THESE BUDS ARE FOR YOU

Hey!

You try to think up a catchy name for your blog entries, but not every one of them is going to win a prize for wittiness, right?  When I attended the Royal Roads School for Boy Soldiers back in the dark ages, only men could attend, and we referred to our friends and classmates as “buds.”  (If Gloria Steinem is still alive and reading this, please kiss my *** and go hate somebody else.)  So one of my objectives during this trip was to visit some of my buds from back in the day when we were all hirsute, virile and could whup our weight in wildcats.  This is not recent history, in case you are curious.  And so it is BUDS in the title - and this entry, if only I can maintain a modicum of focus, should be on BUDS.

As I wander around this country on this road trip, I am often behind a bit on my blog.  Sometimes I am behinder than other times, due to poor time appreciation on my part, or non-existent Internet, or whatever.  Today is 31 August, I am a long ways behind. And it is bedtime so the likelihood of finishing this entry, having been much interrupted, is slim indeed.

And here it is 1 September, the forecast in my last paragraph having been entirely accurate.

So I got to Sooke some number of days ago, perhaps a week ago? And went to the spectacular home of friends Scott and Anne-Marie.  After I had set up the rig they remarked that the tides and weather were favourable, and might I enjoy a bit of salmon fishing?  Well, YES!!!!  They have a 31 foot Boston Whaler with twin 300 hp Mercs on the stern, as in the boat we should have had up at Nootka Sound!  And their slip is at a marina within sight of their home, so quite soon thereafter we were onboard and headed out for an evening fish.  The first fish on was Scott’s, and he brought in a very nice Chinook salmon (“spring” for you west coasters) about eight pounds or so.  That was the only fish caught, but it was a lovely evening and also quite refreshing to actually catch something!

The next morning Scott and I went out again, to a different location, and joined a pack of boats working a point where the tide tends to bottle up the salmon in a smaller area.  I had a fish on immediately, but lost it at the boat.  (Curse those single barbless hooks!)  Then when I was setting up again a fish took my lure on the way down (at twelve feet!), then put on quite the display.  When we got it into the net, it was a nice coho, which we kept.  So I had two fish on before Scott even got his rod down.  Soon enough, it was Scott’s turn, and a lovely spring joined the coho in the fish locker.  By this time we had the pack of boats following us, the skippers of those boats having seen our success.  The final count for the morning was five salmon caught and kept, and a couple more lost or missed.  It was really a very good morning on the water, and this was accentuated by a check of the crab traps which we had set on the way out.  There were 19 crabs in each of the pots, with one escapee just as we hauled the trap aboard.  Four were of legal size, and they went into another hold.  Once back at the marina, I filleted the salmon while Scott dealt with the crabs.

And of course I had neglected to bring a camera once again, so the evidence of this success does not exist...............

That evening I treated Scott and Anne-Marie to supper at a restaurant in Sooke, where the menu and wine list were written by people with a flair for pretentious words and an odd list of ingredients.  I especially wondered about the wine with “hints of petrol”  Our waitress was a sweet young thing, and my guests just about wet themselves when the waitress patted my hair and fondled my beard.

Saturday was the mini-reunion of Roadents and wives, and we had a wonderful time getting caught up on each others’ lives, and in some cases meeting spouses for the first time.  I am hopeful that I have convinced at least some of them to come to Kingston next fall for our big reunion.  Some pictures of the folks:

OK it looks like the connection at this campground is too slow to upload photos, so next time I have reliable Internet I will post them.