.
That's right.
Come on buddy.
Oh that's better.
Enjoy it.
Just enjoy it.
God we've been here for an hour for this one haven't we?
Was it that long?
I think it was. We had a little bit of a lull. We started telling fish stories.
And look at this Warren. Look.
That was the bait I cut for you.
There you go.
We missed it. We've been sleeping. Look it. We had one hit here.
And Warren has got himself a nice fish on there.
What have we got there?
Terry, you think it's a cool hole?
It's a spring.
Well we'll see. I think it's a cool hole.
Whoa!
Whoa! Look out!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Stand down.
Whoa! Right underneath the boat!
Yeah, we've still got it.
Are you sure it's a dog?
I think it's a dog.
It's a chum salmon.
Look at this Garrett.
This is a zoo.
It's a big one around here isn't it?
I think it goes that way.
Well this is still in the water.
We'll just leave that one out. You never can tell.
We better bring her in.
This fish here is we're having a lot of fun with.
Wow!
He's great.
They're great.
They're a pretty exciting fish.
It's a good size too.
Kind of fun on that little hill.
It's excellent.
It's a great rod.
Great rod.
Take a look at that fish.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Anyways, I'm here with
Warren Grillholm.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Gary Trooper?
Ha ha ha ha.
I'm with Warren from the West Coast.
That's all I'm going to say.
That's good to know.
I'm with Warren from the West Coast Fishing Club.
Up here in Langara
off of Langara Island
on a beautiful September day.
I didn't think you could get days like this
but I guess you can, can't you?
There's a lot of days like this in September.
Every day is like this.
Ha ha ha ha.
Every day you remember is like this in September.
You got it.
Oh yeah.
Are we going to tail this Garrett?
Well we have to. We haven't got a net.
We don't even have a gap
for anything else to de-hook it.
The only way to get this fish in
is by tailing it.
And there is nothing harder than tailing
a chum.
They are tough to tail.
They are really tough to tail.
And you're going to see why.
But that's a,
you know we were just going to go in for lunch
were we not?
We were.
No pardon me, dinner.
Ha ha ha ha.
How soon we forget.
We were just going to go in for dinner.
This is leaving us a merry chase isn't it?
What?
Leaving us a merry chase.
He is. He's circling the boat and playing just like a spring.
But he's not.
Come on Warren, quit messing around.
Yeah, come on for heaven's sake.
How many fish over 50 pounds
have you caught up here?
In my life? In your lifetime.
I don't know.
Huh? 15?
15?
15 fish over 50 pounds?
I think so.
And how many fish over 60?
What did you say?
You're asking a lot.
Oh, watch that tip.
Yeah.
Watch that tip.
He's caught up on the tip there.
And how many fish over 60?
Let's see.
6? 6-0.
6? 6 fish.
6 fish over 60 pounds.
That's incredible.
With the biggest being our friends.
Yeah, oh Clive Percy.
I shouldn't say old.
Clive is very young.
Yes, Clive.
That was a neat story wasn't it?
It was.
We'll save that story for another day.
What a beautiful evening out here though.
Isn't it gorgeous?
I bet you the colors just look great.
I'm kind of back lit right now.
So if you want to come around to the side here
and watch me tail the fish that would be great.
They got so much energy.
And the problem with these fish are
is they don't like to be hooked up in the tail.
Where are those pliers?
Hey, what type of fish is that?
That's not a chum.
That's a coho.
Definitely a coho.
That's a coho.
Definitely a coho.
Big hook.
And a real nice size coho.
On the fly rod my friend.
On the fly rod.
Okay.
Let's throw him in the water and let him swim away.
Don't show that.
He's going to swim.
There he goes.
He's out of here.
I told you that was a coho.
Anyway.
I'm with Warren.
I'm not going to say your last name Warren.
Because I keep getting it wrong.
Griswold.
Griswood.
Up here at the West Coast Fishing Club.
And what we're going to do right now is we're going to take a quick commercial break.
And then when we come back.
Because I'm going in for dinner right now.
As a matter of fact join us for dinner.
And then when we come back
in the morning.
Maybe I'll be fishing with one of the guests.
Maybe I'll be fishing out.
Hell of a bit fishing with one of the guides.
And maybe I'll be back out.
That's super. We don't know.
But I know one thing.
We're going to have a great fishing trip.
You bet we are.
Okay.
I'll grab her here.
What have we got here?
This looks like a donkey for sure.
I got her.
Well that goes to show you.
You know.
On fish.
Look at over here.
Look at over here Brian.
Come on back and show everyone your fish.
Oh you just bit the leader off.
Nargy bargy.
Well that goes to show you Brian.
There's a real good lesson right there.
We've seen a couple of dog fish caught.
And I got a bite.
And I went to set the hook.
And I said ah it's just a dog fish.
It was a salmon.
Let's turn this thing off.
And it was a salmon.
Welcome back.
Well Warren isn't out with me.
He's out with the dog.
Well Warren isn't out with me today.
He couldn't take it any longer.
You getting a bite over there too Brian?
Yeah.
Warren couldn't take it any longer.
And what we're doing is we're still playing
these big coho and springs
up here in Langara
on another morning.
Oh what was that?
I got one.
You got one too?
Yeah I think it's a coho.
Don't play your fish all by yourself.
He's right up at the boat here.
He's all wrapped in it.
Well come on back here.
We gotta keep ourselves together here.
What a team eh?
That's the way we fight back to back.
Hey we didn't catch this one Gary.
We lassoed it.
We lassoed it?
It's all wrapped up.
Look at this.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
He's got the weight right on the side of his face
because he's just been rolling it the whole time.
Look at this.
He's got the weight right on the side.
Look at it.
He's hog tied.
He ain't going anywhere.
A nice coho.
Yeah what do you think I have here?
It must have been a coho because it really came out of the water right?
Well it could be a spring.
He sure came out of the water.
Boy oh boy when he hit and I'm sitting there saying
oh it's a dog fish
and I was pulling you know
I was working really
holding the fish really really tight
and then all of a sudden
30 feet behind me
this big fish comes flying out of the water.
Yeah I think this is a spring.
He sort of looks brownish.
He's got a little bit of a pop of color on his back.
My line is broken I still tailed him.
You still tail him with the line broken?
Yep.
There's the hook.
The line was broken he just laid there and I tailed him.
Whoa he wants to go
so we'll just lay him in here.
Hook's right there we'll pop it out of him.
There we go.
There he goes.
And this fish here
is just on the boat.
Bye bye.
I think I got a spring on here.
I think you do too.
When he first showed up there
he had that spring shape to him.
Yeah.
He's got the copper colors on his back you know.
One of the different stuff
you can tell between a coho
and a spring salmon
is
the coho are blue on the top
and your
springs will usually have more of a brownish tinge.
Look at them out there.
Right I can't wait for you to play a fish hole in this flat iron.
Well we'll have to get a couple more I guess.
Since you're going to hog the rut.
Yeah.
I'm going to go get a couple more.
Yeah.
Here Brian
you can play the coho.
Yeah right.
Well I thought it was a dogfish.
Yeah you know that's
that happens quite a bit you know.
I've fished a lot of places
and especially up here
this time of year we get pinkies
and dogfish and that type of thing
and you get a light little tap on the line
and set the hook
and oh another pinky.
Another pinky yeah.
It's coming up and coming up.
Swims right up beside the boat and you get a nice spring on there
and all of a sudden kaboom.
It just explodes.
The reel explodes, the water explodes
and oh big pink.
And for all you people who've
watched the fishing diary
before last year Brian Hillier
was a guest on the show.
You actually hosted the show.
The one on Hellebott. Yeah.
Unfortunately you had a big one on a real light tackle.
I figure it was probably
a barn door over 200 pounds.
Played it for a couple hours.
And the tide started going
really hard and I ended up
losing the fish. But that was exciting.
It was nice to see it. It was exciting.
Not very many people release Hellebott.
But you do.
Long distance.
And Brian is a
guide and
man of all trades
he takes care of
a lot of the repairs as well as out here fishing
all the time bringing guests out
at the West Coast Fishing Club.
And uh
but I pretty well guarantee it. These are
really feisty fish up here so he's going to really
take off in a minute.
Yeah. Yeah. When he gets one look
at you.
Well when we came back from. We'll probably have to chase him
a lot. Yeah when we came back from
commercial there after having
dinner and everything else like that. This is the next
day cause
we went in
and had dinner and
I had a good night's sleep and
and Brian was so gracious.
It was gracious enough to say that he would
come out with me again
today.
Well it was nice. You got me away from
working on boats all day. Yeah and we left
Warren back there. We left Warren back
at the lodge doing the work.
But uh
the time of year again is
beginning of September.
And a lot of people think that
fishing is all over with at the end of September.
Well it's not.
Cause look at this here. Look at this fish here.
Yeah that's a nice
nice spring.
Nice spring.
Whoa!
Hehehehe.
That fish
has a good judge of character. Yeah he does.
He knows when
he knows when to leave doesn't he?
See that's how you
a good way to drag a fly reel
is you see my little thumb in there
I mean not my thumb but my little finger
it acts just like a disc break.
Or you can drag it like that as well.
But I drag it like that
and uh that way
I've got this hand free.
And this is just a little
lamp and number three fly reel
and a nine weight
uh fly rod.
I don't know if they're
designed to play fish like this Brian
but we're doing it.
But like tackle
fishing is getting popular isn't it? Very popular.
Yeah we've been
doing a lot of that for our clients
lately. Fishing fly rods.
Even uh fly rods
off the down rigger which is a lot of fun.
It'll stack a couple lines up
and
everybody's starting to get into it cause up
here you do catch your share of fish so why
not make it even more sporting than what it already is.
That's right. And as you can probably
hear we've got a real good breeze blowing.
If you were fishing anywhere else in the Queen
Charlotte you'd probably be
not bought you'd be fishing out of the
lounge right now.
But that is one of the nice things about
Langara is uh
when it's blowing out there in the west coast
we're actually in the lee here.
And uh
we don't get the real high seas cause
if we had the real high seas well you know what it's like
on the show when we get really high seas
we're going up and down the camera's going up and down as well.
Well okay we're getting pretty close to getting
this fish in
and uh so what we're just gonna do is take a real
quick commercial break
and hopefully we'll have this
fish right to the boat when we come back.
You play a fish like this, I mean
this isn't a big fish it's only about 20 pounds.
But you play a fish this size
on a rod like this and
it's exactly the same as playing a
35, 40 pounder on a heavier
rod.
Getting pretty close there Brian
you gonna tail him for me? Sure.
If we can. He's not on
his side yet so.
Welcome back.
I told you he was
close to the boat, I thought he was close to the boat wasn't he
Brian? That's why Brian is down on his knees
over here cause he was gonna tail
the fish.
Brian's had a lot of experience
at that because there's a lot of
times up here you people release an awful lot
of fish don't you? A lot of the fish yeah.
I'm gonna bring this boy in here okay
just so that
Yeah and if we're gonna release a fish we don't like
to put him in the net. No.
You don't even, you don't want to handle him or anything
you just want to get him up and. Yeah.
You can get him up to
sometimes the best
you know a lot of people get a big fish on and I've heard
people say you shouldn't touch him or anything else like
that. I disagree with that.
The reason I disagree with it is because
especially on a fly rod
like this here this fish hasn't come to
the boat really quick. If this
fish were to come up and you were just to pull the hooks out
you may just see him float away.
That's right. You know so you gotta
lift him up, get a nice picture of him
get the hooks out and then
make sure the fish is fully revived before he swims
away. Cause you know
he's going through a fair amount of shock right now. This is
a strange experience for him. He doesn't
experience the
tug of a rod every day in
his life. Mind you we have
caught some fish up here that have had commercial
spoons and things like that in their mouths.
We've
caught fish that have had all the scales
rubbed off them from a seine net. Yeah.
And they're still swimming around. Oh of course they are.
And then you'll get them where they've had a seal
take a bite out of them. Yeah that's right. It's just like an old
wound on it. You know
where it's completely healed. Over.
They're pretty tough. He's looking
pretty tired there now.
Brian. Yeah.
You got him? Yeah. Oh!
Holy Jesus! Look at that!
Good job!
Brian. He must have
look at that Brian.
Leader. Leader.
Leader broke just as you lifted him out of the water. That's
from it wearing on his teeth. A lot of times what will happen
when you're playing fish like this here
is the line will
wear on their teeth right there.
Nice fish! Yeah not a bad
little fish. That's just a nice little fish. Let's let
them go back ok. Right away.
Because we don't want to keep them out of the water too long.
A little belly rub
here. Yeah.
With these fish if you can
put your fingers right between the two
I guess those are the pectoral
fins. You can feel the heartbeat.
Oh can you? Oh yeah.
You can feel it get a little stronger
a little stronger. I never knew that.
Well that's something new. That's an old
river fishing trick. Is that right?
Yeah. Well you know
you can learn something new about
fishing all the time and of course I've still got a lot to learn.
That's something new there.
You should have been a doctor Brian.
There he goes. There he goes. Goodbye
fella. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Come on back here Brian.
Come on back here buddy.
Hey.
What a trip it started out to be.
Went out with Warren last night. Got a nice coho.
Came out with you today.
And we've got the one spring
so far. Now there's two things we're
going to be doing.
The next thing we're going to be doing is we are
going to be going after a 50 pound spring
on this rod. And if it happens
it will be in a future episode.
But the next thing we're going to be doing is
we're going to head out a little ways
and we're going to see if we can see some whales.
Well there's been a lot of whales around
this year. It shouldn't be too tough to find one.
There's dolphins, there's
porpoises.
Porpoises, orcas.
Gray whales, humpback whales.
So we're going to go out and try and find some
whales and what we're going to do is put it into a
little segment here for you.
For the next minute or so.
Ok? Sounds good.
Just to show you how nice it is. Thanks a lot Brian.
Ok. Ok. And
if you want to book a trip with the West Coast
Fishing Club, this is the number down
here. Until next week
this is Gary Cooper saying good luck.
Good fishing
and conserve your catch.
Ha ha!