Friday, June 24, 2011

Craig Beachy British Columbia Canada



Below is a fishing story from my son Craig Beachy who lives on
the Queen Charlotte Islands. The most western part of BC Canada.
Colleen is Craig's wife. Springs is the local name for Chinook Salmon, in Alaska
they are called King Salmon.
Enjoy

Hello everyone,
Last weekend myself, Colleen and two student teachers were spring
fishing in Rennel sound of the east coast of Q.C.I. We were trolling
with down riggers. Anyway we get a fish on so I grab the rod out of
the holder and hand it to one of the girls. She is fighting it and
doing ok, it is taking a bit of line but she is gaining on it. All of
a sudden the line starts just peeling off of the reel like crazy.
then about 150 yards behind the boat we see a sea lion surface. I say
great he has got our salmon and I take the rod from Laura, we can see
the sea-lion throwing the fish in the air and tearing it apart. I am
reeling in line hoping that the hook will come out of the fish so I
can recover some line. The bite of the line is still deep in the
water when we see an eagle swooping down towards the sea-lion, I
guess he saw a bit of fish he was going to grab. The sea-lion saw
him coming and lunged 3 or 4 feet out of the water trying to grab the
eagle. The eagle swerved hard and came up with my flasher
hanging about 3 feet below him. since the bite of the line was in the
water the eagle only got about 10 or 15 feet in the air before the
line came tight and he crashed to the water. O great now I have an
eagle on my fishing rod. Lucky for the eagle the sea-lion took the
salmon and carried on his way. So I start reeling in the eagle, I
went slow because I did not know if the hook was stuck in him or
maybe the line was around his wing and cutting in. Anyway soon I had
a angry hissing eagle right up to the boat. I pulled him up on the
swim grid and I could see that the line was wrapped around one of his
feet and the hook was dangling free. He kept trying to turn and bite
me so Colleen got my rain coat and I put it over him. He was not
happy but he settled down. I managed to just get his foot out from
under the coat and cut the fishing line. We took the coat off of him
and he gave us an angry look and jumped in the water and started
swimming away, he was to wet to fly. I was happy I did not lose any
line or flasher or lure. It took the eagle about 30 minutes
to paddle to shore, we could see him drying his wings,
and eventually fly off.
Sorry I have no good pictures to include. I will send a picture my
friend took of another eagle. And one of Colleen with a spring
salmon. We had to move because another sea-lion joined the first and
I did not want to share. We ended the day with 7 springs.
Bye for now.
Craig Beachy