I guess it was 1965 or 66 when my family and I stayed
a week at the YMCA camp on Orcas Island. There were a
bunch of cabins, more like bunk houses, that needed
paint, and they were all empty except for one with
another family who had a son about my age, a couple of
cabins down.
Somehow my younger brother and I and this kid from the
other family went out fishing. The local fisherman
probably solicited everybody and my parents and the
others declined saying we kids could go instead.
The fisherman had one of those flat bottom WWII troop
carriers he took people out fishing on. We headed down
to the pier and the first stop was a local waterfront to
get bait, one package of herring. It was a big deal,
somehow, to get bait, and the fisherman had a lot to say
about the virtues of herring, rather than the cheese,
marshmellows and Salmon eggs we kids suggested from our
trout fishing experiences.
The package of herring lasted most the day. The
fisherman loved the water, the sport, and showed us kids
how to cut the herring, bait our hooks, troll the line,
feel the drag, and more, such as not getting our lines
caught in the kelp and on the rocks. The kelp beds were
mysterious as we looked down into the darkness and in
that we didn't want to get the propeller tangled. That
first day fishing I caught a Red Cod and a Salmon. The
other kid seemed to be a natural born fisherman catching
several fish that weighed more. That night we had fresh
Salmon for dinner.
The next day my brother stayed home and it was just
the neighbors kid, I and the fisherman that went out in
the boat. I caught a Ling Cod. I didn't know how to
clean fish and it sat out there and rotted where I hung
it when I got back. The other kid won again catching a
bigger fish, an eighty pound Ling Cod. Our family just
wasn't prepared to process and transport the poundage of
fish us kids were catching. We didn't even have an ice
chest, for example. So the fish just hung there.
The third day began as the other two, we headed down
to the store and bought only a half a package of herring
this time. My little brother went again with us, so our
bait allotment tightened even further. The fisherman was
disappointed that we couldn't buy more bait, but
determined and enthused about going fishing.
The kelp beds were dark and mysterious as we looked
down in the water. We caught a couple of more small cod
when we ran out of bait. Not a problem the fisherman
showed us how to cut up a cod and use it for bait.
Immediately we caught a dog fish. It put up an awesome
fight. When we reeled it in the fisherman pulled out a
club and killed it and then he threw it back in the
water. "I hate dog fish," he told us. "They're the
scavengers of the ocean," he said.
It was a massacre that day. We killed twenty seven
dog fish, little sharks. The Dog fish must have loved
the cod because every time we dropped our line it, it
didn't have to hit the bottom before we hooded a dog
fish. The fisherman killed and threw each one back in
the water except two which we took back to the cabins to
show to our parents. If I remember right, we even
cleaned and ate one, expecting the worse, from what the
fisherman had told us, but were surprised when it turned
out good.
Most amazingly that day, toward the end, we were
running out of cod for bait and one of us hooked
something big. We were adept enough to know a rock, when
we hooked on it now, and there had been a couple of times
when we hooked some bigger fish that got away, but this
thing was not budging. It was definitely a fish as it
moved along the bottom, pulling the boat at times if we
didn't give it line.
We were using thirty pound test, so usually it was
our call whether or not to cut the line if we got it
stuck or something. We had hooked a Halibut prior and
the fisherman showed us how Halibut moved, slowly, up and
down, back and forth, on the end of the line. We spent a
couple of hours trying to reel it in but it got away when
the line was sawed, "intentionly", the fisherman said,
"on a rock." "Halibut could weight eight hundred
pounds," he told us, "and it was a lot of work to get one
in," the boat I assume.
The fish we hooked now was not acting like a Halibut.
It didn't give at all on the line and it didn't move back
and forth like a Halibut. It took us a few minutes to
determine that line was not caught on the bottom when we
first hooked it. "This was something big," the
fisherman told us and he was quite literally not sure
what it was.
The fish, whatever it was moved slowly. We could not
reel it in an inch. Our guess was that it weighed
hundreds of pounds and the mystery lived on as we
eventually had to cut our line and go home. Years later
someone discovered there were Six Gill sharks in the
Puget Sound, the largest shark there is. I'm guessing
now, we must have hooked one and it got away, or rather
we did.
The kelp beds are all gone now, I understand. A rich
fishing bed, a very fertile water, where with the right
bait you could be assured of catching a weeks supply of
food in an afternoon. The YMCA camp, too, I understand
has been bought by a private land owner, so I submit this
amazing fishing experience in the kelp beds of Orcas
Island to you as history.
