SATW Canada Travelling Teddy Bear Blog: Bella Bella goes Jigging

Monday, 26 November 2012

Bella Bella goes Jigging

I recently went jigging in Ucluelet, on the western coast of Vancouver Island … and it wasn't to dance.

The jigging I’d like to tell you more about today is a way to catch fish.

Now, there are lots of ways to fish for salmon along British Columbia’s coastline. Last year, for example, my friend Mike Marriott showed me how to troll using downriggers. In Campbell River, I tried row-fishing with Dwayne Mustard, and at Swiftsure Bank, Mike Hovey taught me how to bottom-fish with a star-drag reel and sturdy Penn fishing rod.

On this trip, Captain Don and his able deckhand, Coco, set me up to jig aboard the good ship Long Beach Princess.

Long Beach Princess is a 13-metre-long cruiser that can carry 14 people out fishing at a time.

I would have found the boat beautiful even without its on-board toilet and toasty-warm cabin.

It is part of a whole fleet of 13- and 16-metre-long fishing cruisers that cluster around the Oak Bay Marine Group’s floating resort, Canadian Princess, like ducklings around their mom.

The M.V. (“Motor Vessel”) Canadian Princess became a resort in Ucluelet in 1979, after a 43-year career as a hydrographic survey ship named the William J. Stewart.

Captain Don and Coco gave us a safety talk before we left the dock at sunrise.

We cruised two hours offshore to a fishing area called Big Bank. Here, a shoal about 50 to 100 metres deep holds schools of bait fish (like herring, sandlance, and sardines) that attract hungry salmon and halibut.

Jigging means dropping a heavy lead fishing lure, called a drift-jig, to just off the ocean bottom (or to whatever depth fish are feeding).

Here’s a nice selection of jigging lures:

Do you see the narrow white lure on my line? That’s the drift-jig. I’m just about ready to let the line out:

My buddy Dave helped me get the hang of jigging.

You have to “work” the jig by moving your fishing rod up and down so that the jig flashes and flutters through the water. A hungry salmon or halibut might mistake the lure for a bait fish, and give it a good chomp!

When a salmon hits your lure, you can feel it like a jolt of energy in your fishing rod. You have to “set” the hook by pulling up smartly on the rod, then wind in the line until your fish can be netted.

Here is Dave winding a fish to the boat:

and Coco netting it for him!

Captain Don cut the boat’s engines so that the Long Beach Princess drifted with the currents while we fished. This is why what we did is called “drift-jigging.”

I felt many hits on my jigging lure, brought five salmon (all coho) to the boat, and was able to keep one. In this area, you can only keep coho that were raised in fish hatcheries. Coho that were born in the wild must all be released.

And how can you tell a wild coho from a hatchery coho? Well, hatcheries remove a little fin on the salmon’s back, just next to the tail, that is called the adipose fin. When that fin is missing, and the coho is big enough, you’re allowed to keep it for your supper.

Nearby, people fishing from our sister ship, the Nootka Princess, were having lots of success too.

Our group returned to Ucluelet around 2:00 p.m. with eighteen “keepers” on board, including a couple of chinook, over a dozen hatchery coho, and one nice halibut.

As we cruised back to the Canadian Princess, we passed the Amphitrite Lighthouse at the mouth of Ucluelet Inlet. The lighthouse helps to warn ships away from the dangerous rocks on this weather-beaten coastline.

Ucluelet is pronounced “you-cloo-let.” It means “safe harbour” in the First Nations Nuu-chah-nulth language. The town of about 1,650 people lies 42 kilometres southeast of Tofino.