THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

As I recall, we probably only managed four or five fish on that second day, but Dave broke his
freshwater ton with a hard fighting beauty of around one hundred and twenty five pounds according to
the length and girth estimation chart used by all the guides.
This was a previously tagged fish last caught in October 2000 when it had weighed in at sixty five
pounds, which was almost half its current size. But by close of play, if the predictive stats were to be
proved accurate, we were still owed at least one more ton, and were well on the way to accumulating
enough fish numbers to qualify for a third.
Dave didn't fish on day three. Instead I had my wife Dawn onboard to operate the video camera. When
asked if she wanted to catch one she said yes, but just a small one to say she'd done it. So with this in
mind, Chad anchored the boat up in a nice quiet little nursery area where the first fish on any of the
three rods would go to Dawn, after which we could then go off searching for bigger targets.
Within minutes one of the rod tips was tapping. She picked it up expecting to connect with something
between five and ten pounds, then for the next half hour or so had to deal with a fish that came out of
the estimation formula at one hundred and seven pounds. It was bound to happen. Chad and I even said
as much on the journey down river prior to hooking it.
That brought our ton up average back almost on target. But it also piled more pressure onto me. Would
I be the only person in the party not to crack the hundred. It was certainly looking that way until Chad
brought one of the rods in and replaced it with a smaller outfit and a very much smaller bait.
Many of the taps and rattles you get
along the quieter parts of the Fraser
come from what are locally known as
squaw fish. A sort of cross between a
barbel and a chub with a mouth the
size of a cod. The aim was to catch
ourselves a couple of these, which we
quickly did, then move over to a
known big fish lie and put one of them
out as a dead-bait.
With a bait of that size, the bite
detection tactics also changed. The
reel was set on ratchet with the lever
drag backed off so the fish could pick
up the bait and move off until it had it
Squaw Fish – soon to become bait
well inside its mouth. It was big fish
or nothing on that particular rod,
though on the other two we still had salmon eggs and lamprey section just in case.
All three rods were mine, and we were probably now owed two more fish over the ton. How much
pressure do you need. Fortunately, relief was not long in coming. The squaw fish rod started nodding
followed by line trickling from the reel, which to all intents and purposes could have been a slow tope
run.
Nervously I stood holding the rod waiting for the nod from Chad. When it came, there was no mistaking
the feel of a more solid fish. But within seconds it stopped doing anything much, leaving me with just
the strong river flow to contend with.
Still it wasn't easy to get it to the boat, but it certainly wasn't fighting. We then started wondering if it
was going to be a fish of maybe fifty pounds or so with delusions of grandeur.
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