Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
The Biology of Angling, Xena King's Insight on Fish, Flies, and Conservation
Strap on your waders and join me as my guest Xena King recount the thrills of wrestling sturgeons in class. Share our passion for fly fishing and tales from the front lines of aquatic biology, where every cast tells a story, and every catch is a dance with nature. We traverse the highs and lows of seasonal fieldwork, from the electric jolt of electrofishing to the precise science of environmental monitoring. Along the way, we reveal the intricate life cycles of our finned friends and the conservation efforts that keep their populations thriving.
Ever wondered how a biologist’s love for fly fishing shapes their career? I take you through my journey, where bull trout battles and the joy of guiding anglers intertwine with the rigorous demands of data collection and habitat assessment. Xena weighs in with fishing strategies, unveiling the art of selecting the perfect fly and the satisfaction that blooms when a student lands their first beauty. Our shared experiences in teaching and the lessons the river imparts are as diverse as the fish we pursue – from the elusive Inconnu in northern waters to the majestic sturgeon, rulers of the riverbed.
As we wrap up this angler’s odyssey, the conversation shifts to the future of fishery-related careers and the timeless bonds forged by those who share the reverence for aquatic life. With humor and heartfelt anecdotes, we discuss the quirks of fish like the sculpin and the doppelgänger dilemma of bull trout and Dolly Varden. We leave you with a sense of awe for the underwater world and an invitation to cast your line into the ongoing narrative of conservation and the quiet triumphs of fishing. So tune in, immerse yourself in our journey, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be inspired to create fishing tales of your own.
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https://www.instagram.com/xenaking96?igsh=aW5yOWMwdndlb2Qw
Strap on your waders and join me as my guest Xena King recount the thrills of wrestling sturgeons in class. Share our passion for fly fishing and tales from the front lines of aquatic biology, where every cast tells a story, and every catch is a dance with nature. We traverse the highs and lows of seasonal fieldwork, from the electric jolt of electrofishing to the precise science of environmental monitoring. Along the way, we reveal the intricate life cycles of our finned friends and the conservation efforts that keep their populations thriving.
Ever wondered how a biologist’s love for fly fishing shapes their career? I take you through my journey, where bull trout battles and the joy of guiding anglers intertwine with the rigorous demands of data collection and habitat assessment. Xena weighs in with fishing strategies, unveiling the art of selecting the perfect fly and the satisfaction that blooms when a student lands their first beauty. Our shared experiences in teaching and the lessons the river imparts are as diverse as the fish we pursue – from the elusive Inconnu in northern waters to the majestic sturgeon, rulers of the riverbed.
As we wrap up this angler’s odyssey, the conversation shifts to the future of fishery-related careers and the timeless bonds forged by those who share the reverence for aquatic life. With humor and heartfelt anecdotes, we discuss the quirks of fish like the sculpin and the doppelgänger dilemma of bull trout and Dolly Varden. We leave you with a sense of awe for the underwater world and an invitation to cast your line into the ongoing narrative of conservation and the quiet triumphs of fishing. So tune in, immerse yourself in our journey, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be inspired to create fishing tales of your own.
•Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/xenaking96?igsh=aW5yOWMwdndlb2Qw
They are wily to wrestle. It feels like you're like mud wrestling with this giant animal that will trip you and bonk you and push you over, and other sturgeon will get involved and you know it's like a. You're grabbing him by the face and by the arm, trying to flip them, because when they're upside down they're pretty docile. So yeah, I got real up close and personal with some sturgeon. Welcome to death. The Draft is Draft is Society.
Speaker 2:How was your day? I guess I should ask.
Speaker 1:My day was pretty good. I'm mostly just in the office today doing report work at that time of year for consultants, so it's pretty relaxed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice consultant. I feel like maybe there's more than one variety. So people, oh yeah, yeah, you explain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I work as a aquatic scientist or a fishery biologist, very small consulting company in white horse, that's in the Yukon, so we do a bunch of our pitch work during the field season and then throughout the winter We've got a lot of reporting to do, a lot of data and tree um. Yeah, just kind of getting it all together for reports to be due around March and then cure up for guilt using again.
Speaker 2:Oh cool, yeah. So obviously you went to school for a bit and you had a good idea of what you wanted to do.
Speaker 1:I would assume yeah, I, um, I grew up in a national park so conservation and education were pretty big pieces of our school system. So Going in biology was kind of a nice like streamline idea of what I wanted to do. But I was in school, I didn't know what animal I wanted to work with. I kind of thought I was going to work with like large mammals or, you know, wolves and ungulates, and that was kind of the path that was headed down until I got to help out with the fisheries team and they do a lot of like snorkels for surveys and canyons and on rivers and this. Uh yeah, that was kind of it and I went pretty full gear into that.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, that's pretty cool. How long the? How long was the program, or was it multiple programs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I did a four-year biology degree and then I did um. I worked for a little bit and through coveted I didn't know if I wanted to go back to school or not. Um, I fly fish as a passion and then when I got to work for fisheries it was pretty exciting. So I went back to school on Vancouver Island um for their fisheries and aquaculture program, which is about a year and you get to work in the research center. It's do a bunch of really like hand-bond work with sturgeon and kind of like a little vet courses um, making a diseases, looking at salmon management, everything else. And then after that, yeah, kovat kind of started to settle down and get back on the workforce. Yeah, it's been fishy ever since.
Speaker 2:I've been fishy ever since. That's awesome. Yeah, I've. Uh, I had a buddy that did that same program. Um, I think he graduated Two years ago, so Okay, sweet.
Speaker 1:Yeah did you like it? I thought it was pretty sweet.
Speaker 2:I think he liked it. Um, I'm not exactly sure when he's heading, but he knows he wants to do I don't know that field and work with with aquatic animals and stuff like that. So yeah, he's. He's doing like a bunch of other courses as well. Um, he's been in school for a while, so we'll see. We'll see where he goes. Hi oh yeah, so when you talk like field work, what do you? What do you really mean by field work? Curious?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like Um kind of every job I've done has been very different for field work, whether it's government or parks, canada, consulting, um and where. Where I am right now up in the Yukon, it's very remote, which is really fun, so we get blown out to places or we get helig out to places, so you have to get all your gear and the electrofisher and everything nice and neatly packed up and They'll helios out, drop us off and come back in a couple hours. We'll do a stream survey. I was leaving the aquatics last year, so a lot of stream surveys. We do a lot of the cabin protocols, so like kicking for benthicks in the fall, um, electrofishing, minnow trapping just to kind of see present absence.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of mining up in the Yukon, so, and a lot of uh, uh, lesser mining, so people are kind of really out in just the most obscure areas that we have to get up and check before they can kind of get in there. So it can be the tiniest little stream on the side of a mountain or in this like massive valley. Um, it's, yeah, it's really varied. It's pretty cool, yeah, and one of my favorite jobs so far.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool. I heard electric fishing or electrofishing, and now I'm imagining you like throwing a toaster in the stream, and I'm assuming that's not. That's not how you do it, but maybe similar.
Speaker 1:Similar. Yeah, it feels like that sometimes if you've got like a pinhole in your waders or something and start to feel a bit of a buzz.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh, you're in the water with it, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you got your waders on and you'll have, um, this it looks like a big plastic kind of heavy backpack With this rat tail out on the back and then in front of you you've got this long pole with a ring, your cathode and your anode no one. You turn it on, it creates like an electrical current around you so that any fish kind of within the vicinity it stuns them for a second and they'll belly up really quick and I'll have another person with me Pretty quick to be on the net trying to scoop them up. And we try not to over shock them or Anything, because you can cause some damage. We don't do it anywhere Hard enough to kill them.
Speaker 1:We're pretty light about it and you're pretty fast, but then the recovery is really fast. So you've got to be Ready that sometimes you'll have these big grayling and they are not happy to be in the net with you and they don't know what just happened. They're pretty funny, but A lot of the time yeah, we deal with sculpting, which are just the tiniest little fish in kind of rocky areas that don't go very far, but there's plenty of them up here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's interesting. So you must get like a pretty good. You know you're doing research on the rivers and streams, so you must get a pretty good idea for your your hobby as well, where you're like hmm, that's how that behaves, or I'd assume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. Uh, it's definitely handy for my favorite hobby to be fly fishing and then my job to be all about fish. I feel like they learn their habitats pretty well. We do um A lot of presence accidents, so you can kind of start to figure out where they are, where they like to hang out Um, where they crowd, how they're going to react Uh, sneaking up on them, especially with the electric fisher. Um, we actually did a big pit tagging study this year as well on grayling Um, and we used fly fishing as our main method Of catch, which was awesome. So I spent a couple weeks this summer of fly fishing and pit tagging grayling Um for hours a day, which was awesome. We all like over 400 fish. I got to teach some people how to fly fish it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, so you literally did get paid to fly fish.
Speaker 1:I did without being a guide. I got paid to fly fish but we couldn't look like we were too happy about it and you know like we were having the best time ever. All our pictures that's like we're on, like a vacation. Yeah, so the people in the office you know we had to have some stories of you know I was cold, it was rainy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh man, I caught another one. This is I know.
Speaker 1:I have to tag another fish. I'm so tired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a hard project and yeah, you gotta, it was hard to hold yourself composed.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, not have like the biggest grin in every photo.
Speaker 2:That's so funny. Yeah, I would. I would have. Let's think, the only photos I'm always smiling in or, like you can tell I'm very happy, is when I'm holding a fish. It's like, oh, he's clearly at a happy state. So, yeah, that would be hard to be like serious, like drop that down.
Speaker 1:Which is massive grayling. I know I always love those memes or something Like this is my boyfriend, um, when he smiles with me and it's like a pretty straight face, and then when he's holding a fish, it's just this huge expression.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. You know I do guide and when someone that doesn't fish a ton or they do fish a ton, it almost doesn't matter their faces and their reaction is almost always the same just like pure excitement, and you know they start grinning right away. So yeah, I my wife definitely knows that she She'll point it out once in a while and be like how come you're always smiling in these photos and then our family photos, you look like you're serious. I'm not good at smiling on cue. It's, it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's gotta be like joyful like this is like just pure childhood excitement when you got a fish on the line or a fish in the net.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's just your body doing what it knows to do.
Speaker 1:I always tell myself I'm gonna like, I'm gonna have a nice smile in this picture with a fish, like it's gonna be great. And then I look through the photos and it's just the biggest smile or like the face is all funny. Yeah, no control. When it actually happens, it is a tough. It's gonna be a big picture. Yeah, that is funny because I think that's okay. They're looking at the fish anyway. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:My face does not matter in this photo, it's all good, oh, that's cool, cool, um. So yeah, you're saying that you kind of do like field work and then you go back to the office and kind of do that for half the season. Is it usually half and half, or is it like do a bit of office work and then go head out?
Speaker 1:Uh, it's, it's definitely Probably half and half summertime is pretty crazy. We don't really do anything except for field work. Um, I only had a handful of days off over the last Field season to kind of. You know you get home young, pack, you live out of a bag, you repack in two days later you know you're shipped out to the next place. Um, so usually by kind of fall is that time where you can relax a little bit. Everything's done. You're going to do data entry. It's a nice time to, because that's when you know bold trout fishing is on. Now that I live up in the ucon got Alaska right beside us with the salmon run. Um, and then through winter time it's a lot of uh, report and office work. So it's nice on the weekends to get out and you know then it's ice fishing and Then, uh, by the time field season hit, you know you're kind of ready to be out all the time again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like the same job that. It's cool that you kind of get you know like an outdoor activity to do and then when it's cold you're Kind of buck me inside.
Speaker 1:And then huddled in a tent so that it's nice and warm too and cozy. Yeah, the rest of the office does do winter field work and I've helped out on those before and, uh, it's cold up here, yeah, yeah so you're living in the ucon now like full-time, or are you still?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm kind of pretty transient, definitely With consulting. It's nice in the winter time you can kind of work from wherever. So I'll be up in white horse for a lot of it and then I'll go back home to a bank For kind of big chunks as well and just work remotely, um, and then I get time to see family. All my family is still back in Alberta, so that's kind of nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. How long do you live in bound for?
Speaker 1:Uh, I was born in grace there, so I grew up there. Um, my mom and my grandfather grew up in the bow valley as well, so kind of I've been kicking around for a while, which is nice, uh, getting to go home and it just, you know, christmas time it looks like a snow globe. Um, there's no ice fishing, but the summer, you know, there's lots of hiking, a lot the backcountry lakes, a lot that you can explore without all the turrets, crowds as well, which gives you some freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I have been through there. I've never fished out there, but it's a lot more lakes, it seems like there. Another is streams, but is there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do have the bow that flows through, yeah, and we've got the West slope cutting as well, which are, you know, they get that really pastel color. They're just beautiful. Um, and there are lake trout as well out in minowanka, but it's it's a pretty deep lake, so you kind of have to have to set up for that. But, yeah, a lot of that country lakes, some of them were stocked way back in the day with, uh, brook trout, which now parks. Canada is kind of trying to Go back and fix and, you know, kind of get rid of the brook trout and either restore it back to what it would be naturally or, you know, put species that have been kind of competed back in there as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Have you been? Uh, like what, when you're going out to do research on like streams and stuff, do they usually send you out just for like one kind of mission, or is it usually like they compile things together, like we need a bit of data on this and this and this like how does that kind of work? So imagine, using like a helicopter to get you to a location is not the least expensive way of doing it.
Speaker 1:Is that? Yeah, definitely not. These and a lot of these places too, we don't. If, for one, we're going to get back to them. Um, especially with things being held on. You know, heliacs, that you have to go at the right time at the right season with the right weather, so they kind of send you out on like a full mission when you get out there that you're going to try to just get as much as you can. Um, you know, we'll be doing perifite and we'll do chlorophyll, we'll minotrop, we'll electrophish, we'll stream assessment and we'll take water samples like it's a, it's a free for all when you're there to just get the best idea For baseline studies of what it looks like. And it's pristine environment Right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then from there we'll build monitoring projects that, if they do choose or get the permits to work out there, um, we have a really good understanding of what it was and then what it turns into, and then from there there can be like implementation and remediation and everything else to try to get it back.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, and then you're getting all that data and you yourself are In putting it into the computer and kind of sending it where it needs to go as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, a lot of data entry. During the winter, which, um, I've been field season you're so excited for, and a month in you're like, oh, my god, I'm ready to go back out and this computer is going to be the death of you but a lot of data entry, statistics, um, building graphs and charts, trying to, you know, see if there's any correlations, if there's anything with metals in the water, what its natural state is. There's some really cool, naturally various acidic rivers up in the Yukon with like, really really low ph's, um, just naturally, like before they even start mining, and then you'll have a river right beside it that you know, just like a beautiful, pristine looking river. That's a nice kind of Tricklesy blue. And then you've got this electric red river right on the other side that's got a super low ph and it's it's really weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is interesting and then obviously in that like super low ph there's not much life, but assume I don't know no, yeah no, there's really no buy.
Speaker 1:You know the fish don't live in there. There they couldn't spawn in as their eggs won't survive and there's no food. So when those two rivers join it's kind of interesting how you'll have pockets of life in areas where the, the freshwater, that's a regular you know river, comes in and kind of feeds and it mixes, and then downstream as it keeps mixing, you know you'll get maybe a little bit more bentic life and invertebrates and and way up high it'll just be completely dead. And then so you kind of you have fine pockets of you know sculpting when you wouldn't expect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very interesting. Is there anything unique that you found out about sculpting, since you've been able to study them a little bit, like how they swim or I don't know? I don't even know what I, what the answer is, but I like fishing stulpin a lot, so that interests me quite a bit um, I think they're Cute, very up close and personal and viewing glasses.
Speaker 1:They're very sassy. I find they are, you know, really unimpressed that they've been caught in a minotraps. They will bump down and, um, especially with water, if you Are trying to deal with them, but then when you go to let them go, they're kind of like a little grumpy old men that they're like no, this is my spot now I'm not moving. You know I'll sit in your hand and then you kind of have to like scoot them off, because they'll just sit right in your hand in the water and they won't run away. Um, almost like they're just like challenging you or they're. You know your hand is warm and they're happy, I don't know, but they're pretty sassy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're the only sculpting up in the Yukon is the slimy sculpting Um, where it's like down south you'll have different species, so it's kind of interesting that they're the only ones up. Here is that's just kind of been able to evolve and stay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wonder what it is. I don't know. If you would tell me, if you.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll find out. Let you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely one day I'll just get a message from you and you'll be like haha.
Speaker 1:I got it all about sculpting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, no well, I guess, enough about work. So, even though you, you get a fly fish once in a while for work, that's pretty cool how did your uh, your whole fly fishing career, let's call it start off?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got my first fly rod. I think it was 15 or 16. And it just kind of started out as one of those hobbies. You know you go out, it's fun, but until you start actually catching fish. Or I caught my first fish on my fly rod on a dry fly and this kind of swampy looking lake that we were just feeding the water, trying to figure out how to get better at coming. But then actually taking the fly is kind of where it clicked for me that oh shit, this is really cool. And yeah, through high school and going into university, I had a really fun time in school. We had a small group of friends that also were into fishing and fly fishing and they were in environmental degrees up in Prince George as well. So every weekend we were out fishing and you know, days after school if we could go or you know it's a long weekend we'll try to get out to terrace for steelheading and your summers start getting packed in with it and it just evolved to be a very full time hobby. And we got into ice fishing. My brother moved up to Prince George as well when I was going to school, so he became a really big ice fishing enthusiast and yeah, so I roped him into it. He's been my very constant fishing buddy for a long time now.
Speaker 1:After graduation everyone kind of spreads out throughout. You know jobs and through COVID it was kind of hard to stay in touch and get those trips going, especially through COVID. So I found when everything was locked down you could really just go out by yourself. You know you're not in crowds, I could go out with my brother or like one or two friends that were locally around and just escape everything. And it became a very big constant in my life and it's so fun. You get to, you know, your first steelhead or your first bull trout and you see your friends and my siblings get their first fish and it's exciting. Or you get that really big, you know Laker through an ice fishing hole and it's hard to not want to go out every weekend, even when you've been scunced in. Hours and hours are spent out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah you carry through those moments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny because I'm chasing steelhead right now, so it's a lot of nothing and we're there as super cool. Exactly my buddy was saying, you know, people think we're crazy for what we do. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. And he's like, but I'll still explain it to you. And he started explaining it, basically like, yeah, we stand in freezing cold water, swinging flies when it's not the most effective way and we come home happy as can be Nice. Yeah, a little insanity there, but yeah, yeah, it's something, something magical, that's for sure. What was like the evolution? Like you said, you started by pounding water with dry flies until it finally happened. And then what was the progression and species and skill sets and such.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely started on dry flies it was. You know, alberta is all about dry fly fishing and ground trout and I started off by rainbows and big rainbows. When I moved into BC that I've got some pretty cool lakes out there with some pretty big fish and lake fishing, I'd say probably started. I had a little belly boat and out there paddling around just getting into the right spot, getting pushed down by the wind and in the up nearer Prince George that all many groups they have rivers. So from lakes all the time to mostly rivers, it kind of helped through university.
Speaker 1:You know you got to exercise climbing down into these canyons and walking up and down for kilometers trying to find the right hole and exploring a lot more instead of just going from lake to lake. You know you really got to find those sections of river. It helps get your mind off school. And from there I found my personal favorite species was fishing for boltarow. I absolutely love boltarow.
Speaker 1:I think they are such a cool species. I love when they are big and round and chunky and they get the big orange bellies in the fall. I just get so excited. It's cold enough that you can kind of be like all bundled up in your waders and your fleece, pants on and everything. Just, you know it feels good being out there. Colors are changing and then from river fishing we kind of started section being off that you know fall is for the river, when to your ice fishing topwater or you know an ice off in the lake, and then summertime you're usually working and hit the rivers or like whatever you can. But we really started like piecing it together depending on the season and I'd say I definitely still live by that. It's pretty fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've done the same thing. You got to know your seasons so you can be prepared Right.
Speaker 1:I've done it 100%.
Speaker 2:Whenever I'm like unsure, I'm like what were we fishing for, you know, in this month? It's like go back in your photos and you're like I know where to go now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the iPhone photos is all the date and timestamps. So helpful, so helpful. Yeah, where was I last viewed? You know Snapchat memories. I was like I was on this river. That's where it was hot. Yeah, I tried to keep a little notebook together, but I'm pretty bad at that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did too, and it's funny because that's like basically what you do for work is like take notes.
Speaker 1:I know Like I don't want to do that in my personal time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm enjoying myself right now. I don't want to do that. Yeah, oh, that's comical, but yeah, no, I did the. I had a little journal going as well for a bit, and I was like really on it at first, like doing so good, water, temps, weather I saw a leaf fall. I'd be like a leaf fell, you know, like everything was in there, yeah, exactly. And then, and then it just trickled off until I was like, yeah, I'm going fishing either way. So you know, I like to crack the code as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's nice to go without a schedule and sometimes you know you're just out there, probably not going to catch anything, maybe in the wrong spot, you know like, I'm just happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely the adventure and the exploring is a big part of why it's so amazing, but you did say something that I'm plenty interested in, which is bull trout. I'll be heading back to, like Cranbrook area for some guiding, so the only thing I want to catch there is a decent size bull. I caught, like you know, 18s and whatnot, but we need to get it, oh yeah, you want to get that big that big, that kind of you know flows on your hands.
Speaker 1:That's oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, let's just let's talk about that for a bit. What's? There's some of the things that you kind of learned about the species that you know sticks out in your mind, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they are such an interesting fish. I think you know they've got a pretty cool life cycle. They spawn in the fall. They like that kind of cold water and they they get aggressive to like. You know it's falling season and lots of fish kind of get aggressive. But you find fishing for bulls in their spawning season when they're all colored up Like you'll usually have that one really big bull sitting in the pool and you know doing snow cold surveys as well like getting to watch them like they're still confident in where they are, right in the middle or up at the front that you know, the smaller bulls around them.
Speaker 1:They're kind of chasing each other back and forth Like they've got no interest. You know he knows that he's the big fish in that section and I've got to do some sight fishing as well with bulls and you'll be up above and you know the little guys are chasing your fly and you're just praying that you don't get him because you want that big guy but he's not interested until you know he's probably the last man standing. So you try to catch him. Or you know you're pulling it away from the smaller bulls that are kind of ramped up. But when you do get that big fish, he's heavy, it'll sit down at the bottom. They head shake really hard.
Speaker 1:I've got some cool underwater footage that you know their fighting style is different. They don't run like a, like a rainbow is going to their very like. She's kind of like bunkered down at the bottom. They try to stay low. They're kind of like pulling in a log sometimes and you're hoping that you know you get them in, but they're just a different fish than fish and critter out.
Speaker 1:I find, um, yeah, they and they're not like a, they're not as wily as damning either, like salmon will take you for a run and it's going to be a workout, whereas I find this is more of a battle of like strength and patience, because they will shake and they'll get tired and you'll finally be able to get it off the bottom, um, but he's going to kind of stay in the same area, he's not going to run up and down the river. So you're just kind of trying not to break your line. Not too much tension, be patient, um. And then when you do get them in there, you know you're, like you said, the big bellies overhanging. They're heavy. You're holding it up to like begging your friends to get the picture in time because your arm is tired. You're going to. You know I got small arms, yeah fair enough.
Speaker 2:I mean you know any any decent size fish. It's it's still especially, and you just bought the fish. You know you were using your muscles. You're like you're tired, it's tired, we're all tired, except for the camera guy. He's just like hold it up, hold it up. And you're like I'm trying.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to have like a normal phase and hold this visual like back to the trying to hold their composure.
Speaker 2:It's, it's difficult. Oh my gosh, I know it's hard.
Speaker 1:I like, um, I like their faces too. Actually. They kind of look gnarly Like they'll. They'll get scarred up, they they'll bite each other. They get aggressive. Um, they've got markings all over them from you know spawning seasons and they can live for quite a while. So you'll have some dinosaurs in there with like torn out fins, like. They just look like a cool fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think their name. Definitely, although it's interesting, they're called a bull trout. Yeah, that to me is, I know, like how do you explain it to someone like, hey, this is a bull trout. It's not a trout though.
Speaker 1:So it's a trout, it's a char. You're like this is a case. Oh, I know we call it Atlantic salmon, a salmon, and it's not a salmon, but I know it is. Yeah, yeah, I always like. A lot of people are still very adamant that Dollyvard and are still, you know, the same as a bull trout, or they are one in the same. And now that we've done genetic testing and to see that they are separate, and uh.
Speaker 1:I do like that debate. You know you'll have some of the older old timers coming in and be like same fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I do get. I do get the kind of like the similarities and look that I've seen. You know I've fished for Dollyvards and I've caught some smaller bulls I would say like the smaller bulls for sure kind of look like like you catch the same size of either species. They do look somewhat similar and I could see that. But yeah, yeah. No sense arguing Now. You know the truth, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know the truth now. Yeah, they do look pretty similar, especially the smaller bulls. They did they. We've got a lot of Dollyvard in up in the Yukon but we don't have bull, trout kind of past walks and playkiria. So I'm going to try and try and hit more Dollyvards here instead of bulls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what is the difference between an Arctic char and a trout, like I don't know? If you look at them and no one told you, you'd probably be like, well, these are all trout. What's the like main component that made them a char versus a trout? You even know? Do I even know? I don't know.
Speaker 1:The Arctic char is actually. They do have some up here and out towards Alaska that I really want to get into this year. That's on my bucket list for species. But yeah, char versus a trout, a lot of it has to do with just their genetics. You know it's a grayling thing versus a whitefish, a salmon versus a trout. You know they're kind of within similar families but their characteristics and life cycles are different. So you know Arctic char can go from the ocean back into freshwater and go back and forth, just kind of like a steel headwood, but salmon can't.
Speaker 1:But salmon and trout are very closely related. And then you've got bull trout that don't go into saltwater. They like to be in freshwater but the Dolly Varden can be sea run so they can go like it's all kind of funny on how they evolve in their similar classes and just kind of how they've been broken up or how the mountains have formed and kind of like locked species in. Yeah, but it's fun how species we thought were really close when you do the genetics can actually be so different where there's subspecies. And then you get mixtures of a brook trout and a brown trout to get a tiger trout and really you've got cisco wets that are a different kind of lake trout in Ontario just from like the depth of the water column. So it's yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting and then we named everything in the Latin form. So now that we're going back in genetics, it makes it really difficult because we've already named them. We're not going to go back and we're just trying to, like, piece it together better.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, now it makes me ponder what came first the arctic char or the trout, chicken or the egg? You know, chicken or the egg? There's no correlation like way far up, there's just a separate species. Or is there like anything connecting them up at the top? Do we know? Can we go back?
Speaker 1:Sure, They've got yeah and sisters that probably connect them all up. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, you look at it as long as you find the adipose fin. Yeah, We've kind of lumped a lot of like the trout or salmone d'aise together based on the adipose fin. So you're looking for like key characteristics and it can get so specific that you're looking at the fin rays and their arms because you're trying to like distinguish them or common ancestors. I mean, you look at, brown trout are from kind of more like Africa, but we've brought them over. They're the only trout species in Africa. So you know there's got to be some lineage of how they got from here to there. And you've got species in Asia as well that are kind of similar to like our trout. Yeah, so it's kind of I'm sure they've got lots of convoluted relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I didn't. It's pretty cool, I mean even. I mean I know sea run a little bit more and there's just so many different variants. I mean there's the slope, there's the coastal cutthroat, the sea runs like it just goes on and that's only three out of the. I don't even know how many, but yeah, it's definitely interesting. Oh, are we alive?
Speaker 1:Oh, are we good Sorry.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry. Yeah, you cut out per second. So I was checking to make sure I still have service. When I move my phone around, it's like we're locked in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries, the audio is coming in pretty good the video's trophy. But I did recently find another program that I can utilize. Instead of Zoom, it's called what is it called Something? River or it's River something. It'll pop into my head randomly. But instead of it's like right now for Zoom, I'm recording my screen and your screen onto my computer, whereas this other app you would be recording on your computer, I'd be recording on my computer Automatically when I click it and then, when it's done, it uploads it to me. So even if our video or audio was trophy, it would come out clear later on, so I will make that free.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is pretty amazing. I mean, zoom has obviously allowed me to connect with people all around the world, so it's been pretty cool. But there are some times where either internet's not the best or you're in the Yukon working off of it. The fact that we're still able to talk and see each other is pretty amazing. It's pretty cool. Yeah, but back to fishing.
Speaker 2:So for bull trout, something I noticed when I would find them in a river. There's one, the Bull River. They don't spawn in it anymore near the dam, and so I'd find a lot of them kind of hunkered down in deep pools and they wanted nothing to do with anything. Yeah, and mind you, I didn't try nymphing them. I was very dead set on getting it on a streamer, so I didn't even really try that tactic. I'm sure it probably would have worked if you got the right egg or whatever nymph in front of them. But as far as streamers, when you go to a run do you find that you're picking certain sections of it or do you always just work the whole run, kind of work at steelheading, where you cast, let it sway and rip it in? It's your brain. Thoughts on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also like to use streamers. Yeah, I'd say it probably takes more like a steelhead approach to where you get to the top of the run, sometimes getting to snorkel flow and just kind of watch their behavior and get kind of like a bird's eye view on them as well. It's kind of helped me see where they like to sit. But sometimes it's a gamble. They're kind of all throughout your house bigger guys kind of quite low to the bottom. So definitely weigh your stuff down and then sometimes those kind of medium to smaller bowls are all throughout the section. So it's good to kind of go through the entire thing and work your way down because, yeah, you'll be surprised. Sometimes they're sitting like right at the back of the run, like where you think you should probably pull and just like keep walking, like stay there for an extra couple of casts and they'll surprise you where they decide to sit. But, yeah, definitely weigh your stuff down and I've lost a lot of good streamers to logs and things at the bottom. But you know we all have yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things If you don't lose flies, you're probably not fishing hard enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah. And then the hard thing is sometimes you know bull trout are funny it won't feel like they hit it really hard sometimes either. It almost feels like you're caught on the log. So you get used to pulling every time and you'll lose the flies. But you never know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you never know. It's funny too, because I don't know why like for steelhead, mentally, when I've given up, I catch a steelhead. And you know, before I had a kid I was fishing a lot more, so there's a lot more chances for it to happen. So that's what I'm struggling with now is where I don't get out as much. So there's, you know, I used to go out two, three times a week and now I'm going once a week hopefully. But in the past there was many times where I was like, okay, I'm giving up, I'm going for brown trout now and then, boom, steelhead on.
Speaker 2:So I tried that a few times, giving up, it didn't work. Though for the bull trout it's like, hey, I'm giving up, guys, it's happening. But we well, I would be guiding and you know someone would catch a cutthroat on a dry and it would be. You know, they're all excited. And then I'm watching this massive bull grab their trout and they're they don't even notice and they're still fighting the trout like all excited. And I'm like did you see that? And they're like see what I'm like?
Speaker 1:massive fat, huge.
Speaker 2:And you didn't see that it was very clear. Yeah, but yeah, we'd call them shark attacks. So I saw many of those and yeah, but of course, when you're guiding, see, you actually got paid to fish, whereas when I'm guiding, or when people are guiding, we usually don't fish ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of a hard part about guiding. You're like your hobby is fishing, but you're not actually fishing.
Speaker 2:It's like data research. It's like data research. You know you're going down and you know it's. I'm obviously quite well not obviously, but I am quite new to the whole guiding thing. I did one full season and I'm going on my second, but, yeah, I definitely noticed that you start to just very much live by curiously, through the person you know. You're like cast there and like they get it, and you're like, yes, I did it. And you're like I'm I still? Yeah, I still feel rewarded when it happens. Yeah, and once in a while someone will be like, no, I want to cast over here. And you're like, all right, and then they catch one and you're like, yeah, that's a good spot. You know it's a little bit of everything, but teaching is really cool and watching people you know enjoy the passion that we both love is really cool. But yeah, there are a few scenarios where you see big brown feeding or you just had a shark attack and that's all you want to do is like ask me the streamer Rod, let me do this thing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like this is yeah, this is my chance. Or you know, right afterwards you're like I got to get that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm coming for you. Yeah, I thought about it. But most of the times after a day of floating, you're everyone. Yeah, they're almost more tired because they had to think about everything you're saying or, like working on their cast presentation, how to fight a fish. Some people have a hard time with you know one of those three things, or all of it or none of it. So some people get exhausted by the end of the day, but at the end of the day everyone's generally very happy, so it's an rewarding one.
Speaker 2:It has definitely allowed me a better way of like teaching people. You know, because before I did it all the time I'd be like we'll do this and then that wouldn't work and it would be hard to find the next thing. But now I've had so much practice with people that it's been easier to kind of learn new ways of teaching people. Me and myself I don't. I don't always learn the same way as other people, so I kind of got used to finding the next route that they could get to. But yeah, so bull trout is one of those ones that I was on the bucket list. I did catch a couple on the streamer, but I'm like it needs to, needs to get up and stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I think too with like guiding and teaching, because I've definitely tried to teach friends and family and I really need to think about what you're doing. I think when you've been fishing for so long, a lot of the time you know it's second nature to you. And then somebody will ask you well, how do I do this? Or how do I get it there, and like what's the technique? And you're like I don't even know anymore, like I'm just I'm just a well-oiled machine, I'm just yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I'm just, yeah, not even thinking about it and it's a relaxing thing. And then when you go to teach somebody or you have clients and you so badly want them to have the experience to get a fish and sometimes it's the first time they've held a rod You're like how can I get you from here to there? And however many days or hours we have, we've got to kind of tune in your own skills which makes you think back to it and maybe you know you're a little less lazy on your own skills and technique after you've had to explain it to someone.
Speaker 2:The one of the biggest things that I am thankful for the guiding was when you sit on a boat or I guess if you're guiding off the shore or whatever, when you're guiding you're watching the whole time. So when something's not working for like long enough, you'll okay, I need to switch this up, I need to change something I'm doing. But when I would fish for myself, I'd get very stubborn and and stick with it. Yeah, I'm like no, it's not the leader length, I swear it's. You know I'm not getting down. And then you know see the color pattern.
Speaker 2:This is the one. So when, once I started guiding, I was like, ah yes, be willing to to change what you're doing because, um, yeah, especially for, like you know, the the West slope cutthroat, that was my first introduction to like real dry fly fishing on my home river. Like I live on Vancouver Island, so my home home river is the Cowjian River and it's not known as a dry fly river. You can definitely get them on dry flies, but it's not. You know, even during a prolific hatch you're not seeing a ton of surface action comparatively to you know what I've seen in other parts now. So I didn't have a ton of experience teaching anyone how to dry fly fish, but then I also didn't have like an insane amount of experience myself.
Speaker 2:So, seeing those fish and how aggressive they would be if you had the right fly, you know nothing's happening, no bugs anywhere. And you're you throw on this one fly. It doesn't work. You throw on the next one, you get four fish and you're like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, what are they looking for, who knows? And then the next day as fishing goes, you know that doesn't work at all.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's like a full reset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but definitely leader length, like dry fly fishing, is. That was the first time that I really drilled through my head and got the understanding that like, yeah, if it's you know, if the fish are getting pickier near the end of the season, that extending of the lot, the leader and such can really improve, or going down and tip it, that can be all you needed to do and I know a lot of people that you know fight that as well, and because most of my friends were all kind of like nope, but now that we've gone past that level, it's like, oh well, what's your leader? You know what's that looking like? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy. You know, and I understand it more now, but when you don't know these things and you're trying to learn, it's crazy how hard it is to wrap your head around like wait, I need to add two extra feet of this line and thinner, and that will work. What do you mean?
Speaker 1:And it's got to be. You know this size and this fly for this river, with this color. And you know my techniques got to be different, whether I'm nymphing or a tri-fly. Like I think fly fishing has become such a hit and it's so fun because it's always so different, like you're always thinking you don't know what's. You know if it's going to be windy, your casting has to be different If it's going to be really still water. You know you've got to be gentle and not just like beating through the wind and it's all these like subtle differences that can make your brain your fishing day. Or you know, you just hide all of us and toss it back in the car. Yeah, by the next day you're ready to get. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I need one day's rest and I will come see you guys again, yeah.
Speaker 1:Eat some snacks and I'll be back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly when you're fishing for bulls, I'm still my brain's still bull-trying out. I'm going to ride the bull for a while here, but let's say you're streamer fishing for bull. What kind of setup do you like to use?
Speaker 1:It is a hard one. I guess I ended up, and from where I am you'll be changing the water, your color pattern depending. I like to go like a white, so pinky sort of streamers, even down to a kokanee pattern when kokanee are spawning in BC that's always a pretty big hit even like a kind of shabby, dead-looking kokanee you know. Toss some white in there and then, because you've got to weight it down, you can get even just like some heavier weight, whether it's you know you're doing three-waste football, to really get it down at the bottom and just kind of let it drag, almost like you. It's kind of cheating and it's definitely hard to swing with, but just to let it kind of like everyone's around, just like sit and drag through the whole pool right at the bottom, and then you can take those weights off and then swing the rest of it and just have like a couple weighted led balls over towards the head of your streamer Actually a weighted streamer, like one of those weighted heads that you can tie onto just to kind of get yourself down in the water column, because I find that can be the hardest part in those bigger systems just getting it down. And if you're in a smaller stream like you. Just, you know anything fluffy you'll usually do and you kind of grab it. But yeah, if you're going to be on a bigger river system, getting it down will kind of be the biggest challenge. And then you don't want your leader to be too long, to the point where it's, you know, hard to cast, hard to handle. So finding you know if it's windy, shortening it up or if it's kind of a nicer day, I always do.
Speaker 1:The trick that I was taught was like from your finger to your elbow, from your finger to your shoulder, from your finger to your other shoulder, kind of depending on your day. It's like the cheesy go to that. I've always tried to write or die by and I've taught people that one as well. You know your leader versus everything else. But yeah, your tippet usually because you're weighting down. I go with a heavier weight. I'll do like 10 pound test Just because I have also lost a lot of both on lighter weight, because you know it's got that stretch to it as well and they really do bunker down. They're not really going to run and you can't drag them out of it. I've broken off a couple times. So like I'm hard on the 10 pound to the 20 pound test.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I usually go 10, wiggle it to 20, get that on the. I'll actually usually use a float line as well, just so that you know when it's weighted down it'll bring your full line down with it too. It's a bit of a janking system and then when you take it off and you swing through nicely, then you know it keeps it up in that kind of middle water column range, and then you can always like change to something quite a bit smaller, the streamer and then just kind of like, let that, you know, be a foot or two under the water, depending on how deep your river is. So you kind of want to hit all three sections of it. They'll kind of sit in different places.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. I, yeah, I only knew as, I only knew as much as I knew. That makes sense. It does. I promise it does. I only, yeah, I only knew as much as I knew. Yeah, what you know what's up.
Speaker 2:So I was, I was very fixated at the time because I only had, you know, I only got, I think, three or four opportunities to go for them while I was out working. But yeah, I was very fixated on like, yeah, heavy fly and fish trying to fish the bottom. Of course that leads to just losing flies consistently. Yeah, I was tying my own and I was tying them like on someone else's vice at the fly shop that I was working for. So it was very much like you know, okay, we're going fishing in 20 minutes, let's see how many streamers I can pump out. They didn't look, look great.
Speaker 2:But my buddy, when I left, like a week and a half later, he's like dude, I just got a massive bowl on your streamer and it was literally like I tied white rabbit strip on the bottom or on the top and then red rabbit strip on the bottom, like halfway, with some dubbing in it, eyes and whip finish. Like I was literally trying to just pump these things out as quickly as possible. And yeah, you know, sometimes I get bent in my head like, is it the fly? Clearly right time, right place helps a lot. But yeah, it was one of those things where I now, looking back, I'm like, yeah, I should have fished these other sections a little bit different. And you know, there was some shallow spots that you know I was like, okay, I'm hitting everything and when I move on so I probably should have changed my set up a little bit and get that tail out.
Speaker 2:Got to get the tail out. I fish everything now for steelhead, no matter what, because I've now hooked into steelhead in weird spots that I wouldn't normally, thanks to one of my buddies who brought me to weird spots, but yeah it was exactly like that, and then I got a fish and I was like, oh, okay, I guess, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Like right then my notebook.
Speaker 2:Yeah, got to get the note. Oh, there's another leaf that fell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I do find this old too, like it's the most gnarly looking old streamer, like that ride or dial in that you toss on, that looks like it's just main G and that's usually your ticket. It's not like other fish that are really picky on presentation. And how does it look? Yeah, they, it doesn't have to be pretty. I have had some pretty ugly flies flung out for them and they'll still hit. Yeah, which is a nice feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That is a good feeling. I hope I get that feeling this year. I'm sure I'll have been going a little bit early so I can fish for the bowls prior to working. So that's the plan, pretty.
Speaker 1:Well, you have to tell me about when you get that, that big king on the pool, and how good that feels in the biggest while you're going to have in that pretty healing photo. I can't wait.
Speaker 2:I'll send you a photo, just like my smile, and then a photo of the fish, and then you'll tell me that the rest of my face looked like it'll be a good game. Yeah, it's. Even when we were out the last time, me and my buddy who I met out there, we like floated it, so he was on on the oars half the time and I was on the oars the other half of the time, so it was pretty sweet and we probably had like four or five shark attacks, so like bulls chasing, like I'd be ripping a streamer through or going really slow, trying different things and I get a cutting and I'd be like, oh yeah, cool, awesome fish, so that's sweet. And then a bull would come out and I'd be like, come on, man, what's going on?
Speaker 1:I was right there. Come on, you got y'all excited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do have a few patterns, though that I'm going to whip up this year that I've seen that were pretty calm, greasy. I don't know, do you call a pattern greasy If it's like, you're like, yeah, that's going to work.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, it's going to be pretty dirty, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You got to get down and dirty once in a while.
Speaker 1:Anything to get a fish to. But you said you do a lot of steelheading. Was that out when you were living on the island or are you?
Speaker 2:I'm still on the island and I haven't been doing it for that long. I really don't know how long I've been doing, I guess maybe like five or six years, pretty much exclusively on the Cowjian River. When I decided I wanted to guide on the Cowjian River, a guide gave me some advice was like learn that river the best you can and just keep learning on it. So that's really where my focus is. But then also, you know, gas prices have not gone down, so that limits Especially on the island, Especially on the island.
Speaker 2:So it definitely limits me where I want to go, especially this year with, or the last few years with, having a kid is definitely like okay, if I only have a day for it, I can't do, you know, eight hours of driving or five hours of driving to find a stream or a lake or sorry, or a river. But yeah, the last two years last year I hooked into six and then this year I've hooked into one, and yesterday I swung past like one buck and four or five hens and my buddy was watching them and he's like, no, they don't want it, so I give it a little rest and try the next thing and swing back through it. No, didn't even look. I'm like all right, that's good enough for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least you're seeing them, though I mean that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it feels good knowing that I actually swung my fly past them, because you know, when you're winter steelheading, you don't really ever know. So that was a good feeling. But then, like leaving that spot, I was like why can't you? Just I actually yelled like bite it a couple of times, just like come on, do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yelling at fish during your fishing day, are you?
Speaker 2:really. You know, yeah, put your head under the water and let them know it was. It felt good. And you know, I know it's just a matter of time. Next month I've got a few days off and I'm going to go hard for one of the weekends. So, fish a few of the weekdays into the weekend, because I was like, well, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen from a major grind, yeah, as steelheading is. So, yeah, they're love, hate. You know, I love catching them and I hate when they don't bite my fly. So that's where I'm at right now. Well, it's to learn, though it's it's. Do you do any spear casting or are you all single hand? I?
Speaker 1:do. Yeah, I've got a spade being up here and just you know this work. I've definitely done it for the last. Usually we would work right into fall, but this this season I'm really going to try to stay more and get out into Alaska onto those bigger rivers. It's like my goal for the season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's magical, I love it. I want to get into trout spade this year. That's kind of my thought, because I was like you know what, I don't actually have to stop spade casting just because winter's over and I've seen, I've seen spade or trout spade fishing. Yeah, that all makes sense, be quite effective. You know swinging very small classic patterns, or even you know just wet flies with, you know, not a ton of stuff on them, and it be very successful. So yeah, I find myself challenging myself more and more with how I want to catch a fish, which usually leads to less fish, but when it pans out it's good, it does get a rewarding effect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, I keep telling myself that, get it on the set though. Yeah, like, okay, when it happens it's going to feel good. Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to be going after some salmon and some Arctic chars on my bucket list. Like that is a fish I really want, and every time I look at videos of Alaska, you know it's that that perfect scene that I've got in my head that you know it's going to be dazed. I'm not going to get one. It's going to be colored up in the season on the right rod with the fly, and then the reality is probably going to be it's a shit show and I won't be ready, and it'll hit when you're, like, least expecting, and it's just going to be less of a Disney fairy tale, but I'm so excited. Yeah, that is really. And I'm sure my stay fishing is going to be pretty rusty, so we'll be working on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got time. The, uh, yeah, they're gorgeous fish.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're so beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are, it's. Yeah, it's definitely up there in the bucket list. I want to make my way up to Alaska as well. I think almost anyone that fly fishes kind of has that thought process. And how far are you from Alaska, newfound, how long of a drive is it?
Speaker 1:Uh, we're really off. Places like Haynes, alaska, or Skagway are quite close to the couple of our drive. But into those more kind of remote areas where you know you might get flown in, dropped off and you're going to be just holding the whole river, are you going to? Especially for you know they've they're tick charts. It's a bit of a ways to go. So it'll be a triple after, plan out and probably take time off for. But yeah, but hitting Haynes, alaska for the salmon run is so close, like you can do a quick weekend trip and go hang out, enjoy it. It's a pretty magical place. The town's really cute and small, the people are so lovely and the rivers are stunning, but the weather is terrible. So yeah, it's the way to go.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you got to have one, can't have, can't have without the other.
Speaker 1:And you know you feel the freezing. Yeah, Nice way to kind of end that season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so much to explore everywhere. It's kind of insane. I mean, even when I think of this island and you know, if I were to put little pins everywhere I'd been, it wouldn't even be like half a percent, Wouldn't even be. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like there's just constant. There's even parts of my the river I've fished on for like seven years that I'm like, oh, never fished that before, I've never even knew there was a path down there. Or you know, see someone pop out of the bush, Like how did you get here? And they're usually older, older people. And I'm like, how'd you get here? And they're like years of trying. Like, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, he probably did his own, his own trail there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he's got a spot.
Speaker 1:I know I am doing that post-grad program on Vancouver Island. I wish I had stayed longer. It was a pretty intensive program and I didn't get to fish as much as I would have liked to and it didn't help. I was there during a pretty rough season. You guys had like two or three monsoons while I was on the island, like it was torrential downpour, rivers were blown out all the time. I brought all my fishing gear and it was just. It was not not the year for it. I tried a couple times but it was pretty rough.
Speaker 2:That was like two years ago right, or two, three years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. It was a hard one.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, you know, my sister is still out on the island during school and she sends me all these beautiful pictures of her out on the river, her doing stuff with school. She's also doing biology and fisheries, but she doesn't really fly fish. I don't know. It's perfect, get out there Like, come on, I'll have to do a visit, or fake visit and drag her out with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fake visit, I'm visiting you. Okay, grab your stuff, we're going fishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, plans are going fishing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that year was something crazy, crazy amount. That's the we got one of our highways blew out, the Malahat there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got stuck in that. I got stuck on the traffic on the way back. It was brutal, but it was on the right, it was on the side that eventually the traffic started going through. So that was very thankful, or else I would have been stuck. And then there's one ferry that connects like Sydney to Mill Bay and of course the second. Anything happens on that highway that's like not even an option. So, yeah, I had to go drop off two kids that were fostering for a bit and, yeah, on the way back I was like, oh no, I'm going to hit traffic and I like hit it right before gas station. So I got a bunch of munchies and like had my phone.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm prepared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone was in their car, with their cars turned off and, like you can see, you know multiple people just watching shows on their phone or there's eventually like hours into it. There was people pulling out lawn chairs and like going to sit around other people's cars and chatting with random strangers. And I was like, wow, this is never been in traffic like that. It wasn't even traffic, it was just parked cars. Some people would just pull over and start walking and I was like you guys are wild, yeah that was crazy.
Speaker 1:You're really going to be there for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that year I actually did really good on steelhead, but of course not during that time. You know that was the time schools over and leave.
Speaker 1:That's when everything gets better.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is exactly it. It was one of the one of the years that I knew the most fly anglers that caught a steelhead. So, sorry, sorry, we did it out. You know, but it's like that. I'm sure you've seen a meme here or there where it's like workday and it's like pristine lake or like oceans, flat calm, and then it's like your day off and monsoon season. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ptidol is white cat and water.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I even, like a couple of weekends ago I got my bad luck. Oh it's, I don't know. Some, somehow nature knows they're like oh, these people really want that fish. I'm going to just switch it on them, right? Yeah, it's usually the day after the day I go fishing. One of my friends is like you should have been here yesterday, or you know that old story. And I'm like, well, I was working, I have a job, like I got to do things. Yeah, you know. Yeah. So, being out in the Yukon, what are the fish species that you can fish for out there, and is there anything you can fish for near you when you're not?
Speaker 1:working? Yeah, it's. It's been different. It's been a bit of a learning curve, which has been fun, because all the species that I'm used to and kind of tuned into aren't really up here to fish for.
Speaker 1:Especially, you know, dc, there's such a wide, fun variety of trout and salmon and you're you know, you get pretty tuned into what you're doing. And then, coming up here there's a lot of lake trout and really deep water which I'm not very used to. But then they've got a lot of pike and I know Alberta's got pike as well, but I never really, you know, mined for pike, especially being in the bow valley with a lot of trout. So a lot of pike, a ton of graylings. I think I got my fill for grayling when I did that training study and I was fortunate enough to go fishing all the time. It's just limitless sunlight in summertime, so you're fishing for work and you go fishing in different locations after work and it was always grayling here. They are everywhere. They do do a little bit of stocking up here for Kokini and rainbows and there's a couple pockets of Kokini that are naturally occurring up here.
Speaker 1:So not a lot. So yeah, I'm trying to get better with Lakers. Fly casting for pike is something that I'm gonna try to get kind of tuned into a little bit more. Having that metal leader is really weird to cast with. So yeah, getting into stuff like that, but there's not a lot of trout. You're not really steelheading up here. You're not really pole trout fishing. There's some dollies in pockets, but the fish that I'm really after is the ink new.
Speaker 2:Educate me please. Yeah, it's a cool fish. Don't even, never even the ink new.
Speaker 1:The ink, new, yeah, the Kony. They had a teacher on Vancouver Island that loved them. He put pictures of them up at Halloween because they're kind of like the white fish gone bad. They eat other fish and they get massive Like it's. You know it's that you almost gotta look up a picture of it. We call it. I'm about to.
Speaker 2:What is the spelling of the? Is it sound? Spell out sounds.
Speaker 1:I'm, I'm, you know I probably I'm the worst spelling.
Speaker 2:Don't worry, I'm in the same boat. That's why I fly fish, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, filling was not my strong tooth to school.
Speaker 2:I got made as that. I got made as obviously did not. Yeah, so you'll have to send me a photo or something.
Speaker 1:Then you have a picture of the one that we got two weeks ago and so it's. You know they're, they're massive, they can be just the coolest looking fish. They've got big scales. They look like a big mean white fish, almost kind of like a token. And then the white fish, like it's such a weird yeah, because up here they they're in a couple of systems and we actually didn't know they were in canoe, in the lake that we were fishing for Lakers in ice fishing, and when he he got it we pulled it up. Like everyone was really shocked seeing it come through and it was, you know, heavy like a Laker, acted like a Laker, like we thought we hooked into a pretty cool fish and it was such a surprise pulling that out and we'd been talking about in canoe the whole snowmobile ride out and how we should go to a different lake for and to do so. It was kind of a fun surprise.
Speaker 1:But I I got to get one myself and you can fish for them in the spring. A lot of the time they kind of go up into like smaller areas that you wouldn't expect a fish like that to get into, and there's a lot of them in the Northwest Territories. You know, I've heard of studies where people go out and catch them and you can just get like net holes of them. There's just so many. And yet when you're fishing for them, of course you know it's a struggle. Not one, two, three, four, five, you're like. So that's my little unicorn right now. That's the fish that I'm after. You know, hiker, cool Lakers are really fun grayling. I've got my fill of but being canoeing, so it's gonna be. And then over to Alaska, but I'll tell you a picture of one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And now in Halloween, you can think of, like you know, the white fish going back.
Speaker 2:It sounds like I don't know. Now I'm imagining a tarpon with like war paint. To be honest, I don't know what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1:It's like a tarpon with white fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so great Is there a coloration like pretty like still silver or like what are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the one that we pulled out. It depending on the lake, of seeing different kind of colors, for they'll be that really like silver, white and almost kind of like a bluey to them. But I've also seen ones where they're kind of a little bit, you know, kind of dark or not yellowy but kind of that like kind of dirty white looking kind of silvery, kind of brownish on the underbelly. But I think depending on what system they're in or like how deep the water is, maybe they look kind of different. The one we pulled out was silver and white and kind of bluey and just like that perfect thing can do coming through the ice.
Speaker 1:And we're so excited that I didn't even get a good release video of it or anything, because you know, when you're just like jittery, our friends in the ice fishing tent beside us heard us yelling and hollering. By the time they could even unzip our tent. You just like stuffed it back down the hole, yeah, and let it go. I've got the tail of it and their sad faces, you know they're just like what was it? And we were just yeah, you're almost like shocked on what you caught that you didn't even think to take a second and appreciate it too much and just yeah, throw it back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things too. And you know like oh well, how long was the fight? Oh, it must have been like 10, 20 minutes. And then you watch the video it was like a three minute video and you're like whoa, I lived a whole life cycle in that three minutes. Yeah, Crazy.
Speaker 1:And you can replay it in your head. Or they always ask like you know, did you measure it? Yeah, Like nope, I didn't even think about it, it's just you know, you get excited and you put it back.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and that's good, Maybe you'll catch it again. Bigger they'll grow.
Speaker 1:Bigger. Oh my gosh, I hope it gets bigger that was a big fish. Yeah, I can tell you how big, because we didn't measure it Like how like do they grow quite large, like now?
Speaker 2:I'm thinking kind of Laker size, which I've seen some, you know beasts of Lakers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, pretty big, I'm guessing. The one that we had was probably, you know that 23, 24 range, you know, just trying to picture him holding it, and you know he's got a little girl inside you. But they're a white fish Like, and I've heard of Inky, who's getting to be just monsters. But I can't wait, I'm really excited. I didn't know you could really ice fur him either. I mean, he's born and raised in Yukon and he's never caught anything through the ice, so wow.
Speaker 1:Those are pretty special times. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is really cool, Lakers. Like because you were saying I don't even know if I'm saying it right Ink new. Is there one syllable? Am I missing a syllable For some reason? I feel like I'm missing one. Like new.
Speaker 1:I think it's like you're in, you know, like you're in a canoe Ink new, ink new. Get your ass in.
Speaker 2:Ok, all right, all right. And you said you can fly fish for them. Like they go into those.
Speaker 1:I'm going to check on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ok, power to you. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:I've got someone who's determined to do it with me.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:That's what you need they feed gear fish for them and they'll go into those kind of smaller spawning streams and I think if we can kind of nail them right when they're leaving the bigger systems and coming through, it'll be easier to fly fish for them in gear fish. But yeah, I'm going to give them my best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about lakers? I haven't never really thought of fly fishing for lakers because they're always so deep, but they must be spawning in rivers or something I would imagine. Do we know?
Speaker 1:So a lot of people have fly fished for lakers up here, like just on shore off the lake, which is pretty cool. We've got a lot of lake trout in the lakes up here and just all variety sizes and I've heard a lot of people have really good luck just in your waders on shore having a beer, tossing as far as you can, and they'll kind of come up a lot of the lakes that are kind of just like a nice gradual or there's an island and you can kind of get them in that battle. Or you've got like a nice narrowing from one lake to another. You can get them in there and I've heard really good luck. So I'm going to try that. I also didn't think to fly fish for lakers from Jorah or anything but.
Speaker 2:There we go, yukon, just put on the map.
Speaker 1:It's weird, up here Everything's a little backward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, would it be like when I'm thinking, sorry, not our chart. What's the other one? You were talking about Grayling For grayling. When you're fishing for them, I would feel like it would mostly be nibs or exclusively nibs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we were. I would say I did try kind of throwing dry flies at them as well and we were doing that pit-taking study because at some points it was almost too easy or you got so tuned into it you want to try something different. And I had way better luck, just kind of nibs in through. Then I did dry flying for them and they just had to be. Usually about a foot underwater is when they were doing really well and we would kind of fish through that top layer and they will grab it almost immediately too.
Speaker 1:They're a lot of fun and they're pretty wily. Because they're all kind of wily, they don't spook the other fish in the pool Like you could fish the same pool over and over and over and we would catch new fish. After three of us just smashed it for an hour and it's been stirred up and fish are all crazy. We'll do the pit-taking and we're still catching fish. They're hungry little rascals. So, yeah, they definitely like the new fish. I tried bobber fishing for them too, in the lake as well. Just having a beer was a really sunny day Sun doesn't go down so you could be out there at 10 PM and just kind of bobber fishing for them worked really well as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just a little indicator hanging. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like a good wily fish. I really. You know, I love the round trout and maybe someone will say that I'm wrong on it, but pound for pound, a rainbow fights so hard.
Speaker 1:I love rainbow fishing. I know everyone's like. You know that's your beginner fish. I'm like, oh, they're fun. Yeah, they're fun, they'll jump yeah they're all over the place.
Speaker 2:I caught a 20-inch one and it was on a, I think, a four-weight. It was my buddy's rod and that thing it was on a click and pull, which was cool too. So it was like just a very lively fight. But I was like man that you know that to me a rainbow is. You know they're spunky, they, like you said, they get airborne. They generally are where you think they'll be. You know they're kind of. I can see how people would say it's a beginner fish, but I mean, if you want to just a really good fight rainbow, you can't get them wrong. Browns are kind of. You know I haven't caught the big bowls, but browns are kind of that, like you know, hug into one area and dig. I've seen a few jump when they're hooked but yeah, they're usually kind of more of like that digger and try to stay low and that type of thing. And you know I've caught, I've caught a couple of 20-inch browns that peeled line and I was like whoa, okay, good morning.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, exactly, but most of the times it's kind of like I go this way and doggy there. I go this way and doggy there. So, yeah, the same thing, you know. Obviously, steel head is a edginess rainbow, but yeah, they hold a little special place in my heart. I haven't caught. The other one I really want to go for is the tiger. Tiger trout. I think they're just, you know, brookie crossed with a brown is just so cool looking, so that's one that I would really like to go for. But brook trout as well. I did catch one this past season in Cranbrook which was really cool and it's out of I don't know how many trips I did. There was maybe only three caught, including my one. So it's not like there's a heavy population, but they're a spunky little fish. I mean, this thing was you know and I was like, oh goodness, like you're going for it, and their teeth are like way more pronounced. It's yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's like a football too. Like they get kind of chunky, like they're chunky little boys and they get that kind of fun shape to them and they're yeah, they're mean, I like them, yeah, and they're beautiful too, like they're spot too yeah.
Speaker 2:There was a very interesting fish caught that I think I got a photo of it, potentially the same kind of thing where you're like all excited and you're like oh my God, and then it gets released and you're like, wait, did anyone get a photo? So I don't know how good the photo is, but it kind of looked like and I know genetically or I assume genetically it wouldn't work, but it was it. Just from looking at it I was like is this a brook bull trout? It had just the craziest coloration, so maybe that's just the more juvenile bull trout. I don't. I haven't really looked through that, but it had crazy colors. But it was like a bull trout head but then like the back of it looked like a brook trout and I was like this is a crazy little fish.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, who knows, Maybe it just was, you know, the peacock of the bull trout world, or we don't know, but yeah it was. It was a cool one. I just thought of that and I was like man, that is a cool fish.
Speaker 1:So if you take up a picture of it, yeah, send it to me. I'd like to see it.
Speaker 2:It seems like we're going to be sending photos back and forth.
Speaker 1:I know yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, hey, look, this is what I've seen out here. I am very yeah, it's cool because you know, even out here on the island we got, you know, the brown trout which are predominantly in one system. I have heard of like a few other lakes and maybe a creek or two that hold them further up island, but everyone knows there's brown trout in the Cowichan River and we've caught a couple that have been silver. So like, potentially sea run brown you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talked about that in school, kind of because I mean, browns aren't supposed to really be sea run, but I've heard tales of sea run browns in the Cowichan, or maybe they're in the estuary, where that kind of salt water, fresh water mixture they can tolerate it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, Well, in Greenland there's sea run browns like for sure. Yeah, Adonia, Argentina for sure, you know, they know it so and what you just said is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:But yeah, ours are getting to be like. You know, if they can adapt, for us that would be really cool, and then you'll see, maybe over time they're going to like space out and get into different systems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's a good point. That would be cool, right.
Speaker 2:Might not be alive by then, Might not be alive. Maybe be alive, yeah. Yeah, these things take time. These things take time, yeah, and it's. You know that's the other cool thing. I mean, most of the times, the photos you see online. You know, a brown trout's a brown trout, a 20 inch brown trout, it's a 20 inch brown trout. But once in a while you see one and you're, just like you know, flabbergasted at how beautiful it is or the spots, how cool they look Like.
Speaker 1:There's something unique of it Brown trout, yeah, yeah, like I'll play it, or someone will need.
Speaker 2:I think, and that's.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, Go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, you go. You see, I think you had some things.
Speaker 1:Have you seen some of those? You know the Chinook, the King salmon that they're getting down in South America. I feel like it pops up on my Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like.
Speaker 1:Patagonia. Yeah, I like that one video, that one pretty viral.
Speaker 2:Now I'm curious. I've seen a lot, a lot of photos, because you know Patagonia, we got to get there. Yeah, it's on the list. Yeah, it is on the list. I've I work with someone from Chile and he's definitely going to go down there with him, and I just had someone on who does a lot of fishing in Patagonia.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, there's, there's plants brewing, but it's interesting to that whole like from my understanding, I don't know what Asian culture started it, but they like wanted to introduce salmon down there so they could cultivate them, and then it didn't really work so they left and then all of a sudden they started showing up and and and doing well in the systems and now it's a fishery. Like that's pretty crazy, but I don't know. Yeah, the what fish go through and can survive and like adapt to is pretty remarkable. I mean, you know we joked with this with one of the guests that you know you park your car in a big parking lot and you can lose it, Whereas a fish can find the same stream, basically same gravel bed, spawned, their kids, no communication, or at least we don't know about it, and there they are again, you know, four years later or whatever, Like that's.
Speaker 1:It's amazing it's got has been baffled by it for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That honing instinct is strong.
Speaker 2:She's strong. Yeah, that's that. That whole time. You know well, we're looking for a vehicle in the, in the parking lot. We don't have animals attacking us, we don't have people fishing for us, we don't. There's nothing. That's no danger, or usually no danger. Look out for cars, cross one safe, that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's, it is pretty cool. I think that's one thing that you know. Living on this island and getting so used to fishing for an adge misfish Every season, I'm just like baffled from like and then you start to kind of know it, like, oh, this year is going to be a small pink run and then the next year will be, you know, a really big run, and that happens and you're like, wow, that's crazy that you can kind of you know, I know that's pretty basic stuff, but at the same time it's just cool how you can like kind of map that out.
Speaker 2:Or you know, you hear whatever happened in the Fraser Valley, um, affecting the salmon, and then you see the next year's like the salmon runs are lower and then they do a little bit of work and things start to bump back up and it's like it's cool how you can watch that and get in tune with it. So, yeah, also learning about how salmon are, how important they are for you know our West Coast. I knew they were important because obviously things feed on it. Yeah, and when you realize that someone was telling me where even the rings on the trees they can tell what years had crazy runs just because of how nutrients dense the rivers were and how the trees were feeding off of that, I'm like all right, this is so cool, it is so cool you find it, it's a whole system that you start to realize the impact of the sand run, not just that the trout get bigger by eating the eggs and the bears get fatter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you start looking at the plants and the soil, makeup, and even the benthic inverted brits or something I was learning a huge appreciation for, it's pretty crazy how the different years and the different runs can make such a difference. But I know it's one species we haven't talked about but it's huge in BC. Well, maybe not huge, but pretty special too is our sturgeon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, cool, that is true, that is true.
Speaker 1:That is good. That is wild. The dinosaur is in the water, I know.
Speaker 2:I've never fished for them, but what a creature.
Speaker 1:What a creature.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Have you done any research on them in terms of for work, or have you ever had to probe one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done more research than I have. I've got to fish for them. I've been vandering for such a funny town but they have an enhancing surgery hatchery up there. That was kind of like my introduction to sturgeon was. I went out with them when I was working for the government to try to catch spawning male and we did get a male. I got to hoist him up onto the boat. I got to check him for a tag. He was ready for spawning. I got to name him Winston. Second one it does. Yeah, he did have a name. Yeah, he did have a name.
Speaker 1:So Winston, you know he was in the late 80s or early 90s and he was just under nine feet long and it was just so funny. You know you have to get him in a sling to get him in a tank that we've Jimmy, rigged onto the back of a truck to get him across town and back to the hatchery. And he ended up spawning with a female named Winnie. We've got Winston babies out there. She's pretty precious and up there they do a big release every year and they'll have like the whole community.
Speaker 1:Come out and get your little baby sturgeon and let him go back into the water. And that was kind of like my first big experience with sturgeon and then coming down onto Vancouver Island at the university. They've got a research center for sturgeons where they take sturgeon that can't be released back into the wild, whether they've been barely in factured, or one came from somebody's backyard that they had caught, kept and when it got too big had to surrender. Wow. So you know we can't let. We can let her go back into the wild and they actually have a dwarf sturgeon that is so cute and precious.
Speaker 2:But it's just will never grow past a certain point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's just like this crump little man and his old tank because the other surgeon are mean to him, but they do a lot of. You know sturgeon teaching in that program and you get to like get in the tank and you're in waiters. There's sturgeon all around you. They're massive and you're trying to catch one and drag it over into a plane so that we can do ultrasounds. And you know, do like that health essentially on sturgeon. And they are wily to wrestle.
Speaker 1:It feels like you're like mud wrestling with this giant animal that will trip you and bonk you and push you over and others sturgeon will get involved and you know it's like you're grabbing him by the face and by the arm, trying to flip them because when they're upside down they're pretty docile. So yeah, I got real up close and personal with some sturgeons in that. And then when we do breed the sturgeon, we do for research purposes. You know you get your little baby sturgeon stage this semester and you get to do a bunch of research with them, which is pretty cool. So if you ever get the chance that that VIU, you should check it out. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is really cool. I did not know that there's a whole. So there's literally a tank with like all these sturgeons there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a little Wow. It's like right at the top of the university. It's pretty special yeah. And you get to learn a lot. Really. Hands-on birdfish program Pretty cool, that is really cool. But a wild sturgeon is always going to be a pretty cool experience with seeing how big they are and how old they get and how scarred up they are. Their life cycles are crazy and their eggs are so small and the fight between baby sturgeons and otters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is their life cycle? Now that you said it that way, it's got me intrigued.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it takes a long time for them to sexually mature. They could be between I think it was 12 to 16 to 18 years before they start to become more sexually mature and they take a really long time to grow. So that's why they can get so big. It just takes quite a while. They are in cold water but you can do aging because they don't have scales. They've got scoots but you can do a fin clip and almost kind of like tree trunks where you can count the rain. You can count the age of the sturgeon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hold up back up a little bit. So sorry, you said scoots and I know my dog scoots. But now I'm thinking in a different variety. I'm just imagining these fish. I got like a cartoon brain. Yeah, I got, legitimately. I have a cartoon brain. Everything turns into a cartoon in my head, you know, like yeah, not like a cartoon with paint on. Yeah, exactly, you were just about. So sorry, there's scales and then there's scoots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you think of like a scale in a normal fish and like the indentation in their skin for like how a scale fits and versus scoots, and they've got that kind of textured skin almost like a shark. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah so. And then there's scoots are actually sharp. So it's kind of like these protrusions that are hard for protection, like in armor. So if you think you can kind of like I'm thinking of a Pokemon, now there we go. Reven, now we know, here we go. But yeah, there's scoots are sharp and they do kind of feel like sandpaper. So when you're wrestling them you'll actually cut your hands up pretty bad. I'm trying to just get a hold of them as like a defense mechanism, especially when they're small. But yeah, they're kind of gritty and it is a bit more invasive to try to age them, which is why you know, if we do something like a thing clip and we do tag them, you won't have to do it again because the tag, once you scan it, you'll know kind of how old that fish is and you can kind of keep going up from there from when it was tagged, because you don't want to just keep chunking away before me.
Speaker 2:Just like a snake. All of a sudden you're like oh, we got the info. No, finn, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they're really cool fish to have, so different from everything else. Big giant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're, yeah, they're super. I don't know. It is pretty great. How long do they live for? Sorry, I was just rambling in my head and just yeah. I'm imagining their, their scooting scales.
Speaker 1:The scales. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've never but the oldest sturgeon I know like out in that there's no sturgeon in Russia and there's Lake sturgeon out in Ontario. So for the white sturgeon, I mean Winston was in his late 80s, I don't know what the oldest is Lake sturgeon.
Speaker 2:To get into, like what's their, you know, a really big weight for them. I want to say like 500 pounds or more, Like, is that absurd? Am I just like imagining these numbers? Probably.
Speaker 1:So they look pretty chunky.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They definitely. They're more than I do. Okay, so I Googled it. The oldest white sturgeon recorded is a 110 year old. She was 10 feet long and weighed over 700 pounds.
Speaker 2:There we go. Okay, so I wasn't a boy yeah. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the river monster of the Fraser River in BC.
Speaker 2:Only you could talk to them and be like so, in your opinion, how is the river changed?
Speaker 1:Does it taste worse now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like what's going on, and I bet they would have stories to tell that we just can't even fathom. That's crazy 110 years old, 700 pounds.
Speaker 1:That's a big, big sturgeon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that is huge. And for it to you know what do they? What is their main food source? Because they're a bottom feeder, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're bottom feeders, which is kind of interesting too. I feel like when you think of a really big fish, a lot of times you think, like you know, carnivore and like they're getting big and meaty like that in canoe. But no, they're bottom feeders. Anything down there they've got kind of like a. If you ever see their mouths it kind of looks like a sucker fish almost, and they've got the cutest little mouths, especially the Merlittle, and they've got their whiskers out. So they're really tuned into smell.
Speaker 1:So if something is, you know, died on the river, they'll get right in there. They can like completely clean like a chicken carcass if that's in there. But they also, like you know, when we were feeding them they were definitely spoiled like squids and things, like anything belly. They'll go too. So for BC, especially when you guys have to salmon run and everything dies at the end of the season, I'm sure they just have a heyday. Get down there and you can get everything and cleaning up off the bottom and they'll fluff up eggs and they'll eat carcasses from all those salmon. They'll get into smaller benthakes and microbes and stir up rocks and you know probably a lot of algae down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are they spawning Vacuum? Are they same kind of thing as salmon, where they just clear out a red and spawn in the sand, kind of thing?
Speaker 1:So it's kind of hard. They like very aerated kind of rattle to spawn in. We did look at spawning kind of refuge for the sturgeon out near Vanderhoof because they're having a hard time up there and that's why they've got the enhancement hatchery to kind of try to boost the numbers. But the hard thing with sturgeon is because it takes the ones that are sectional mature. You have to wait a really long time to get results. So we were looking at habitat as well and with sedimentation build up in the rivers and it's starting to clog a lot of those little porous kind of gravelly areas because their eggs are a lot smaller than salmon eggs so they kind of fall through the cracks and they need that aeration. But when you get sediment load in there it just bulldozes over and there's no chance. If we've ever eaten caviar or anything like the teeny, they look like little pebbles. Some of them have to be a little bit bigger, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that why caviar is so expensive? Is it because of how long it takes to sexually mature? I don't know. I thought, popped in my head yeah, is that such a? I've tasted caviar and it's not something I would pay crazy money for, but I have an average Joe palette, I guess.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Yeah, that's fair to say, it's salty for sure. Yeah, so back when you know, when they found white sturgeon in BC it was like a heyday because it was so much big fish and you can get a crazy amount of eggs out of a female that it was just more, so much, especially coming into, you know, exporting it to places like Russia and Asia and Europe, like it was such a high quality fresh water, you know, not contaminated, not bread, wild caviar. But then we kind of overdid it, of course.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of time. Every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have no self-contained help ourselves. It was like a ghostly cry yeah, seriously, every time, every time. If we don't, we're in, I guess. So we don't we're terrible. But there are a couple sturgeon hatcheries in the Vancouver kind of coastal area for caviar, so that we're not doing any wild caviar anymore. But it does take a really long time for the females to actually mature. The good thing is they will actually mature a lot after they're past their stage. You know, okay, every couple of years the female might develop, and when they do like it's a pretty big haul. So now that it was science to weaken, get the water temperatures and everything and kind of try to initiate those phases too. So it dropped the price, which is good. I think there's a lot of stigma to caviar. A lot of people don't really eat it, I find in Canada, but overseas it is still a big export. But we're not doing wild caviar anymore. Yeah, thankfully, I think of it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is interesting how, like I don't know, random, going off on a little trip, I once it was thinking of breeding snakes, ball pythons specifically, and the cool thing is that temperature could change if you're going to have males or female hatch. Yeah, like little things like that, you know. So it was only like a degree or two, if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1:I'm turning through like that too, aren't they?
Speaker 2:I believe so. Yeah, so I mean it's super interesting that I guess it makes sense that water temperature would have something to do with you know even how many were produced. I would imagine all that kind of stuff. But when we're talking a lot of eggs because salmon spawned a lot of eggs but we're talking in like millions, like maybe even a couple million, I don't know, but yeah, and then are they doing the same thing as I'm now imagining, salmon kind of thing, where they're, you know, pairing up and spawning together, or is it kind of like the females just lay eggs and do them and males do everything that they need to do? Do we know that much detail? I guess we probably do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they are kind of the reason that they don't have parental care. You know, it's kind of like a if you find your spot, you the females will be ready, and when they're ripe and it's you know right spawning grounds, and the males will come in, they'll do their business, and then you know they're all like salmon, they're not just going to keel over afterwards and then they just leave, which is another part. That's, I think, hard on species that don't do parental care. If you know we're messing things up or you know temperatures are changing, climate change, sedimentation loading, it is hard. When it's not, there's nobody to care for the little rascals.
Speaker 2:So they're just trying their best out there. Oh, you just got to have a talk with the sturgeons. Let them know like, hey, you need to do a little more yeah.
Speaker 1:What are you doing? I'm going to be 90s. Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2:You know how many kids I've made. That's funny, exactly, yeah. And then back at it, you know, like everything's eating them. Oh my gosh, yeah, diction's sculpin, those little sculpin.
Speaker 1:Oh, man sculpin, yeah, rascals, they, uh, they munch, they do munch. They're getting in there for sturgeon. Otters are a good one too. They, uh, they like to get to the sturgeon because they stay pretty small for quite a while and pretty easy pickin'.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know otters are cute, but they are hard on fish.
Speaker 2:I guess it makes sense that they have that many babies, especially with, like, how long it takes for them to grow. You know, out of the like a hundred feet, but definitely yeah, out of a million, like 10 survivors or something like that, some crazy number. But yeah, that's, that's a good point. I've never talked about sturgeon. I have heard of someone catching a sturgeon on a fly, but it wasn't like traditional fly fishing. Um, they just like put a fly and put some something on the the hook that was meaty and yeah so, but it had to be done on the front rod. Someone had to do it, right?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah yeah, somebody had to try. I hate that. They got him. That's pretty cool yeah.
Speaker 2:It was. I'm sure that was a fight, to remember. I mean, when you see a sturgeon getting reeled in and they do, though, like basically that whole, you know eight feet out of the water or whatever it's, yeah it's pretty crazy. Have you actually fished for them or just done? Have you ever actually gone?
Speaker 1:I haven't, other than just for research. Um, it had Bare hands.
Speaker 2:Used your bare hands for them, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, or you're wrestling them in a tank bare handed. But I can definitely see why. You know, you always see pictures of people who've caught sturgeon and there's like a lineup of people in the photo all holding on, yeah, cause, yeah, they are hard to hold on to to get that picture. I'm like it's all hands in there, yeah, and they're not trying to flipping way. But I would like to have a sturgeon fishing. But I feel like I've got such an appreciation for them now that you know I've had myself got to have some pretty cool experience and you know, I don't know if I'm ready to throw, you know, a rotten chicken on a fly rock. Yeah, fair enough, I appreciate the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a business, for sure. No, that's good. Well, we've been talking for quite some time, I know, yeah.
Speaker 1:I took up your whole evening. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1:You know, time for my bedtime story, oh they're in bed.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. Yeah, we had a really good chat. We talked a lot, of a lot of cool stuff. I kind of go into it not knowing. You know I don't sit down and write out all my questions or anything like that. It's like an organic conversation. So, yeah, it was a sweet conversation. I thought that was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was definitely nervous coming in. I've never, you know, done something like this before and I feel like I rambled or was kind of at a loss of words at times, but it was a lot of fun. Yeah, the way I did it and I come down.
Speaker 2:It's definitely easy to ramble and I mean my brain goes all different directions. I mean half the time it's cartoons up there and the other half the time it's like who knows. But no, I think, I think there's some really cool information and, yeah, you did great. So, yeah, I really appreciate you sitting and some time aside for me and sharing what you're up to. I think that's pretty cool. Do you have kind of plans with work or are you going to stay doing what you're doing for a while? You think it sounds like you enjoy it quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, being up here doing this kind of helly work is pretty awesome, going into places that other people are never going to be or probably ever see these fish. I'll probably stay up here for a little bit and be where my fishy career takes me, whether it's back to government and DFO or you know. Yeah, I don't know. Being consulting, I really like the company I work for, so it's pretty special. And you pictures of Incanu and I just realized too.
Speaker 2:we never did an intro, so welcome to the podcast, zina there we go. That's it, we did it. Sometimes I don't know if I'm actually starting the podcast and then we start talking and like, oh shit, we are, we have, okay, good, so.
Speaker 1:We're in this now, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. Well, yeah, really appreciate it. I expect those photos. I will send you a photo of the bull trout I catch. I'm putting it out there in the in the universe that I will get a good one, so you Get your.
Speaker 1:I got high hopes for you. Then it's going to be great.
Speaker 2:I can't. I come with a bit of knowledge this time. Last time I just winged it. Now it's a little bit of knowledge and we'll just keep fine tuning from there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'm like. You know you're going to be giving me tips on it.
Speaker 2:Who knows, who knows yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun. This is good. I love talking about fish. It's my whole life.
Speaker 2:There we go. All right, well, I'm going to end it there, but if you don't mind, just staying on for a second, and yeah, I guess. Good night to everyone and thank you.