Westcoast Salmon Fishing in British Columbia

Almost 20 years of my life was spent salmon fishing on the Jildana. The boat was very good to me and provided me with many experiences and adventures I could never have found anywhere else. She carried me safely through hurricane force winds in the middle of the winter and fed my family.

Fishing salmon allowed me to develop some very close friendships over the years and at one time or another most of my family and many of my friends joined me on fishing trips. This provided them with opportunities to see what commercial fishing was all about and sometimes they were able to make a few dollars.

Adams River Sockeye 1982...

My first experience with the Jildana was in the spring of 1982. I had been out of fishing for a few years and had started a carpentry apprenticeship with M. Wall and Sons in Nanaimo. I really enjoyed building houses and we built some really nice ones, some of the most expensive in Nanaimo at the time.

After working with them for about 3 years we were in the middle of a horrible recession and the housing market was at a standstill. All of the employees were laid off. I had been catching up on school and was half way through my third year when my wife lost her job and all of a sudden we had no income. We soon lost our home and I was forced to make a tough decision about stopping my apprenticeship and going back fishing.

I had no money to buy a boat and didn't really want to go back deckhanding so I put an ad in the paper looking for a troller to lease. Within a few days a fellow called saying that he had a fairly new 40 foot fibreglass troller to lease and asked if we were interested. It was in Sooke so Cheryl, my brother Pete and I drove down to have a look.

When we reached the dock we could see the boat tied up to the float and my first impression was what an 'ugly boat'. I wanted to turn right around and go back home. Pete said that as we had come so far we should at least take a closer look. We walked down to the boat and started crawling all over. We were amazed at the room on it and even though ugly we could see that it would be an efficient fisher.

We went back home and Pete and I quickly made a deal with the owner. As the season was already underway we packed our gear and were off to the west coast. I remember when we were running out Juan de Fuca Strait we had a small tv onboard and the Vancouver Canucks were in the fourth game of the Stanley Cup Finals. The reception was really bad and it was hard to follow the game but as it was the first time our team had ever made it to the finals we were crowded close to the tv trying to catch the action. We finally lost all reception and didn't know the outcome. It was just as well as the Canucks ended up losing and were knocked out four straight games.

Pete and I were very excited about fishing together as we hadn't since our first jobs with our stepfather when we were young teenagers. We had both left him and gone on to other jobs on boats with some of the best fishermen on the coast and had both gained a wealth of experience. We decided that we would like to fish around the Kyuquot and Esperanza area which was about half way up the west coast of Vancouver Island. This area was known for an abundance of big fish but also had the worst weather, but we were young and tough and away we went. It was still early in the season and we could only fish for spring salmon so we found it a little slow.

Largest Sockeye Salmon Fishing Run in History

It took us a little while to get used to the boat as the owner wasn't very helpful with any information about it. He basically handed us the key, wished us luck and said not to bother him. We soon had everthing working smoothly and the coho season began. Cheryl came out then to cook and give us a hand with the heavy fishing we were about to encounter and after a couple of pretty good coho trips, the heavy fishing did come in the largest Adams River sockeye run in history.

Day after day we had some of the best fishing we had ever seen and mixed in with the sockeye was some excellent spring fishing. We fished the whole season only missing a couple of days and other than the first part of the season I don't really remember a slow period. By the end of the season we had lots of money in our pockets and I started to wonder why I had ever quit fishing in the first place.

The owner of the Jildana hadn't been making his boat payments because the interest rates had skyrocketed since he built the boat and the payments were impossible to make. The bank repossessed the boat and it was offered to me at an incredible price but I declined as it would have taken all my cash and the interest rates were way to high for me too. Also this had been my first experience leasing a boat and it had been too easy. I liked the idea of coming home and handing the keys back to the owner and enjoying myself for the winter by not having to worry about the boat.

That winter an older friend of mine called me up to ask if I knew of any good boats for sale, so I told him about the Jildana and he bought it. He told me his son was going to run it and if things didn't work out then I could take it if I wanted it. His son fished it through the 87 season while I leased several other boats during those years.

I had also bought a small crab boat and had been fishing crabs in the winter around Ladysmith. In the fall of 87 just a couple of days after I had returned home from salmon fishing I got a call asking if I would be interested in taking the Jildana again. The owner said that if I wanted it I would have to be willing to fish year round and he would put a drum on it for longlining.

I agreed and after a short time at home I rounded up some fishing gear, hired a couple of deckhands and away we went fishing for dogfish and cod. We fished that winter in Georgia Strait, close to home, but didn't do all that well. I had a hard time keeping deckhands as no one liked to fish in the winter but I still managed to come out ahead and my lease was on a sliding scale where the more I made the smaller percentage I had to pay the owner. I don't think he thought I would do very good when he signed the lease. Anyway by the start of the second trip of salmon that year I was up to the maximum pay on the lease agreement and he wasn't very happy.

That year was the most money I ever made and he was so pissed off he sold the boat. The new owners came to me to ask if I would run it for them too and weren't buying unless I agreed. I was enjoying fishing it too much to turn them down and I wasn't in a position to buy it myself, so I soon found myself leasing the Jildana off the third group of owners. I knew I would never get a deal like I had the previous year but they were still great guys to deal with.

I longlined for cod in the winter and trolled salmon in the summer and the fishing had never been better. I was fishing with some of the best fishermen on the coast and we were always on the hotspots. Every year I seemed to get a little more efficient and a little smarter and caught a few more fish. The Jildana became an awesome fisher and at times we were beating the other guys so badly I would be embarrassed to tell them how many fish we had caught.

In the spring of 93 I was finally in a position where I thought I should try and buy the Jildana and one of the owners wanted to sell. I convinced the other owner to buy him out and then finance the boat for me. He agreed and I found myself the owner of a nice troller. I figured all I had to do was continue what I was doing and I couldn't lose. I had been paying more in lease payments every year than what a mortgage payment would be.

End of an Era in Commercial Salmon Fishing

Things were fine the first year and then the Department of Fisheries and Oceans started cutting back our seasons. One year they wouldn't allow us to fish for spring salmon and then the next year we couldn't fish coho. It seemed that they were trying to bankrupt the fishing fleets and it was really starting to work. As our seasons were cut shorter and we caught less fish, the fish buyers were also struggling and the prices for our salmon started to drop. The past five years have seen such dramatic restrictions placed on the fishing fleets that it isn't profitable to continue fishing even though in the past two or three years I have seen some of the best fishing ever. We just don't get enough time on the fish to cover our costs.

In 1996 a government sponsored license buyback program was put in place and I submitted my license to be retired and it was accepted in February/99. In November the Jildana was sold to a fellow from Vancouver and he plans to relicense the boat as a trawler. He will be selling his fish to the live fish market in Chinatown. I was glad to see the boat remain in the fishing industry but was very sad to see it go. Hopefully it will be as good to him as it was to me.

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