Читать книгу Stalking Salmon & Wrestling Drunks - Peter L. Gordon - Страница 10

chapter 2 A Man of Grace

Оглавление

The first time Cliff fished with us, he was in a mixed group of guests aboard our newly refurbished Kalua. His sister, Alison, had made the booking based on a glowing recommendation from her friends. When she called, the only questions she asked were the time of departure and whether her brother should pack a lunch to bring with him.

Subsequently, for four consecutive years, Cliff booked at least one charter with us each summer. During that time we became good friends and he became our fishing legend. I write this with a smile because I know if he were to read these words, he would punch me in the shoulder. One of his charms was that he never took himself seriously. However, he was the consummate example of how, in life, it is important to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. From our point of view, he was our man.

On his first charter, Cliff—Dr. Cliff McGee—was booked with three other people. In the group was a single fellow called Rae who was togged out in camouflage pants and shirt. He had no interest in fishing; his interest was photography. During the charter Rae spent a great deal of time at the bow of the boat with his cameras and bag, taking pictures of anything that stirred him. With his own Thermos of tea and a packet of sandwiches, he was quite content to enjoy the ride. At the end of the charter he left a fat tip for Sten and thanked us both vociferously for a marvellous experience. I never saw him again, but later that year I received a large brown envelope containing an article he had written for a national magazine that included some of the pictures he had taken while he was out with us.

The two other guests on this charter were US naval officers from a war vessel moored in Esquimalt. They introduced themselves as Ricardo and Jensen. While Rae, our photographer, and Cliff, our doctor, wore idiosyncratic clothing, these two looked as though they had picked their clothes out of someone else’s locker. There was not a hint of navy apparel in their selection. They both wore jackets and shirts better suited for portly men and pants turned up at the cuff. They explained that their shipmates had hidden their clothes as a practical joke and what they were wearing had been scrounged from more sympathetic colleagues. They certainly added an interesting element to the group.

On our way out to Race Rocks, a marine ecological reserve in the Juan de Fuca Strait, I asked everyone how they would like to fish. To a man they wanted to troll, so I told them how we rotated strikes and asked them to work out who was to be first up. We would run two lines. The tide change would happen in about an hour and a half, but I expected to land some fish before then. It was a lovely cruise out to the rocks with such an animated, optimistic group.

We saw an osprey returning to its nest carrying a grilse in its talons, and the Steller sea lions were on full display lounging on the rocks surrounding the lighthouse at Race Rocks. But they stank—there was no polite word for it. The reek of their digested fish diet was so strong it made your eyes water. In the summer months, under the right wind conditions, the smell could force you to leave the area. On this particular day, the sky was overcast with a threat of showers. Fortunately the wind was not blowing in our direction, so the smell was negligible. I had spent some time in Vietnam, and the smell reminded me of a sauce they make in that gorgeous country with anchovies and salt. In North America it is sold as fish sauce; in Vietnam it is called nuoc man.

We cruised through Race Passage up to Church Rock, where Sten turned us around to face the ebbing tide and I set the lines. Ricardo, the youngest of the naval officers, had drawn first strike so I ran him through the strike procedure. Within twenty minutes we had our first hit and our first fish in the boat. It was a beautiful eight-pound coho, sparkling clean, free of sea lice. While pictures were being taken, I reset the lines and changed places with Sten.

He kept the lines at the same depth. Within ten minutes we had another fish on. Cliff was supposed to take the second strike, but he insisted Jensen take it. It turned out to be another splendid coho about the same weight as the first. In the fish trough they looked like twins; they were obviously from the same run. While Sten dressed the fish and stowed them in the ice chest, I cruised back to Church Rock and turned us back into the ebbing tide. The paper sounder showed vast layers of baitfish going down ten fathoms.

The squawking of seagulls, diving on the surface into shoals of baitfish, obscured all other sounds. At the helm I could barely hear the click, click, click of the paper sounder. I moved us farther out so we could fish the edges of the bait and avoid some of the messy debris the feeding gulls were dropping.

Before Sten lowered the lines of the downriggers, I had him change the heavy trolling rods for spinning gear with single-action reels holding fifteen-pound test line. The mood on the boat was lighthearted; it was a joy to be in a group of men who loved the scenery, the camaraderie and the fishing. Cliff and the officers were exchanging life stories and showing pictures of their wives and children. They found common ground in places they had lived and even thought they might have friends in common. Cliff kept refusing to take a strike, insisting the young naval officers have the fun. There was so much laughter at the stern of the boat that Rae joined them for a while and took pictures of the fishing activity. He didn’t say much, just kept repeating, “This is great, this is just great,” as he took a series of pictures with the sophisticated collection of cameras hanging from his neck.

Almost on schedule, the ebbing tide went slack. I made a long, slow loop and headed straight toward Church Rock. Twenty feet before we would have run aground, I spun the wheel hard to starboard. The effect was to drop the trolling gear into a hot spot right in front of Church Rock. Sometimes this manoeuvre produces a twenty pounder. But not on this occasion, so while we kept trolling toward Race Passage, Sten and I changed places. Between the two naval officers we had five fish on ice. I thought it was time we brought in a slug, something Cliff could show off to his sister.

I brought up the portside rod and attached a five-inch silver and bronze spoon to the line before lowering it to forty-five feet. This particular spoon revolved and jerked from side to side, imitating a wounded herring in escape mode. Sten, watching me intently, knew exactly what I was doing. Slowly he altered our course so we would pass directly over a sweet spot just before we entered Race Passage. As we approached the spot, I watched Sten and he watched the paper sounder. Still watching the sounder, he raised his right arm. I lowered the downrigger, with the spoon attached to it, down to sixty-four feet.

Given our speed, the tide conditions and the drag on the downrigger cable, I hoped I had placed the spoon directly into a deep channel. When Sten’s arm came down I raised the downrigger, which brought up the spoon. Before I could look away from the gauge on the downrigger, the bell rang. I jerked the rod out of its holder and reeled furiously to catch up to the fish. At the same time, Sten threw the boat into neutral and was at my side cranking in the second downrigger.

“Any size?”

I didn’t answer—I was concentrating on reeling as quickly as I could. The fish had taken the spoon and was racing for the surface. Before I could make contact it breached cleanly out of the ocean, snapping its head back and forth, trying to throw the lure. Then it sounded, and that was when I caught up to it. The speed with which the line was running out let us know it was a fish with authority.

I turned to find Cliff standing beside me. “You ready?” I asked.

He held out his right hand and I placed the rod into his grip. The line was peeling out, throwing a light spray.

“You’ve got fresh fifteen-pound test,” I said. “The drag control is in the middle of the spool.”

“I’ve got a reel just like it, only for fresh water.”

“Great. Just keep your rod tip up and keep pressure on the fish.”

While the fish continued to run, Sten unclipped the weights from the downriggers and put them in their box, then removed the downriggers and the rod holders from their brackets. The deck was clear. Cliff had lots of elbow room. This, we knew, was what we had come for.

Each time I stuck into a nice fish and handed off the rod, I had mixed feelings. While I knew I was running a business and customers were paying for the fishing experience, it was hard to hand off a rod with a strong salmon at the other end when the person taking the rod clearly had no clue about how to play it. Watching Cliff was different. I could see he was experienced and skilled simply by the way he anticipated the fish and held the rod.

I looked up at Sten, who nodded at me.

I nodded back. “What do you figure?”

“Thirty.”

“That’s my guess.”

Cliff played the salmon with a lighter drag than I would have suggested. Two or three times the fish sounded before spinning around and shooting to the surface. Gripping his rod as the line whirled out of the reel, Cliff cranked maniacally on the handle to bring in the slack line as the fish charged back to the surface. It was an uneven battle. The gear we were using and the skill of the fisherman was overwhelming the heavy salmon. Its only hope was to throw the hook, but Cliff stayed in firm contact with it and let his rod wear it out. After he’d played the fish for twenty minutes, I brought out a director’s chair and walked Cliff backward into its seat. He was a cool customer, but I could see his knees rattling together. Of course, while he played the fish the two high-spirited officers and Sten kept volunteering to take the rod. They told him they didn’t want him to tire and were only thinking of his well-being. They even promised to hand the rod back to him when he asked for it. He was having none of their hijinks; instead he just smiled and told them in terse, naval language to catch their own fish.

During our charters, we used a rough estimate to gauge the length of time it would take to net a salmon. When using spinning gear the estimate is a minute per pound, although I once netted a twenty-seven pounder after only two minutes. But that is another story.

After sounding half a dozen times, the fish was about twenty feet directly below our stern, thrashing frantically. Without prompting, Cliff began pumping the fish to the surface, alternately reeling then dropping the rod tip so it touched the water before pulling it up to raise the salmon. When it saw our propeller it took a short run, but the steam was out of it. Without any further struggle, Cliff was able to reel in the last ten feet of line and steer the fish into the landing net.

Sten took over. Snapping the handle up and effectively locking the fish into the basket of the net, he swung the fish onto the deck. He looked at his watch. “Thirty-two minutes,” he said aloud.

During these activities, Rae had migrated from the bow to the stern where he recorded the event with his cameras. The two officers clapped wildly and slapped Cliff on the back. I shook his hand and gave him a hug and joined in the shouting and hooting. We all couldn’t have been more pleased that he had landed his fish. He couldn’t keep a smile off his face. In a flash, I saw the ghost of a twenty-five-year-old Cliff standing on the deck, balanced on the balls of his feet and exuding the confidence of youth. The white hair was gone, as were the white moustache and prescription sunglasses. They were replaced with a sleek pair of Polaroid glasses, and his hair was a rich brown and his skin uncreased.

In the next instant, the vision was gone and the old Cliff was again before me. He stared as if entranced at the glistening chinook that was still in the folds of the net. “Damn, that’s a pretty fish. It’s almost a shame. Do you think it will go over twenty-five?”

After the Priest had done its job, I handed my trusted scales to Sten. “Better weigh it before it starts to put on weight.”

With the hook of the scales under the salmon’s chin, Sten lifted it off the deck. “Thirty-one on the nose.” There was another round of applause while Sten put the fish in the tray.

“Cliff, do you have a camera?” Rae asked.

“In my bag—it’s on the seat in the galley.” Without a word Sten fetched the bag and gave it to Cliff, who pulled a simple camera from a side pocket and handed it to Rae. “Will you take a picture?”

Rae took the camera and had a quick look at it. “Is it automatic?”

“Point and shoot.”

“Got it. Stand in the corner and hold up the monster.” With a bit of a struggle, Cliff lifted his salmon out of the trough and took a couple of steps back. He held it chest high while Rae took some pictures. The camera whirred and clicked loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“Thank you,” Cliff said. “This will prove to the fellows back home that I really caught a nice one.” He turned to Sten with dancing eyes and a barely suppressed smile on his face. “Did you say it’s thirty-five?”

Without missing a beat, Sten replied, “At least.” The whole crew broke into laughter and clapped again.

Cliff fished with us for four subsequent summers, and his legendary status aboard the Kalua only grew because of his charming character and magical good luck. The second summer he booked with us, he had with him the picture of his thirty-one pounder from the previous year. He announced that he wanted its twin. The guests who were sharing his charter chimed in and said they too wanted a fish that size. Sten and I rolled our eyes. They made salmon fishing seem like a trip to the supermarket.

Well, here comes the spooky part. We cruised out to a can-shaped buoy just past the lighthouse and picked up some nice fish in the eight- to twelve-pound range—delicious dinner fish. They were respectable but certainly not thirty pounders. For a while we stopped fishing, cruising around to admire the lighthouse and drifting quietly while the guests had their lunch. After lunch, we fired up the engine and I put out two downrigger lines. Cliff had already regaled everyone with an improved version of his catch from the previous season. In his account, it had taken “an easy forty-five minutes to land my thirty-eight pounder using twelve-pound test line and a trout rod.” Sten and I enjoyed the story but winked at each other. We had the ship’s log as a witness to the real event.

With the downriggers in place and the lines attached to them, we began to troll through Race Passage. Sten was at the wheel. I recall looking up at him and realizing he was going to take us over the identical spot where Cliff hooked his thirty-one pounder the previous year. On Sten’s signal I lowered a line into the hot spot and again on his signal, I pulled the line up. Just like magic, the bell on the downrigger shook twice; then the line was free. I snapped up the rod, reeled in the slack line and handed the rod to Cliff, who was already standing beside me. The events were nearly a carbon copy of the previous year. This time Cliff did not need to sit down—his legs still rattled but he had more control. Just like the previous year, everyone pulled his leg while he played his fish. Also like the previous year, the salmon was successfully brought to the net and tipped the scales at thirty pounds.

This scenario repeated itself the third and fourth seasons he booked with us. The sweet spot where we picked up these thirty pounders became known to us as Dr. Cliff’s Hole. In the ship’s photo album were pictures of his thirty pounders. He would joke that we should pay him to fish with us, an idea I often turned over in my mind when the fishing was slow and the guests were grouchy. Perhaps in an effort not to jinx it, we never took any other guests to that special spot.

Cliff’s fifth booking happened in an odd way. Sten and I took out an early-morning charter with poor results. We cast off at 3:30 AM and fished the change of tide. The group, though enthusiastic and boisterous, had been poor fishermen. They managed to lose every fish we handed off to them. Sten and I were sure that one of the fish was over twenty pounds. When I presented the bill for the charter to the host of the party, she complained that it had been an expensive “boat ride.” I reminded her they had played but lost five salmon.

“What difference does it make if we’re going home without any fish?” she moaned.

Under these circumstances, I usually kept my own council. In this case, unfortunately, I failed to follow my own advice. “Hmm,” I said. “Maybe you could stop at a supermarket on your way home if you want to be sure of having a salmon to take with you.”

Immediately I regretted my sarcasm. Needless to say, this remark further soured the trip, so after they had disembarked and we had cleaned up the boat, I sent Sten home for some much-needed time with his darling.

After he left, I pulled out the ship’s log and filled it in. I went through the maintenance records and decided that one of our fuel tanks was low and needed to be topped up. In reality, it did not need to be filled, but I simply wanted a little more time to cool off before going home. The exchange of words from the charter was still with me.

While I was standing by the boat at the fuel dock, chatting to the young attendant, I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw Cliff. He was a splash of colour in a Hawaiian shirt, yellow pants and white deck shoes. He was also wearing a porkpie hat and prescription sunglasses. I cannot tell you how pleased I was to see him. After we greeted each other, he said his usual stay with Alison was going to be cut short and he wanted to go out fishing before he left the following day. When I explained that the tides were all wrong and that I’d heard orcas were at Beechy Head and moving toward us, he said he didn’t care—he simply wanted to be out on the water. Despite my joy at seeing him, I was reluctant to take him. I was certain we would not have a single strike and the trip would be for nothing. There was also the question of cost—he would have to shoulder the entire cost himself instead of having it spread over a group of people.

“None of that matters,” he said.

I had run out of arguments, so off we went.

On the way out I contacted some of the local charter skippers by CB radio to find out how they were doing. The results were dismal—none of my reliable sources had seen a salmon in over two hours. With this information in hand and the orcas heading our way, I decided to fish directly in Race Passage off a rock we called RON Blasting. The rock was so named because a notice was written directly on it to warn boaters the peninsula was used by the Royal Canadian Navy to explode ordnance. The large letters were supposed to read RCN Blasting, but instead they appeared to read RON Blasting.

When we reached RON, I pulled out two medium-weight spinning rods with two saltwater spinning reels and attached forty-gram herring lures. I explained to Cliff that we would drift slowly past this rock, fishing at a depth of thirty pulls. A pull represents about two feet. With no other boats in the vicinity we had an unobstructed drift.

This is one of my favourite ways of fishing. The engine is turned off and each fisherman has his own rod and feels the moment a fish strikes. On this afternoon the sun was hot and the water inactive so our hundred-yard drifts lasted about twenty minutes before we pulled in our lines and returned to our starting point.

We talked of politics, grumbling about the poor quality of candidates. Religion floated into the conversation, and we both complained about the poor choice all gods had made when they moulded humans. We talked of family and nearly came to tears trying to express how much we loved our children. We talked of death and how final and pointless it seemed.

We were so deep in conversation I nearly choked on the dolmades I was eating when Cliff snapped his rod up and shouted, “Fish on!” His rod doubled over. “Maybe I’ve just got bottom.”

“If you have bottom, the bottom is moving.” I put down my rod to check the drag on Cliff’s reel. As I did the salmon took its first run, racing to the surface and heading toward Victoria. We looked at each other. I shook my head, saying, “If this is another thirty pounder, you’ll be on permanent staff.”

“I think you just hired me.”

Working a fifty-foot cruiser when you are alone can be a bit tricky. Sten and I were such a team we scarcely noticed how we covered for each other. But today I was on my own. I cranked in my line, started the engine and slipped us into a slow reverse.

“Watch out,” I yelled to Cliff. “I’ve put her in reverse, so don’t let your line go slack.”

Cliff was ahead of me, bringing in line as fast as he could.

“I’ll put us in neutral as soon as it stops running.”

“Better do it now,” he called up to me. “It’s sounding and coming back.”

I put the boat in neutral and pressed the kill button on the engine. In the silence all I could hear was Cliff mumbling under his breath as he reeled in the slack line. We were in deep water at the mouth of the bay with a light breeze pushing us toward Victoria. This was a fabulous spot to play the salmon.

“It’s a heavy fish, bigger than the others.” Cliff was short of breath as he spoke.

“How much bigger?”

“Much bigger.” He was puffing hard and his legs looked like vibrating cello strings.

I unfolded the director’s chair and eased Cliff backward into its seat.

“Thanks. That feels better,” he said, but he was still puffing.

The boat drifted in the slack current and the sounds of the barking sea lions could be heard in the distance.

“It’s so nice out here. Even better with a fish on.”

“Listen, Cliff, if you want me to give you a break, let me know. This might be a long haul.”

“Now, don’t you start with that. It’s not often everything is perfect.” There was a silence before he said, “Listen to those damn seals—you’d think they could learn something new to say. It always sounds as though they’re repeating the same thing.”

We played the fish for over forty minutes. At one stage I held my index finger under the rod tip to take the strain off Cliff’s arms and shoulders. He didn’t object so I knew it was giving him a break. For the last few minutes of the battle, Cliff stood up to direct the salmon into the net. He was clearly relieved the struggle was over.

Together we weighed the fish. When I told him it was a fraction over thirty pounds, he said, “I must be getting old. I could have sworn it would go forty.”

With the boat drifting gently, Cliff watched me as I cleaned his salmon and slid it into the fresh ice left over from the morning’s charter. He knew about the group we had taken out in the morning.

“How would you like me to take this fish around to those arseholes and stick it up their noses?”

I pitched over, laughing. It was the right thing to say at just the right time. Somehow it lightened my life. I shook his hand and thanked him. He didn’t release my hand but held it until I looked back into his eyes. “Thank you, my friend,” I said, “for an unforgettable day.”

“No. Thank you, Peter.”

We stood there, looking deep into each other. I realized he was saying goodbye. I let go of his hand and put an arm around him and gave him a squeeze.

When I told him to sit down while I took us back to RON he suggested we call it a day. “Let’s end it on a perfect note.”

So I packed up the tackle, cranked up the engine and headed for the dock. I called ahead on the VHF so Alison would be ready to collect Cliff and drive him home.

Fortunately there was no wind when we came in to moor, so it was an easy job to bring the Kalua alongside and tie it down with only me working the lines. Alison was waiting for us at our slip and made a huge fuss of the salmon. She insisted on taking pictures of Cliff and me holding it up. She even asked me to snap a few frames of her and Cliff standing by the boat. I could see she was worried about him as she bundled him off to her car. As they crossed the rattling ramp to the shore, they both turned around and waved.

That was the last time I saw Cliff. Alison called me several months later to say the cancer, which had been diagnosed before our last trip, had taken his life. I knew Cliff would say it had been a good life.

Stalking Salmon & Wrestling Drunks

Подняться наверх