Muffin and Pedal

Funnily enough, although this post is un-BMX-related, it’s through BMX that it happened. Living the ‘BMX dream’ in Vancouver has facilitated the opportunity to meet amazing people with a common interest. One of these people is Chad Jones who I’ve spent many an early morning with at Hastings sipping on coffees between dropping in at the bowl. Chad is also a talented photographer and animator who has been one of the persons helping me turn muffinandpedal into what its become. Chad also happens to be a great fisherman and is related to a sea faring Captain who owns a 55 foot concrete hull fishing boat called the Cantamara. You can see Cap’n Jack here coming aboard his rig, pretty spry for his 70’s.

We set sail from Port Edward just south of Prince Rupert in Northern British Columbia. I can’t disclose any of our fishing spots or Uncle Jack would sever my fingers one by one. He’s more protective over his spots than BMXers so that’s saying something.

Cap’n Jack likes to tell rude Jokes whilst making out he’s the saltiest of old sea dogs just for the fun of making new crew members unsure and wary of the old sea Cap’n. At the first stop Jack was starboard criticizing my technique calling it ‘some kind of weird southern hemisphere jigging’ but only ten minutes into dropping my line a rock fish literally jumped onto my hook and there you have it, my fist ever fish.

Of course I had no idea how to get it off the hook at first and Uncle Jack is hovering nearby in his gruff voice “Put yer goddam fingers in its mouth, you can’t be a fisherman if you don’t put yer dam fingers in its mouth!”. He was right, it works a treat getting the hook out its mouth if you’ve got a hold of its lip. However, almost to the loss of my finger, this is not the case if you’re catching Ling cod. Ling have razor sharp teeth as Jack pointed out “Don’t put yer fingers in THAT ONE’s mouth, you’ll lose yer goddam fingers!”

Chad got the the biggest catch that week, a 38lb Ling Cod.

In between fishing and from spot to spot, there’s a lot of down time which gets spent either gutting fish or drinking…               …or mostly gutting fish while drinking. We bought so many Pacific Pilsners it felt like out trip was sponsored by them. If only it had been, there wouldn’t be a gaping whole in my wallet the rest of the month.

At the end of the day you find your sea legs or at least the copious amounts of Pacific Pilsner to compensate only to be topped off with a bit of pirate juice. On the left we have ‘common pirate drank’, great for swigging at regular intervals and has your chin wagging for hours about senseless nonsense. On the right ‘poncy pirate nect’aaaaRR!’, equally good at transforming the English language into gibberish but is more of the sipping nature than the swigging kind.

At one point on the first night of Rum ‘tasteing’ Cap’n Jack asked me if I’d ever been on any fishing trips before, after misinterpreting his question I answered “I’ve been on top of a fare few fish n’ chips I’ll have you know!”. My answer met with no response, verbally or physically, literally nothing Jack must’ve thought he was dealing with a foreign simpleton (he was right!).

Every morning shortly after we managed to wash out the stale whiskey taste with instant coffee we would pull up crab traps to find hordes of surly purple orange buggers feasting on the remnants of a day old fish head. Chad’s fella looking a little grumpy, I would be too if Chad was holding me up by my testicles.

One of the best parts of being on the boat is when the sun goes down. Each night we pulled into this beautiful calm cove where the water was calm and glassy and the skies were for the most part clear. The sun just setting the sky ablaze and casting the most surreal colours across the horizon.

Just after sunset comes night and its just as beautiful.