While fishing up the north end of Vancouver Island this past July, I picked up a book in the drugstore at Port McNeil that I hadn't heard of before. It's called "The Fisher Queen," by Sylvia Taylor.
My job sends me all over the world, but there is nowhere I have been yet that surpasses my favorite part of the planet, the so-called "jungles," the countless islands between Campbell River, BC and Queen Charlotte Strait.
Thanks to the captstan windlass on the front of my 1973 Land Rover (another story), I first saw these waters in 1977 on the BC ferry from Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island on my way home to Hawaii after a six-week camping and fishing vacation in the Yukon.
Standing on the deck of the ferry watching the amazing environment that is the Inside Passage slide past, I vowed I would someday live here. It took me two years to work up the nerve to quit an enjoyable and well-paying job in television in Honolulu and do it, but I finally made the move.
So I'm interested in anything having to do with the area, and have read all sorts of books, from the required-reading "Curve of Time" to "Whistle up the Inlet", the story of the Union Steamship Company.
"Fisher Queen" gives a remarkable look at commercial salmon trolling, as told by a woman who, when she was 22 or so, served as a deckhand for a season to a fellow who fished a 40-foot troller. The picture she paints of fishing around the north end of Vancouver Island is unlike any other I have read.
She does a great job of capturing the "mood" of the area, as well putting the reader in the middle of the often-terrifying weather and sea conditions the trollers worked in.
"The Fisher Queen" is available on Kindle as well as in print. I highly recommend it to anyone who's as fascinated by this region as I am, and who is particularly fascinated by the people, past and present, who've chosen to make their living on these waters.
My job sends me all over the world, but there is nowhere I have been yet that surpasses my favorite part of the planet, the so-called "jungles," the countless islands between Campbell River, BC and Queen Charlotte Strait.
Thanks to the captstan windlass on the front of my 1973 Land Rover (another story), I first saw these waters in 1977 on the BC ferry from Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island on my way home to Hawaii after a six-week camping and fishing vacation in the Yukon.
Standing on the deck of the ferry watching the amazing environment that is the Inside Passage slide past, I vowed I would someday live here. It took me two years to work up the nerve to quit an enjoyable and well-paying job in television in Honolulu and do it, but I finally made the move.
So I'm interested in anything having to do with the area, and have read all sorts of books, from the required-reading "Curve of Time" to "Whistle up the Inlet", the story of the Union Steamship Company.
"Fisher Queen" gives a remarkable look at commercial salmon trolling, as told by a woman who, when she was 22 or so, served as a deckhand for a season to a fellow who fished a 40-foot troller. The picture she paints of fishing around the north end of Vancouver Island is unlike any other I have read.
She does a great job of capturing the "mood" of the area, as well putting the reader in the middle of the often-terrifying weather and sea conditions the trollers worked in.
"The Fisher Queen" is available on Kindle as well as in print. I highly recommend it to anyone who's as fascinated by this region as I am, and who is particularly fascinated by the people, past and present, who've chosen to make their living on these waters.
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