Extreme Fishing (6 page)

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Good lad.’

It physically hurts to get in the car and I wave and wave until I can’t see them anymore. Five minutes later I phone Vanya.

‘Is he OK?’

She tells me that, as soon as I turned the corner, he went to watch
SpongeBob SquarePants
. Kids these days – so shallow.

Jet lag is like being in a really crap musical you don’t want to be in: you’re singing the songs and dancing the dances but your mind and heart are elsewhere.
It’s as if you’re watching yourself from the wings, wondering how you will ever reconnect with that dancing, singing twat on stage. My nightmare musical would be
Salad Days
– I bloody hated that one. After ten hours in the air, my body and mind are truly smashed, but I gaze glassy-eyed out of the window at the mountains, vast lakes, emerald-green forests of
British Columbia, and they take my breath away.

Black Gold

It’s 4.48 a.m. in Vancouver and my head is bouncing off the walls. In the UK it’s nearly lunchtime. I witter to my diary cam about how I’m losing the
plot and I really am. Unable to get back to sleep, I’m dressed, fed and ready to go by 6 a.m.

The iconic Fraser River flows through the city of Vancouver and just a few miles upstream is the largest freshwater fish in North America, the mystical sturgeon, which can grow up to five
metres. To try and help me catch this prehistoric giant is Randy Beck – yep, Randy – and, seeing as there’s only him and me on the water today, let’s hope he doesn’t
live up to his name. Men can get kinda lonely fishing sometimes.

It’s a cold, grey day. We jump out of the minivan at our meeting point on the Fraser River. Randy wanders over to greet us and shakes my hand firmly. He looks like Tintin’s mate
Captain Haddock but without the hat. I jump aboard his fishing boat and we head upriver. It really is bleak and wintry out here but the mountains in the distance lend a stark beauty to the misty
monochrome scene.

We’re casting from the boat today because if I hook one of these fish from the bank I’d probably end up waterskiing in its wake. Think of sturgeon fishing as a tug of war with a
small car. They grow so large because they gorge on the millions of salmon whose life cycle ends here, and in order to catch this extreme fish we are going to need some extreme tackle. Randy drops
anchor unexpectedly. Clank! My heart skips a beat before going into overdrive. My nerves fray even more when Randy introduces me to what he calls a ‘mangina’. I’ve worn one before
but never heard it called that. It is basically a harness that wraps around your waist with a little codpiece at the front to accommodate the butt of the rod (it’s all getting a bit Julian
Clary). I tell Randy it reminds me of the heavy-metal band Saxon’s lead guitarist, who wore one of these to spin his guitar mid-song. It seemed an apt story, given Randy sounds exactly like a
roadie at soundcheck, but sadly the pop trivia is lost on him. I quickly move the conversation on.

‘OK, Randy, let’s just pretend I know nothing about sturgeon fishing.’
Er, you do know nothing about sturgeon fishing, Robson
, pipes up my internal monologue.
‘Shut up!’

‘What?’

‘Not you, Randy. Jason, the director, was coughing.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ says Jason Holmes from a second boat across the way.

‘So what tips would you give in order to catch a sturgeon?’

‘Three things that are essential for this type of angling are courage, power and strength,’ he says.

I’ll get my coat.

I am lying through my teeth, telling Randy I’ve spent five days a week at the gym for six months preparing for this moment, when, all of a sudden, I get a nose-full of a putrid stench. If
that smell is coming from Randy’s bottom he needs to see a doctor
immediately
. It’s like someone’s just opened a coffin next to a sewage plant. I discover the culprit is
Randy’s bucket of ‘green death’ stink bait. It’s shocking, a full-on dirty bomb attack on the senses. Sturgeon love putrefied salmon, it’s like fishy crack and they
know it’s bad-quality gear, but they’re addicted to it. I place the bait on the hook and am gagging. I cast out fifty yards of line and drop the lure into a natural feeding channel
behind the boat. All we can do now is wait.
Please bite
, I think,
I’ve travelled nearly 5,000 miles and feel like I’m on a bad acid trip
.

We’re using ninety-pound breaking-strain line with thirty-pound tension on the reel, as some of these creatures can weigh over 500 pounds. The odds really aren’t stacked in my
favour. Randy tells me that, because the price of caviar is so high, one decent fish can be worth up to $100,000 and it’s not uncommon for boats to be held at gunpoint and asked to hand over
their catch or else they’ll be sleeping with the fishes. The thought that I could be murdered for a fish takes time to sink in.
I need to try these damn fish eggs
, I think.

Suddenly, something begins to stir in the depths and the rod gives a small but significant twitch.

‘There we go!’ shouts Randy.

The rod is resting in a cradle on the side of the boat; I wait for Randy’s command: ‘Hit it! Hit it! Hit it!’ I swing the rod skywards to hook the fish – ‘Reel,
reel, reel!’ – and I wind with all my might, but nothing’s on. We’ve missed it. My heart is pounding in my chest.

‘Bloody hell, Randy, I nearly had a heart attack when you shouted: “Hit it!”’

We don’t have to wait long before we are in again.

‘Now, now, now! Reel reel reel!’ yells Randy.

‘Yeah! I am!’ I shout.

The bend in the rod is near breaking point; I feel as if I have hooked a mini submarine. The bend increases and the rod almost folds back onto itself. I wind and pull up but every time I wind in
two yards, he takes me out two yards.

Finally, after what seems an eternity, the fish reveals itself close to the side of the boat and it is the most extraordinary sight to behold. It’s about five feet long and forty pounds in
weight. We heave her on board. I try to hold her up for the camera but she’s such a strapping and awkward lass that I struggle, so Randy takes the tail and I hold her head. She is an
astonishing creature whose family has survived two ice ages. She certainly looks prehistoric with the white, diamond-shaped scutes patterned down her sides, like the armoured skin of a crocodile
rather than fishy scales. The Native Americans used these scutes as cutting tools, arrowheads and piercing instruments. The sturgeon was also prized for its oil content, and just a hundred years
ago these beautiful fish would even be stacked at the sides of rivers or lakes, to use as firewood. (‘Throw another fish on the fire, there’s a good lass.’ ‘Throw your own
bloody fish on the fire, you chauvinist pig!’ Whack! Getting smacked around the chops with one of these fish could be fatal.) It was also common to see steam-boats sailing along the
Mississippi powered by sturgeon oil, until legislation led to the cessation of overfishing. Now they are under attack because of their eggs, which are known as ‘black gold’. This
particular fish is worth around £20,000, but because sturgeon are endangered, and thankfully protected in Canada, we are going to put her back.

So, I am no longer a sturgeon virgin and I’m very happy. These fish love Randy’s stink bait and soon we have another strike. This one feels like the Daddy and it’s moving away
from me at an alarming speed. I struggle, winding and lifting, winding and lifting. Suddenly he whips round to the left – I spin with him. Now to the right – ‘Where’s he
taking me?’ I am propelled forward – he’s diving down. The downward load is putting a massive strain on my back and I am not as young as I think I am. I am beginning to wish I
really
had
trained for six months because I am fighting a perpendicular battle and my back is not strong enough for the struggle. There are shooting pains flying down my legs and into my
boots but there’s no way I’m losing what could be the biggest fish of my life. The world record is an astonishing 994 pounds, and this feels very close. I throw my hat on the floor. I
am sweating profusely, the inside of my lime-green anorak smells like Randy’s bucket of green death. I wrestle and struggle some more. Randy is getting a wee bit enthusiastic and decides to
increase the tension on the reel to try to slow the fish down. I plead with him not to, as we are nearing the breaking tension of the leader line, but he turns the tension wheel clockwise and
shouts, ‘Come on, Robson. COME ON!’

‘I think you need to take some tension off, Randy. He’s gonna fucking take me over. Seriously, guys, get a fucking hold of me!’ I yell as I lose my footing.

‘I’ve got you,’ says Randy, putting his arm around my waist, laughing wheezily like Muttley from
Wacky Races
.

I am in the hurt locker.

‘Look at that – he’s away. This has to be the biggest fish I’ve ever had on my line.’

‘He’s coming, buddy. Get him, get him,’ Randy points.

‘Come on then, son!’

I wind and lift the rod up with all my might. Snap! I fall backwards onto the deck – the sturgeon has broken off.

‘Ohh, fuck!’

I swear incessantly for about three minutes. There are no other words for the feeling of loss, frustration and despair. It was 200–300-pound sturgeon – it had to be as it’s
just broken off a 90-pound trace.

Ever the professional, I turn to camera and say, ‘But the thing is, the fish win sometimes and it’s going take a better fisherman than me to bring that fish out the water. Oh,
bollocks!’ In reality I’m thinking,
It’s all flipping Randy’s fault. He put too much bloody tension on the line. I knew it and I did nothing about it. I know, Uncle
Kenobi, I know I should have trusted my instincts, but it’s a bit bloody hard to when I’m the novice and haven’t caught one before.

Director Jason tries to dampen the blow by offering me Champagne and caviar for dinner that evening. Pound for pound, caviar is the most expensive food in the world and
it’s strange to think that I’m about to put something in my mouth that is from the bottom end of a fish – but then I do like eggs from the bottom end of a chicken so why not?

‘Sturgeons’ eggs might be black gold, but are they worth it?’ I say to camera.

I taste a small amount on a blini. The answer is, quite simply, ‘no’. To my mind, caviar is a bit like some WAGs I could mention: zero calories, little taste and a total waste of
money. I wash the salty eggs down with the Champagne and pour another glass. Now that stuff is worth every penny.

Kayaking, baby!

We are heading for Gabriola Island and it’s blowing a hooley. I do my Kate Winslet impression at the front of the ferry but I am really not looking forward to going
canoeing in this weather. I tried kayaking last year in South Africa and Costa Rica – it’s always a bloody disaster and the footage is never used. Kayaking and me go together like the
press and Hugh Grant, democracy and China, Scargill and Thatcher. But at least it was warm in South Africa; today it’s gonna be as frosty as a miner’s wife on washing day.

I meet Kim Crosby, a camp kayaking evangelist who will have to perform a miracle to convert me today. Unfortunately it appears he wants to perform something else. He peers into my canoe, his
face dangerously close to my crotch. I point and bite my nails at the camera. I’m going to have to keep a weathered eye on this old sea otter. We paddle out into the Straits of Georgia, where
there are sea lions, killer whales and . . . sharks. It is effing freezing and I really don’t want to fall in. ‘Chin-up, chest out, Robson, and stroke, stroke – no, Kim, not me,
the water!’

We are heading for a reef where lingcod live – not a relative of Pacific cod but in fact a long, slender greenling. The lingcod are fierce predators with massive mouths and sharp teeth,
and they can grow up to eighty pounds. Kim says the biggest fish can take the kayak with them, dragging you for hundreds of metres. I say to him, ‘Stay close.’ Worryingly he replies,
‘Don’t worry, I’m with you, baby.’ I have been on some dates in my time, but this one is unique.

We arrive at the spot near some rocks where Kim suggests we throw out a line but this isn’t easy and the strong wind keeps blowing us off the reef. He gets me by the paddle, trying to
steady me in the waves. It’s an impossible task and we are both blown and tossed further off course. I hold on tightly to his kayak, our canoes gently rubbing against each other in the bumpy
waters.

I ask Kim that if by some a miracle I should catch a lingcod today and get it to the boat, how the hell do I dispatch it?

‘We just grab into the gills, pull it in here, punch the shit out of the fish and down it goes.’

Right. That sounds lovely. I have a feeling that Kim might be sniffing glue or that he’s two lingcods short of a picnic – and right at this moment a picnic or any kind of food seems
very doubtful indeed. In two hours I have only managed ten minutes of fishing. The wind is taking the canoe in one direction and the current is taking the lure in another, meaning it’s not
sinking to the bottom but rather is floating on the bloody surface, which is no bloody good for attracting lingcod.

‘This is fucking stupid! Ocean kayaking is meant to be breath-taking, but I think this is piss-taking,’ I snap.

‘But you are looking marvellous,’ says Kim, trying to appeal to my vanity. Well, my vanity fucked off long ago and is currently by an open fire, sipping single-malt and puffing on a
Monte Cristo cigar, and I want to join it.

We of course catch sod-all. My bottom is numb, I can’t feel my toes and I’ve really had enough. In my eyes, Kim’s credibility is at its nadir, unlike our lures. Unabashed, Kim
says, ‘I dropped some prawn traps earlier today. How about some lovely prawns for lunch?’

‘Prawns. Perfect. Whatever. Get me out of this kayak!’

We head out on Kim’s boat to pull up his prawn traps set 100 metres down. Right now I’m so hungry my stomach feels like my throat’s been cut. I start to haul
up a trap. It’s hard work but finally it reaches the surface and . . . ‘Fucking hell, Kim, it’s empty!’

There is not a single prawn. I feel like a right one, but Kim is a prize langoustine.