Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
On the second visit to Shearwater I found it a bit different place. A whole fleet had materialized out of thin air the second time through, but I still had the entire guest dock to myself while I took the dog on a walk to the Spirit Trail just out of town.
That night I found myself down in the happy spring hunting grounds I used to fish a decade or so ago before it got so stupid crowded. It’s more or less protected water and it was literally the first time of the trip where I didn’t have to battle big water while fighting a fish.
Big change in the clientele fishing that spot, though. No less crowded then I remembered it, but gone were the big twin-engined Gradys steaming around in circles with only a few meters of sea room between their bows and sterns. This time, lots of FN guys in 17 footers. They all fish exactly the same way, towing flasher and anchovies at warp speed in a tight circle, round and round and round they go. The fish they catch they hang from the side of the boat on a cord, like scalps. I saw one guy (fishing alone) with at least 10 coho and a spring hanging along the side of his boat. Meanwhile, I troll at half the speed they did. As there was no way I could get in the mix without pissing someone off, I didn’t even try.
The next morning I thought I’d pretend like I was in Rome and act like the Romans do—I tied on a flasher and an anchovy, thinking I could now blend into the FN fleet better. This was the first time in my fishing career I rigged that combo to my rod. I lasted all of 5 minutes, though. I didn’t like the speed I had to run at, I didn’t like the way the flasher pumped my rod tip, and I knew how disappointing the fight would be when I finally hooked a fish and had to fight it through a flasher. I took it off and went back to my normal set-up: just a swivel, two hooks and a piece of bait. I went to the outskirts of the fleet, ducked in to the good spots when I could, got out when they came chasing back, and managed to hook a few nice springs playing this type of cat and mouse game. This one wasn’t huge but it turned in to a major ordeal, taking piles of line which turned into a bit of a Nantucket sleigh ride. And interestingly enough, it did not have an adipose fin....
Note that the flasher was now tied to the downrigger ball, where all flashers should be... ha ha
Then the next morning... back to Hakai....I played the same old same old as I’d been doing the entire trip....waiting for a break in the wind. My goal was to fish off Starfish reef and see the famous “staircase” ....it’s an amazing piece of geology and I just had to see it again. First try....10 foot swells, some with breaking tops. A bit too sporty for me after all the near misses I’d had with rock walls, big swells and wind. So I tied up in Adams Harbor and waited my chance. The next morning, it still blew but there had been a bit of a subsidence.....I snuck through a narrow channel between Odlum and Starfish and there was the staircase.....I was as happy as if I’d just hooked a spring....what a piece of real estate!
Later that morning I knew it was time to start heading for Rivers to stage for my Caution crossing. The availability of ferries was basically non-existent and I knew if I missed my reservation there was a chance a week or more could go by before I got another one so it was time to be conservative with how I burned off my last few days. And there were some spots south of Caution I knew I just had to fish
So anchored off Cranstown Point, big surprise, another 20 knot blow. Just plain ugly NW weather. I could have screamed I was so sick of wind....never again would I do this trip so late in August ....no way. It was about 5 Pm. Addenbroke Lighthouse was posting 15 knts (protected by Calvert) but interestingly, Egg Island was posting 13 knts which to me indicated a possible evening subsidence in the wind. With the ebb tide out of Rivers Inlet, there were 8 - 10 foot breakers off Cranstown Point. But I reasoned my tack from CRanstown to the mouth of Smith Sound would be the worst of it....once I got around Tie and Brown Island, wouldn’t I be going with those swells? Bit by bit I started talking myself into an evening Caution crossing, despite the crappy conditions.
By then I was deflating my Avon raft, securing it to the cleats, making sure all the coolers of fish and salt ice were solidly tied off and thus I set off on an evening Cape Caution passage in what I knew to be marginal conditions. Once past the protection of Cranstown Point, it was just about as sporty as you'd would want to experience in a boat my size. Calvert no longer offered cover and I was wide open and exposed to Queen Charlotte Sound and the open Pacific and a steady 20 knot blow
I’ll admit that now with 28 feet of LOA under my feet and twin outboards for power redundancy, the gout of anxiety I usually felt when a Caution passage was on the horizon wasn't quite so noticeable. And yes, of course, an ebb tide in full swing sharpened the prospects for even crappier conditions. But I reasoned that with these huge swells I’d at best be making 8 - 10 knots and by the time I got to Caution and Slingsby, most of the ebb would have come and gone .
I also had some technology that I hadn’t really yet put to use on this trip. These were the Zipwake trim tabs that are activated by electro-servo motors. When in “auto” mode, they’re controlled by a sophisticated GPS antenna that effectively behave like a gyrocompass, addressing pitch, yaw and port and starboard roll. The waves were confused, coming in at different directions. It was interesting to watch the Zipwake tabs compensate automatically for the shape and movements of these waves. The boat moved through the heaped up seas with determined purpose. I was just a bystander.
With the exception of having a breaking wave come in from my beam quarters I felt confident I’d made a reasonable move....maybe not a smart move...but a reasonable move. I’d already familiarized myself with the formula that calculated what size wave it would take to roll my boat....the formula is a wave roughly 30 percent of your LOA. In my case, that meant an 8 1/2 foot breaking wave could just about roll my boat if I was in the trough and it caught me at the wrong moment. I kept my peripheral views on high alert, scanning the horizon behind me for the potential "queer one" that might creep up at an oblique angle.
As I approached Necky Ness the waves grew larger and more confused. The 30 - 60 feet depth contour I usually navigated when doing Caution early in the morning was out of the question in these conditions. I decided it would be downright critical to tack offshore, searching out deeper water. That exposed my beam to some huge NW swells but It turned out to be a good move because once I got into the 150/200 contours the waves no longer broke and seemed to grow a bit more predictable. Then there I was off Raynor Point in fishable conditions on a slack low tide. Good move, dude I said to myself, and opened a bottle of wine to celebrate putting Caution behind me.
There‘s Cape Caution off in the distance.... the prudent mariner’s nemesis. it looks downright bucolic in this picture but it was a hot nasty mess when I went by it
That night I found myself down in the happy spring hunting grounds I used to fish a decade or so ago before it got so stupid crowded. It’s more or less protected water and it was literally the first time of the trip where I didn’t have to battle big water while fighting a fish.
Big change in the clientele fishing that spot, though. No less crowded then I remembered it, but gone were the big twin-engined Gradys steaming around in circles with only a few meters of sea room between their bows and sterns. This time, lots of FN guys in 17 footers. They all fish exactly the same way, towing flasher and anchovies at warp speed in a tight circle, round and round and round they go. The fish they catch they hang from the side of the boat on a cord, like scalps. I saw one guy (fishing alone) with at least 10 coho and a spring hanging along the side of his boat. Meanwhile, I troll at half the speed they did. As there was no way I could get in the mix without pissing someone off, I didn’t even try.
The next morning I thought I’d pretend like I was in Rome and act like the Romans do—I tied on a flasher and an anchovy, thinking I could now blend into the FN fleet better. This was the first time in my fishing career I rigged that combo to my rod. I lasted all of 5 minutes, though. I didn’t like the speed I had to run at, I didn’t like the way the flasher pumped my rod tip, and I knew how disappointing the fight would be when I finally hooked a fish and had to fight it through a flasher. I took it off and went back to my normal set-up: just a swivel, two hooks and a piece of bait. I went to the outskirts of the fleet, ducked in to the good spots when I could, got out when they came chasing back, and managed to hook a few nice springs playing this type of cat and mouse game. This one wasn’t huge but it turned in to a major ordeal, taking piles of line which turned into a bit of a Nantucket sleigh ride. And interestingly enough, it did not have an adipose fin....
Note that the flasher was now tied to the downrigger ball, where all flashers should be... ha ha
Then the next morning... back to Hakai....I played the same old same old as I’d been doing the entire trip....waiting for a break in the wind. My goal was to fish off Starfish reef and see the famous “staircase” ....it’s an amazing piece of geology and I just had to see it again. First try....10 foot swells, some with breaking tops. A bit too sporty for me after all the near misses I’d had with rock walls, big swells and wind. So I tied up in Adams Harbor and waited my chance. The next morning, it still blew but there had been a bit of a subsidence.....I snuck through a narrow channel between Odlum and Starfish and there was the staircase.....I was as happy as if I’d just hooked a spring....what a piece of real estate!
Later that morning I knew it was time to start heading for Rivers to stage for my Caution crossing. The availability of ferries was basically non-existent and I knew if I missed my reservation there was a chance a week or more could go by before I got another one so it was time to be conservative with how I burned off my last few days. And there were some spots south of Caution I knew I just had to fish
So anchored off Cranstown Point, big surprise, another 20 knot blow. Just plain ugly NW weather. I could have screamed I was so sick of wind....never again would I do this trip so late in August ....no way. It was about 5 Pm. Addenbroke Lighthouse was posting 15 knts (protected by Calvert) but interestingly, Egg Island was posting 13 knts which to me indicated a possible evening subsidence in the wind. With the ebb tide out of Rivers Inlet, there were 8 - 10 foot breakers off Cranstown Point. But I reasoned my tack from CRanstown to the mouth of Smith Sound would be the worst of it....once I got around Tie and Brown Island, wouldn’t I be going with those swells? Bit by bit I started talking myself into an evening Caution crossing, despite the crappy conditions.
By then I was deflating my Avon raft, securing it to the cleats, making sure all the coolers of fish and salt ice were solidly tied off and thus I set off on an evening Cape Caution passage in what I knew to be marginal conditions. Once past the protection of Cranstown Point, it was just about as sporty as you'd would want to experience in a boat my size. Calvert no longer offered cover and I was wide open and exposed to Queen Charlotte Sound and the open Pacific and a steady 20 knot blow
I’ll admit that now with 28 feet of LOA under my feet and twin outboards for power redundancy, the gout of anxiety I usually felt when a Caution passage was on the horizon wasn't quite so noticeable. And yes, of course, an ebb tide in full swing sharpened the prospects for even crappier conditions. But I reasoned that with these huge swells I’d at best be making 8 - 10 knots and by the time I got to Caution and Slingsby, most of the ebb would have come and gone .
I also had some technology that I hadn’t really yet put to use on this trip. These were the Zipwake trim tabs that are activated by electro-servo motors. When in “auto” mode, they’re controlled by a sophisticated GPS antenna that effectively behave like a gyrocompass, addressing pitch, yaw and port and starboard roll. The waves were confused, coming in at different directions. It was interesting to watch the Zipwake tabs compensate automatically for the shape and movements of these waves. The boat moved through the heaped up seas with determined purpose. I was just a bystander.
With the exception of having a breaking wave come in from my beam quarters I felt confident I’d made a reasonable move....maybe not a smart move...but a reasonable move. I’d already familiarized myself with the formula that calculated what size wave it would take to roll my boat....the formula is a wave roughly 30 percent of your LOA. In my case, that meant an 8 1/2 foot breaking wave could just about roll my boat if I was in the trough and it caught me at the wrong moment. I kept my peripheral views on high alert, scanning the horizon behind me for the potential "queer one" that might creep up at an oblique angle.
As I approached Necky Ness the waves grew larger and more confused. The 30 - 60 feet depth contour I usually navigated when doing Caution early in the morning was out of the question in these conditions. I decided it would be downright critical to tack offshore, searching out deeper water. That exposed my beam to some huge NW swells but It turned out to be a good move because once I got into the 150/200 contours the waves no longer broke and seemed to grow a bit more predictable. Then there I was off Raynor Point in fishable conditions on a slack low tide. Good move, dude I said to myself, and opened a bottle of wine to celebrate putting Caution behind me.
There‘s Cape Caution off in the distance.... the prudent mariner’s nemesis. it looks downright bucolic in this picture but it was a hot nasty mess when I went by it
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