Fishing for food embodies much of my truth as a kayaker. For me, sea kayaking and fishing are natural adjuncts. We sea kayakers tour for a lot of different reasons. But in my book, a week of tasty fish fillets is one of the best.
Take, for example, a recent trip to the Brooks Peninsula. My friend Steve and I had spent the better part of the afternoon paddling and fishing in vibrant seas, tepid sun and vagrant autumn breezes. Alone on the remote northwest coast of Vancouver Island, we had paddled ashore to fly fish the mouth of Battle Creek for coho salmon.
The only action we had was one feisty buck salmon jumping multiple times five feet in front of us. With the tide pushing in, the wading was dicey; waves and surge pulses hit us randomly and threatened to knock us over.
We got back in our boats, pushed off and spent the last hour trolling Battle Bay hoping to find a fish or two hanging out up top. When it looked like fate would surely give us the stiff we pointed our bows toward camp half a mile distant. But dragging those flies, mind you, every stroke of the way.
Steve was well ahead of me and my mind was drifting toward the beers we’d stashed in the creek when I looked up to see a salmon leaping repeatedly around his boat. I reeled in my line, dug hard with my paddle, and watched as Steve reached back for his rod and waved wildly in my direction.
It was an extremely long fight and nearly dusk before he finally had the fish in his lap. We stashed the fish in the rear hatch and pad- dled ashore, while I envisioned salmon fillets grilling over a little driftwood fire.
The perfect end to a day of kayaking.
I love ocean kayaking in a coldwater para- dise like this, camping and fishing day after day, night after night until my inner savage is stilled, my “wild quota” is met once again. The way I see it, just because we’re on a kayak trip doesn’t mean we don’t try to eat locally, organically, fresh and wild. For me, tapping into seafood resources completes the kayaking experience.
Sure, I bring along a few freeze-dried meals for when I’m too wiped out to cook, but for the most part, the staples we bring are intended to complement a seafood buffet—sautéed onions and garlic and carrot with a little red cabbage and apple salad over Basmati. If the fishing turned out to be a total bust, I’d be looking at a lot of low-cal dinners.
Fortunately that has never happened. The ability-to-live-off-the-sea index is very high in British Columbia. The more remote you are, the better it gets. If you’re lowering a jig off the edge of a kelp bed or a rocky point, you’re fishing in the right place; odds are, something will bite. This is not dry fly fishing on the henry’s Fork. These fish are wild and hungry and eager for the lure. You’ve got to be a fishing klutz not to bring the bacon back to camp here.
How do I do it? For salmon, I usually fly fish, casting or trolling a bucktail, unweighted, right on top, using a 9-weight rod. But a good handline and a lead or painted metal jig, jigged up and down just off the bottom, or even troll- ing that bucktail, will catch most everything.
When the inevitable storm comes along, I harvest ahead for one day, but no more—a basket chilling in a pool in a forest creek is our only refrigerator. If I’m confined to the beach, I look at the next tier of critters. Even an aver- age low tide will usually reveal barnacle beds, from which horseshoe barnacles can be care- fully gathered, then steamed and drenched in butter and tamari for dinner. Or perhaps there are crab in a nearby lagoon we can wade for or trap. And there are always trout up the fresh- water coastal streams. More often than not, a meal is salmon fillets grilled over a beach fire, or chunky lingcod fillets with pepper and lime, prepared in a ceviche dish.
living off of the sea as you explore is about more than the nutritious food that you put on the table; it is an integral part of wilderness exploration. In fact, it’s that return to the primacy of needs-based hunting and gathering that cre- ates the kayaking buzz for me. Not only does it give me something soundly pragmatic to do; it provides both the excitement of fishing (which is a near universal thrill) and a wealth of seafood entree options.
No matter what you catch or how you prepare it, a fresh seafood diet for an extended pe- riod of time is something to look forward to on any kayak trip. In the spirit of “chop wood, carry water,” out here it’s chop/carry and catch fish, and there is a deeply refreshing quality about such direct imperatives.
Rob Lyon is a former fly fishing guide who lives in the San Juan islands. He can be reached at [email protected]. learn more about kayak fishing in Adventure Kayak’s sister publication, Kayak Angler.
This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
