Along about the end of February and throughout March it is time to consider replenishing your bait stocks with herring, or better still getting some fresh herring for pickling or special breakfast fare as in Scotland or Japan. With this thought in mind, Bryan Allen invited me to accompany him on a herring jigging adventure on Baynes Sound last Saturday. It was an easy “Yes” on my part.
There in an old saying that when you launch your boat at one end of a lake you frequently travel to the other end in search of greener pastures. As a case in point, when most anglers launch on Edith Lake at the north end they promptly crank up their motors and travel to the so-called glory holes elsewhere on the lake. In the meantime they ignore the hot shoals in front, which are just off the ramp site.
Two old, experienced anglers followed that traditional practice when they launched Bryan’s boat at Union Bay on Saturday morning. As we proceeded out of the harbour we noticed a few sea lions and some active gulls right in front us. However we had knowledge of huge herring schools of about 8,000 tons down in the Deep Bay area. True to form about distant pastures looking greener, we headed down there. As we travelled we watched a seine boat in the process of a test fishery over a huge school of fish in mid-channel. The gulls, sea lions and harbour seals where enjoying a feast.
When we arrived at Deep Bay we saw nary a sea lion or gull – there was no visible sign of the presence of herring anywhere in our scope of vision. In the meantime, Bryan picked up some chatter on the radio that said there was a huge school of herring, sea lions and birds off Gartley Point – the other end of the Sound in Comox harbour limits. We had no choice but travel back up the sound to Gartley Point in search of the elusive herring. As we travelled past Union Bay we noted there was still limited gull and sea lion activity in the area.
When we arrived at Gartley Point there was indeed a large number of California sea lions working the area in company with gulls, eagles and cormorants. There was also another recreational boat jigging in among the feeding wildlife. While the herring were present they were not concentrated – possibly split up by the large number of sea lions in the area. We caught a couple and decided to go back to the seal and gull activity off the Union Bay Point.
Back at Union Bay we started to connect with reasonable numbers of nice herring. By way of explanation, a herring jig is a string of five to seven small fly hooks tied on a light nylon line with light plastic dressing to make them resemble small shrimp-like creatures that the herring feed upon. They are cast into the schools of herring with about a two-ounce weight on the end.
It is not uncommon to catch four or five in a single jigging retrieve. It is tricky when this happens because with hooks and fish jumping around with no control you can get a nasty tangle, thereby putting you out of action until you untangle the mess. In the meantime our catch of herring had gone from almost nil to several dozen in a matter of an hour. As the afternoon wore on we were joined by five other boats in pursuit of fresh herring.
It is a low-key type of fishing where the spoils are not very great, but it is nevertheless not without challenges. To keep our fish fresh they were put on a frozen ice pack in a large ice chest immediately after catching. Ice packs are important in that they keep the fish cold without melt water.
Bryan has a simple system where we washed the catch over a wire frame to get rid of the slime before we packaged them in Ziplock bags. Each bag received a good handful of pickling salt before it was put into the freezers for future use.
Lesson learned – distant pastures may not always be greener.
Ralph Shaw is a master fly fisherman who was awarded the Order of Canada in 1984 for his conservation efforts. In 20 years of writing a column in the Comox Valley Record it has won several awards.
