Dunbar Residents Association News and Events

Its July 10 1957, I can see the first light breaking over the city as I start picking up my salmon gillnet from between the old W.W. 2 Searchlight Towers and the Bell Bouy on Point Grey . The smell of burning wood from the night beach fires that are still l sparking on Wreck Beach ! In the stern of my little gillnetter its also the smells of my navigation kerosene lantern fastened on top of the cabin that I also remember !The silver Sockeye and the few Jack Springs I am saving under the net drum to later take home to eat , each one of them has its own a distinct fish smell !

The rising sun now that seems to be sliding slowly up from behind the West Vancouver mountains and bursting gold off the many windows in the pink apartment over in West Van. is a sign of a great day coming on ! The night stars and the full moon that have been above the beach all night and have been lighting up the corks of my gillnet, they now have all slipped away in the first morning light . !

The gulls above my little gillnetter are calling and looking down trying to see what the night tide might have provided for them ! The big ebbing tide coming out of the harbour now and grabs my gillnet and pushes my boat south across the shallow sand bars off the North Arm of the Fraser River and on to the green light on the end of North Arm Jetty ! The nets wooden corks are down indicating a big catch and the Early Stuart Sockeye are still trying desperatly trying to pass by the net and enter the river ! A early morning cool Westerly Point Grey Wind picks up as I fill the hatch with sockeye !

I watch seaward as other fishboats turn off their “stern pickup lights” and finish picking up their nets ! I see a man on one boat close to me, reach down and lift up the net end light and blow out the sputtering wick inside the hurricane lantern . The night of fishing for Fraser River Sockeye off Wreck Beach is over, yes I am tired its been a long but lovely night under the stars and full moon waiting patiently for the Sockeye !

I watch as other boats near the Point Grey Bell Bouy and Green Light, crank up their night iddling engines and their exaust pipe puffs out grey smoke , yes the night of gillnetting for Stuart Lake Sockeye between the”Wreck Beach Search Light Towers and the North Arm Jetty is over , Yes we are all very tired and at last on our way home !

Its just one of my fishing stories from the past and I always enjoy telling it with my 4 year old grandchild on my knee !

Terry

We can only hope that in the ocean just off San Jaun, deep in the salt water there is enough Early Stuart Fraser River Sockeye moving home to just fill a little piece of their spawning grounds, north of Prince George !This year I can only hope they are just some how late again !

Many times in the past, only during El Nino events on the West Coast of course, those” Sneaky Stuarts” come from the deep ocean and through Johnstone Straits following the mainland shore to the mouth of the Fraser River ” the north entrance route” and on July 10, they will move past Point Atkinson , have a quick peek at Siwash Rock and the mouth of False Creek and pause to drink some Fraser River Freshet Plume Water ! Now they can really smell home ! On the big evening tides during the week of July 10 to July 16th, jumping with joy, on a full moonl rising , the historic Great Stuarts on mass, move in to the river mouth to start their long River Migration home !

Yes for all the years that I gillnetted the Stuarts I was amazed with their precise migration timing and they were the week of Full Moon travellers, as they entered the Fraser River Estuary ! I can only hope to day they have avoided detection and are waiting all along Spanish and North Sturgeon Banks for the full moon of July 15th , to send them all on their way home to Stuart Lake and the spawning streams they are longing so hard for !

Terry Slack ” The Stuart Sockeye Guy”