Old Man and the River - Chinook fishing in British Columbia, Canada

"The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual sees of occasions for hope" - John Buchan

British Columbia Canada is a magical place.  It's where the Pacific Ocean meets the North American Continent.  Where a subduction zones has created the Coastal and Rocky Mountains and where the mighty Chinook salmon make their annual pilgrimage inland to spawn.  It's for these reasons that I set my sights on Bella Coola, BC in June of this year for a little R&R with my brother.

Now, Bella Coola is not the easiest place to access.  A short flight from Vancouver international airport on a relatively small propeller plane always makes for an interesting adventure.  This time, we had epic views of the Coastal mountains and their glaciers as we descended into the Bella Coola valley.

Photo taken out of the window of the small prop plane from Vancouver international to Bella Coola.  You haven't experienced flying until you've done this trip!

The Bella Coola river boast some of the best river salmon fishing in the world.  That said, fishing for Chinook is not like Pinks or other, it's simply a matter of throwing your line into the calmer water and waiting!  The hope is the fish will bite the hook, spring the line and then you'll have one hell of a fight to get the beast to shore.

River Chinook Salmon Fishing can really try your patients.  It's simply a matter of "putting time on the river" as the locals say.  Needless to say, we managed to hit a small run coming through!
 

The fish didn't seem to be running on our first day there.  After about 8 hours on the river we left empty handed.  The locals believe in a correlation between the moon, the tides and the quality of fishing.  If this was true, then the next day was predicted to be a great day of fishing.

My first fish of the trip.  You simply can't beat fresh salmon

It really is incredible the difference a day can make.  I'm not sure whether it was the moon, tides or other but day two was fantastic.  We were averaging catching a fish an hour which makes for a pretty exciting day.

That's more like it!  Definitely one of my fishing highlights!  Wish I'd spent more time cleaning it off before this picture was taken

Tails of our great day on the river spread quickly.  The following day the number of anglers in our spot had swelled.  A few small fish were caught but nothing like the dream day we had experienced the day before.  Around noon, we packed up our gear and made west towards the airport in Anaheim Lake.

Where there are fish, there are usually bears. This guy didn't really seem bothered by our presence!

 Fishing is an interesting past time.  We spent hours waiting for the rare opportunity to catch a fish.  In the downtime, we talked about everything from politics to movies, past experiences to future ambitions.  Nothing can replace the quality time on the river.  In addition, it's an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors with the potential of bringing home delicious dinner.  We left the river with our limit of 2 fish (~45 pounds of fresh BC salmon!)  I haven't calculated what that's worth in the supermarket but based on the epic time that we had together, it's priceless!

Even if there weren't giant salmon in the rivers, the stunning scenery would be worth the trip

Hopefully, I'll get a chance to come back to the Bella Coola valley (maybe in the early fall) to try my luck for another species of Salmon.  Isn't that the secret....a perpetual series of occasions for hope!