Orcas Island Kelp Beds

    I guess it was 1965 or 66 when my family and I stayed 
a week at the YMCA camp on Orcas Island.  There were a 
bunch of cabins, more like bunk houses, that needed 
paint, and they were all empty except for one with 
another family who had a son about my age, a couple of 
cabins down.
  Somehow my younger brother and I and this kid from the 
other family went out fishing.  The local fisherman 
probably solicited everybody and my parents and the 
others declined saying we kids could go instead.
   The fisherman had one of those flat bottom WWII troop 
carriers he took people out fishing on.  We headed down 
to the pier and the first stop was a local waterfront to 
get bait, one package of herring.  It was a big deal, 
somehow, to get bait, and the fisherman had a lot to say 
about the virtues of herring, rather than the cheese, 
marshmellows and Salmon eggs we kids suggested from our 
trout fishing experiences.
     The package of herring lasted most the day.  The 
fisherman loved the water, the sport, and showed us kids 
how to cut the herring, bait our hooks, troll the line, 
feel the drag, and more, such as not getting our lines 
caught in the kelp and on the rocks.  The kelp beds were 
mysterious as we looked down into the darkness and in 
that we didn't want to get the propeller tangled.  That 
first day fishing I caught a Red Cod and a Salmon.  The 
other kid seemed to be a natural born fisherman catching 
several fish that weighed more.  That night we had fresh 
Salmon for dinner.
   The next day my brother stayed home and it was just 
the neighbors kid, I and the fisherman that went out in 
the boat.  I caught a Ling Cod.  I didn't know how to 
clean fish and it sat out there and rotted where I hung 
it when I got back.  The other kid won again catching a 
bigger fish, an eighty pound Ling Cod.  Our family just 
wasn't prepared to process and transport the poundage of 
fish us kids were catching.  We didn't even have an ice 
chest, for example.  So the fish just hung there.
    The third day began as the other two, we headed down 
to the store and bought only a half a package of herring 
this time.  My little brother went again with us, so our 
bait allotment tightened even further.  The fisherman was 
disappointed that we couldn't buy more bait, but 
determined and enthused about going fishing.
   The kelp beds were dark and mysterious as we looked 
down in the water.  We caught a couple of more small cod 
when we ran out of bait.  Not a problem the fisherman 
showed us how to cut up a cod and use it for bait.  
Immediately we caught a dog fish.  It put up an awesome 
fight.  When we reeled it in the fisherman pulled out a 
club and killed it and then he threw it back in the 
water.  "I hate dog fish,"  he told us.  "They're the 
scavengers of the ocean," he said.
   It was a massacre that day.  We killed twenty seven 
dog fish, little sharks.  The Dog fish must have loved 
the cod because every time we dropped our line it, it 
didn't have to hit the bottom before we hooded a dog 
fish.  The fisherman killed and threw each one back in 
the water except two which we took back to the cabins to 
show to our parents.  If I remember right, we even 
cleaned and ate one, expecting the worse, from what the 
fisherman had told us, but were surprised when it turned 
out good.
   Most amazingly that day, toward the end, we were 
running out of cod for bait and one of us hooked 
something big.  We were adept enough to know a rock, when 
we hooked on it now, and there had been a couple of times 
when we hooked some bigger fish that got away, but this 
thing was not budging.  It was definitely a fish as it 
moved along the bottom, pulling the boat at times if we 
didn't give it line.
     We were using thirty pound test, so usually it was 
our call whether or not to cut the line if we got it 
stuck or something.  We had hooked a Halibut prior and 
the fisherman showed us how Halibut moved, slowly, up and 
down, back and forth, on the end of the line.  We spent a 
couple of hours trying to reel it in but it got away when 
the line was sawed, "intentionly", the fisherman said, 
"on a rock."  "Halibut could weight eight hundred 
pounds," he told us, "and it was a lot of work to get one 
in," the boat I assume.
    The fish we hooked now was not acting like a Halibut.  
It didn't give at all on the line and it didn't move back 
and forth like a Halibut.  It took us a few minutes to 
determine that line was not caught on the bottom when we 
first hooked it.  "This was something big,"  the 
fisherman told us and he was quite literally not sure 
what it was.
   The fish, whatever it was moved slowly.  We could not 
reel it in an inch.  Our guess was that it weighed 
hundreds of pounds and the mystery lived on as we 
eventually had to cut our line and go home.  Years later 
someone discovered there were Six Gill sharks in the 
Puget Sound, the largest shark there is.  I'm guessing 
now, we must have hooked one and it got away, or rather 
we did.
    The kelp beds are all gone now, I understand.  A rich 
fishing bed, a very fertile water, where with the right 
bait you could be assured of catching a weeks supply of 
food in an afternoon.  The YMCA camp, too, I understand 
has been bought by a private land owner, so I submit this 
amazing fishing experience in the kelp beds of Orcas 
Island to you as history.

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