Column: Embracing your inner caveman

By Thomas Winterhoff

First published on September 17, 2003.

Copyright © Thomas Winterhoff

Civilization has come a long way since the days when mankind’s very existence depended on the ability of every fur-clad troglodyte to venture out into the hinterland and hunt down animals to keep his family fed.

Nowadays, of course, city dwellers have no pressing need to load up the fishing spears, bows and arrows or buckshot and head out in search of prey. Most of the meat and fish we eat today is produced by large-scale agricultural conglomerates, which deliver their goods to the supermarket already wrapped up in shiny plastic.

So when I was presented with the opportunity over the B.C. Day long weekend to get back to my primitive roots and go foraging for food as my forefathers once did, I just couldn’t turn it down. A friend of mine who lives up-Island invited me to go fishing with him for spring salmon, which were just starting to show up in local waters.

Even though I don’t eat a lot of meat or fish, there was something very compelling about the idea of slipping into the role of “the mighty hunter”, bringing home a huge chunk of raw meat and slapping it down on the kitchen table to the astonishment of my adoring wife.

Although I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the great outdoors camping or hiking over the years, my fishing experiences have been few and far between – and not entirely encouraging. The first such outing I can recall was with my Dad in Penticton when I was a lad of only five or six. At that age, I couldn’t quite understand the point of standing around for two hours in a frigid wind waiting to hook an elusive trout, especially when the concession stand down the road already had delicious-smelling hot dogs ready and waiting on the grill.

A few years later, my father and I sought out a trout pond near our home in Port Coquitlam. It had reportedly been well-stocked with fish, almost guaranteeing us something for the dinner table. But despite watching dozens of fish swim over, under and around our hooks (probably snickering at us all the while), we didn’t get a single bite.

In fact, the only death toll registered that day was when our 1966 Chrysler ran over a “herd” of tiny frogs that were inexplicably leaping in all directions on the gravel road as we squished our way through them on our way home.

My next fishing expedition, at the age of 13 or 14, was considerably more successful. Not only did I catch an eight-pound chinook salmon while fishing from a small boat in Howe Sound, but I also learned how to drink wine from one bottle while simultaneously disposing of the end results of a previous bottle over the vessel’s transom – a surprisingly useful skill that has served me well on a number of other occasions.

I arrived in Ladysmith that holiday weekend to find my friend already preparing for the trip north. His newly acquired 1984 Toyota Corolla was parked at the curb and we soon had it loaded up with fishing rods, hip waders and a tackle box full of lures and other gear.

We had a good two hours of driving ahead of us, so I became a little apprehensive when he started to point out some of the more unusual attributes of the aging vehicle. For one thing, the trunk springs had given out long ago, forcing him to use a piece of equipment that has never appeared on any “options” list provided by the good folks at Toyota. However, the Chunk-o’-Wood 3000 worked pretty well holding the trunk lid open – when it isn’t threatening to give way at any second and separate our fingers from the rest of our bodies.

The other unique feature was a gas gauge that didn’t actually provide you with an accurate representation of how much fuel was sloshing around in the tank at any given time. The needle would still sit on “empty” even when the tank was completely full, but for some reason would slowly creep up to the halfway mark just as the last vapours of fuel were being sucked into the gasping engine – a trick that proved to be a bit unsettling as we travelled further and further away from the main roads.

Despite the somewhat unnerving prospect of running out of gas when we least expected it. we hit the road and arrived a short time later at Nile Creek, a decidedly grandiose name for such a modest stream. There, we engaged in what I was to learn was a time-honoured fishing ritual: talking with other anglers about the prevailing conditions and the likelihood of hooking a big fish. I stood by, observing with interest as my friend touched base with a couple of people who were just packing up to leave. To my untrained ear, one portion of the long and drawn-out conversation went something like this:

“So, Bud… Is the bite on?”

“Ain’t so good. I’ve been rigging a 20,000-pound test line with a triple bypass leader and a bivalve universal spinner and Sonic Booster out on the deep shallow flats, but I ain’t caught nothin’ – not even a bull finch.”

“Ya, ain’t it the way? Too early for bull finches to be moving upstream anyway.”

Armed with that utterly useless information, we decided to drive further north and reached the mouth of the Oyster River just as the tide was turning. We waded through the cool, shallow water and joined a dozen or so fellow anglers who were spread out along the far bank and on a couple of sand bars at the river’s estuary.

It had been the better part of two decades since I last picked up a fishing rod, so it took me a few minutes to regain my casting skill – much to the consternation of the guys on either side of me, who were sent running for cover by my unorthodox technique.

But it all came back to me before long and I soon settled into a nice, relaxing rhythm while I gazed at the hypnotic movement of the water, marvelled at the eagles soaring high overhead and watched my buddy’s tackle box floating majestically out to sea on the rising tide.

Over the next three hours, I repeatedly cast my pink and silver lure out into the river, slowly reeled it back in and removed several pounds of bright green seaweed off the hook after each cast. I did manage to hook two little sculpins (ugly little critters with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, either in the frying pan or out of it), but I was beginning to think that the pink salmon we had come in search of would forever remain tantalizingly out of reach.

Just as I was starting to reminisce about that Penticton hot dog stand, my rod dipped sharply and a moment later I saw a flash of silver belonging to a fine, three-pound specimen. It made a few cursory attempts to make a run for the open sea, but it stood no chance of escaping in the narrow channel and a few minutes later I pulled the five-pound brute from the water and up onto the bank.

A couple of quick knocks to the back of its head with a handy rock (hey, no one ever said fishing was pretty) and the eight-pound leviathan was mine.

As it turned out, I was the only guy to successfully land a pink salmon that afternoon while we were there, although a couple of others hooked (and lost) a few. We eventually made our way back to the car, carrying the massive 12-pound fish in a plastic bag barely large enough to contain its 15-pound bulk – drawing to a close one of my most successful fishing trips ever.

After all, how can anything compare to the primal thrill of wrestling a 20-pound beast to the ground using nothing but one’s own bare hands and the innate skills of a born predator? My cave-dwelling ancestors would have been proud.

Neither my wife nor I got to taste its flesh, as it turned out, since its 40-pound carcass was much too large to fit into the trunk of our small car and we didn’t relish having it as a travelling companion for the two-hour trip home. I also thought it would be a nice diplomatic gesture to leave it behind for the enjoyment of our hosts, seeing as it was the only thing we caught that day.

But now that the blood lust of my primeval ancestors has been reawakened within me, it’s only a matter of time before my friend and I will be drawn to the water once again. But my wife isn’t taking too kindly to wearing her new bearskin clothes around the house so far, so I’ll have to take it one step at a time.