Text and photos by Mary L. Peachin
January, 2011 Vol. 15, No. 3
Cheerful staff ringing cow bells outside your door at 4:15 AM does not make for an easy wake up call. It’s still dark, and you feel like rolling over and going back to sleep. After an evening of fine wine and dining, only the urgency to catch a salmon tyee can rustle me out of a warm bed. I’ve fished British Columbia’s coastline for more than a decade and have only come close, a pound or two shy of catching the fabled 30-pound tyee, the weight qualification to an exclusive club.
In seven years of guiding, Geoffrey Duddridge had never witnessed a triple salmon hookup. Brian Gage and I were fishing downriggers near Craycroft Point, his wife Diana was on the flat line. When the couple hooked up, my rod also bent. Soon, it was bedlam. We each followed the line of our fish exchanging places and moving rods around and over one another to prevent a tangle. Tangles and all, we landed three nice size Chinook.