Canada & Stafford Moor – August 2007
Just returned from an awesome trip to Canada and although I promised not to derail the Willinghurst news I just had to give you a few highlights. I spent the first week and a half on the West Coast of Vancouver Island fishing for salmon in the ocean together with halibut, ling cod and even a few tuna. Highlight of the time over there was a day fishing for salmon where our limit (4 fish) comprised 3 x 30 lbs and a forty pounder and on that day we caught and returned over 20 twenty pound salmon plus a thirty pounder.
The second part of the trip was a return visit to the Fraser River just outside Vancouver. This was the 6th time that I’ve fished for sturgeon in the Fraser and for the past 3 years I’ve been trying to beat my personal best of 8ft 10 ins, I was desperate for a 9 foot sturgeon. We had some amazing days on the trip, including a bunch of 3 consecutive days where we landed 22, 18 and 21 sturgeon. I also managed to catch an acrobatic six footer for the cameras of a team making a film promoting Vancouver to be shown at the Beijing Olympics (Vancover host the 2010 Winter Olympics).
I’ll recount the full epic story elsewhere, suffice to say that on the final day of the trip I landed this monster
(Click the thumbnail for a full sized image)
It measured 9ft 1 inch from the snout to the fork of the tail (that’s how they measure them in Canada, in the USA they measure to the tip of the tail but everything’s always bigger in the States !!). The girth was 46 inches and weight for length tables put it at around 400 lbs, there’s certainly no way that 2 of us could lift it. As I said, I’ll post a full story of the trip with loads more pictures somewhere and I’ll pop the link on here.
Whilst I was away a whole bunch of Willinghurst regulars took a week long trip to Stafford Moor Fishery in Devon for a little festival. With matches every day, competition was bound to be fierce and it was going to take a good angler to come out on top. Lo and behold, the outright winner by quite a margin was Terry “The Cod”, one half of the new Willinghurst management team. Not only did he weigh in in excess of 100 lbs on all but one day, plus picking up over £1,000 in sweepstake winnings, he also relieved Mick The Bookie of £500 (£50 at 10/1) !!. Well Done Tel !!
Fishery maintenance tasks now completed include a path plus fishing platforms around Horseshoe Lake and an almost completed path around Old Lake, the boys have been working extremely hard whilst I’ve been jetting back and forth. More news soon.
Ross