May 16-18 - Friday Harbor (#29)

Monica, Jenny and I set out for Friday harbor to participate in the C-Brats get together. We left Friday morning and crossed Haro Strait to the south of San Juan Island. There was a bit of a chop which slowed us down and we had a visit from the Shipriders (http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ibet-eipf/shiprider-eng.htm), a joint RCMP and US border patrol group. We passed inspection, but drifted quite a way to the south while being visited! We made it to Friday Harbor after lunch, cleared customs (we lost some tomatoes and a pepper!) and then started visiting with the "brats". We went for a nice dinner in the Grange Hall, organized by the owner of Downriggers (which burnt down since last year!). jenny and I went to the pub for an pint afterwards.On Saturday we went for a hearty breakfast and then rented a scoot-coupe and a moped  from Susie's mopeds for the day. We used these to drive down to American Camp, South beach, Cattle Point and then Lime Kiln State Park (where we ran into Alexander I, an old student of mine!). We had a great day exploring the island! In the evening we enjoyed the C-brats pot luck and good company.
On Sunday morning we made breakfast on board and then motored up to Jones Island, where we hiked around the east side trail and had lunch with several other C-Dory owners. After that we motored up to Stuart Island and went for another walk up to the old school house. We then motored back to Cadboro Bay where we cleared customs at the RVYC dock and then retrieved Natural C-lection at Cattle Point.
A Big Thank You is due to Barry and Patti who organized the event at Friday Harbor where around 40 C-dorys gathered for the weekend! It was great seeing many old friends and meeting some new ones!

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105 km

April 25th - Oak Bay Area (#28)

Martin and I went out again to look for halibut, this time in Haro Strait. The tide was not running very fast for the first while, so we decided to jig and drift. No bites from any big fish... After the current started to ebb too fast for drifting, we decided to go to the Oak Bay flats to troll for chinook. again not luck though we hooked a ling and a yellow-tail. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and more fun than working Friday afternoon!

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30 km.

April 21st - Constance Bank (#27)

Martin and I went out for an early morning trip to Constance Bank to try for chinook and halibut. Conditions were magnificent (weak tides and no wind), but we had no luck. It was basically a shake down cruise to start the new licence season! I was able to try out the halibut anchoring system which worked well except that another fisher caught my anchor line with his downriggers!
I obviously have lots to learn about halibut fishing!

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26 km.

January 25th - Winter Spring Fishing? (#26)

Pete, Kyle and I set out for a morning of winter spring fishing. The reports had been good, and conditions were forecast to be favourable. Conditions ended up being calm but very foggy. Visibility was between 100 and 300 m throughout the day! We went out to Constance Bank first and had no luck though we hooked three small ling cod. After Constance Bank (where a huge freighter was anchored) we went over towards Esquimalt, and had no luck other than a borderline legal spring which we let go. In spite of no fish to bring home, it was a nice day on the water - and not bad for January!

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56 km

December 24th - Cowichan Bay (#25)

Monica, Jenny,Claire and I went for a Christmas eve prawning trip to Saanich Inlet. The weather was sunny and calm and not too cold considering the time of year! We put our traps down off Ardmore and then went to Cowichan Bay for a pub lunch - nice and warm! After lunch we made our way back to pull the traps and stopped by a large cargo ship on the way. 295 m long and 45 m wide - a bit bigger than us! The catch was not as big as some times, 103 prawns, but I think I dropped a few traps too shallow this time. The prawn puller with hands free attachment worked well. A lovely day out!

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48 km.

October 5th - Constance Bank (#24)

Martin and I went out again to Constance Bank to look for some more coho. We stopped first and emptied Martin's prawn traps near the launch ramp and then went out to the bank. On our way we dropped out traps at two locations near the bank (#63 and #64). the traps were well weighted and has 300+ ft of line in spite of about a 200 ft depth. We fished for a while, and things were pretty quite. We hooked and landed one nice coho (while watching the MS Coho come in and out of Victoria!) at #65. After we decided that coho fishing was too slow we tried our hand jigging for halibut on the bottom with no success. When we decided that we were done we went looking for our two prawn traps, but they were nowhere to be seen! Amazingly we found trap#64 at  location #65 and then after much more searching found trap # 63 at location #66!. So no gear was lost! (we thought we had probably lost all of them!) . The weather conditions were great, and we were lcuk that it was easy to see the traps at a good distance.

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52 km.

October 2nd - Constance Bank (#23)

Martin and I went out to Constance Bank for the afternoon to see how the coho fishing was. We landed two coho and had a couple more hits. It was also a great afternoon to be out! Flat water and a few rainbows about!

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33 km