I've just spent a fantastic five days on Vancouver Island with Damien and Delayne White who are cousins to my brother in law Ross. Unfortunately my digital camera is on the blink so no pictures unfortunately - think of this as a book and use your imagination! I caught the ferry (all six stories of it!) over to Nanimo on Vancouver Island. I hired a compact and got upgraded to a silver golf 5 with mags, tiptronic transmission / gearbox, sunroof...talk about pimp my rental! I drove the 100km to Port Alberni where Damian and Delayne live. The drive was slow, not just due to acclimatising to driving on the right side of the road, but because the island is so indescribably beautiful. Crystal clear alpine lakes seemingly around every corner that simply take your breath away - not that easy to keep your eyes on the road let alone drive on the right side of the road while imagining the huge trout that must live in the depths of these lakes (some up to 200m deep!).
The Whites stay on Sproat lake. Their hospitality was simply legendary and they really made me feel like one of the family. The Island is an outdoor paradise and simply fishing heaven. I fished for pink salmon in the surf on two evenings and caught a small one. I hired a guide for a day and fished for steelhead (sea run rainbow trout) on the stamp river. The river flows strong and wide and seemingly as all water on the island, is crystal clear. The steelhead and salmon don't feed when they are in the river and they are caught only through striking in instinct and aggression. We saw steelhead been 10-12lbs holding at the bottom of the river (a sight to make any fly fisherman weak at the knees). The technique is to get a heavily weighted fly down to them and strip it right in front of them hoping to a strike. And hope we did. But even though I had several follows, I wasn't lucky enough to get a take. We did eventually catch a steelhead of about 10lbs on spinning tackle - what a beauty! I fished with Damian the next day from the bank and lost two probably through shock at actually hooking two!
The rest of our days were spent reading, trying to stay on tubes while being pulled behind the boat at breakneck speed and lying on tubes while floating down the river - pure magic!
It was with sadness and excitement that I left for the next leg of the strengthening ties tour - New Hampshire and the Weiss family reunion!
Many thanks to the Whites for hosting me with such incredible hospitality!
This is the Stamp river where we caught the steelhead. Believe it or not, the river is about 2-3m deep here!
My first and rather small salmon.
Floating down the Stamp river with the girls.
Looking upriver from one of the fishing spots on the Stamp.
10lbs Steelhead.
The view from the White's balcony - breathtaking!
The view from my bedroom - tough waking up to this every morning!
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