I turn 50 in December and since nobody likes me, and I'm not social, and it's so close to Christmas, The Old Bag said sure.

"You can go fishing for a week, with your buddy, Les Linfoot. Run up the Visa. We don't have the money...what difference will it make?
Les Linfoot on the St. Mary's River
Photo by Glenn Baglo

"It will be your birthday party."

Linfoot, having done the trip before, planned the route and the rivers. He provided the "fishing car" and I provided the tent trailer and camp comforts. We had a full week, well eight days really, and we planned to use it.

Strange how some people get along and there's a tension with others. Les and I get along. Must have something to do with sleeping late, smoking indoors, eating only if it doesn't interfere with the fishing and pleasure in good coffee and good whiskey.

It's a two day drive (or 12 hours straight run) from Vancouver to Fernie, in the Kootenay's. We took two days, stopping to purchase an extension for the trailer wiring (and then discovering we had one in the glove box about 25 minutes later), beating the living day-lights out of a couple of dust-caps trying to install them on the trailer hubs after I had liberally repacked the bearings (which blew the original covers off when the grease heated up) and sitting behind a repaving crew on the main highway that crosses Canada on a Saturday morning.

Discovered we could set up the tent trailer and camp in six minutes (and we weren't even trying to set a record) which gave us time to fish the Kettle River at Grand Forks. Water temperature was 64 F. I caught a fish.

We cooked our beans in the tin and ate them off of paper plates. I'll contribute the recipe later. I think it consists of a tin of beans, paper plates, fishing, approaching dark, beer and more miles to make.

We stopped to fish the Goat on our way to Kimberly. Pulled up on a logging road behind a pick-up from Idaho. Hey, if a guy from Idaho is fishing the Goat, this has got to be the place to be. I caught a fish.

Pulled into Happy Hans Campground early enough for a round of mini-golf. Les caught a fish on hole five.

A rainbow ready for release. Photo by Glenn Baglo

Two frustrating days on the St. Mary. We'd read lots about this river, but hadn't realised how difficult or easy it is to access. Found a couple points, including one that I termed "the motor pool". It had an engine sitting in the river forming an eddy. Now it had a name, but that wouldn't improve the fishing. I caught a fish. Linfoot figured it out. We'd make a cast in a new spot and get a strike or a fish and then nothing. He termed them "greeters". WalMart greeters. They'd say hello when you entered the river and made your first cast and from then on, you were on your own. I caught a fish.

OK, this is getting boring.
Glenn Baglo sitting on the fence.
Photo by Les Linfoot

We motored on to Fernie and fished the Elk for three days. Recent articles in fly-fishing magazines have increased the pressure. People coming from Europe and the U.S.A. Guides complaining that the fishing is off, temps too high. I caught a fish. 14 1/2".

Next night, I fish dead water where I've seen rises and catch my biggest trout ever, 15 1/2". He's all screwed up and I don't think he'll live. If I'd realised that I could keep him in this section I would have killed him. I hope he lives, but, I doubt it.

We head for home. Enter the Twilight Zone. Princeton Castle RV park. It's centred around a 1910 cement plant that is falling in ruins. Sorta does look like a castle. Llamas graze in the ruins. Guy that checks us in won't let us set up camp without twenty minutes of conversation.

People move in next door, a 100-year-old woman and her son, with an instruction booklet and a tent. We prayed she wouldn't die in front of our campsite and then theorised that he was actually trying to off her to collect his inheritance. As she staggered to the washroom, taking
six-inch steps, a polka wafted through the site. I put on the CBC to drown it out.

Linfoot practiced his pitch, driving pine-cones into the forest off a floor-mat he took from the fishing car.

We rise early the next morning and hit the Skagit on the last day, catching some feisty rainbows before coasting home.

"There are no steelhead".