Trip to BC, Canada

Knowing how much my family likes to fish, our dear friends Al and Sandra helped us arrange a fishing trip to the beautiful islands of British Columbia for Dad, John, Brannon and myself. We spent a few days in Vancouver visiting with Al and Sandra, seeing a few sights, and taking an impromptu zip line ride down Grouse Mountain. Then we were off to the King North Lodge for a few days of salmon and halibut fishing.

We landed in Vancouver late on Wednesday night and spent all day Thursday and Friday seeing the sights. Al took us on a driving tour of the city on Thursday morning, including Stanley Park. The view from Stanley Park was amazing as we walked along the seawall. Dad of course stopped to talk to anyone holding a fishing pole to ask them what they were fishing for and what bait they were using.

After our walk through Stanley Park, we went hiking on Mount Seymour. It was hard to believe you could have such a feeling of being in the wilderness so close to the city.

On Friday morning we took a cab ride to a warehouse district to visit the tackle shop that supplies the lodge. Remember, this is to be a serious fishing trip and you have to do the proper research to be fully prepared! The tackle shop turned out to be not a real shop, but more of just a warehouse with rows and rows of fishing supplies. Dad knocked on the locked door (because locked doors have never deterred him in the past...) and spent the next hour grilling the good natured employee who happened to answer his knock. It was a productive trip and we learned a lot about the type of tackle and bait will would be using at the Lodge. We spent the afternoon walking around Stanley Park some more and exploring the trails near Beaver Lake.

We were supposed to leave Vancouver early Saturday morning on a charter flight to Bella Bella to catch a float plane to the North King Lodge, but the flight was cancelled due to weather and rescheduled for the following morning. What should we do the rest of the day? The boys went to Grouse Mountain while Sandra and I hit South Granville for a little shopping. Not having the girls around to knock some sense into them, the boys decided it would be a great idea to zip line down the mountain. This involved lots of climbing and multiple zip line runs. Even Dad (who turns 70 next week!) got talked into it... he claims he was at least 35 years older than everyone else there, but somehow that didn't deter him from giving it a go.

We arrived at the Lodge (really a 70 ton floating barge) on Sunday afternoon and immediately started fishing. We primarily fished for three types of fish: king salmon, coho salmon, and halibut. The salmon were caught by trolling with downriggers somewhere between 30 and 50 feet below the surface and the halibut were caught by jigging the bait on the ocean floor, around 300 feet down. We fished from about 4pm to 9pm on Sunday, from 5:30am to 9pm on Monday, and from 5:30am to 9am on Tuesday. This was serious fishing folks.

Dad with his Lodge record for the trip: a 61 pound halibut.

Brannon's 24 pound king salmon. He almost beat Dad who had a 24.5 pound king. Almost.

John with one of his "twins"... among other fish, he caught two salmon that were 14.5 pounds each and two that were 22 pounds each. Spooky.

Me with my "big" king... 18 pounds. My other big fish was a 28.5 pound halibut.

These are just some of the fish we caught... between the four of us, we ended up with 365 pounds of fish fillets to bring home!! The Lodge cleaned the fish, vacuum sealed them in meal-sized portions, flash froze them, and packaged them for travel back to the US with us. After an early lunch on Tuesday morning, we boarded the float plane to begin the journey back to Texas. It was a great trip!! Thank you to Brannon's parents and Tiffany for watching the kids and to JeanMarie and Mom for holding down the fort while we were gone!