushed onward, around a slight bend in the waterway and entered what appeared to be the short estuary’s head…a broad shallow, fog-laced bay.  This was it!  Our vision of where record salmon lurked.  We cut the motor, nervously unlimbered our fishing gear, and became aware of a furious splashing in the waters around us.  Visibility wasn’t great,  but you could make out the water being roiled by hundreds of fins.  My partner was first to cast, and hooked prey within moments.  The fish put up a short but worthy fight before being reeled near our hull.  As I snapped the handle of our net into place, my companion let out an expletive almost as worthy as that eagle’s voice.  He had recognized his catch as a large dogfish shark, scourge of anyone who has fished salmon waters from Puget Sound north. (Illus: the wily dogfish, which often poses as a Chinook salmon.)

Bad luck, but surely only a fellow traveler with those Chinook we still imagined were rolling about in the bay.  We were disabused of that notion after hauling four or five more dogfish into sight.  The sun by now had burned away enough fog that, reluctantly, nay furiously, we saw that the myriad fins slicing the bay’s surface all bore the solid, triangular shape of the shark family.

Sturzkampfflugzeug (or "Gedamnbirdenbomberbaken")

An aerial farewell:

Back to the mother ship, fishless and frustrated, and as we retraced our route, we had forgotten the aerial attack of an hour before.  Now there was little fog left, and our flying foe spotted us from afar.  She launched into a series of sorties that surpassed her earlier attacks.  We motored on, glancing off stumps as I blindly steered our craft while stretched out below our gunnels.  Finally, mom again retired to her aerie and we sat up to contemplate an ignominious return to shipboard.  Our captain was furious that we had taken off without notice, while our shipmates were relentless in their disparaging of our angling prowess and ongoing in their disbelief in our tale of eagle and dogfish.  To make matters worse, in our haste to sneak in a salmon foray, we had forgotten to take any of our photo gear along, so had no documentation of our trials.

Oh well, the diving goals of the expedition were met, with recovery of Royal Navy artifacts from the sloop Tonkin earning a prominent display in the Royal Canadian Naval museum in Esquimalt, near Victoria, B.C.

©2002 Fred Delkin, who is the Editor of this august publication, even if it is May.