Peter McMullan - Casting Back: Sixty Years of Writing and Fishing

CASTING BACK

Sixty Years of Fishing and Writing

Peter McMullan

Copyright 2016 by Peter McMullan

First Edition

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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77160-174-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-77160-175-7 (electronic)

Edited by Rhonda Bailey

Cover photo: Craig Somerville, Castabroad

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

DEDICATION

This book has to be for Daphne, my wife and patient partner for more than 50 years, the one person who has supported my love of fishing almost from its beginnings, who has willingly shared in our adventures from Haida Gwaii to New Zealand, from Northern Ireland to the Cook Islands, from the Bahamas to Bamfield. From brown trout at Lake Taupo to the rainbow trout of Babines Rainbow Alley, from chinook at Langara Island to Atlantic salmon on the River Mourne, she has accepted with good grace dawn starts, inclement weather and the often fruitless hours we anglers tend to take for granted. Simply said, there is no way I can ever thank her enough for all she has done for me, as both a fisherman and as someone who finds writing about fishing to be almost but not quite as rewarding.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

In His Blood

Peter McMullan says he was just a boy who was born to fish. Luckily for us, he was born to write too, and now both passions are brought together in one place.

In these collected works he ranges from the relatively genteel salmon rivers of Ireland, where hes never far from a pub, to wild steelhead rivers in British Columbia, where hes never far from bears. He navigates both with charm and humility.

Unfortunately I never got to spend any time with Peter on those Irish waters he writes about with such love, but I have been lucky enough to wade with him on several occasions on the Pitt River, a rush of glacial water that comes down out of the Coast Range near Vancouver, pouring into a deep tidal lake, whose rugged mountainous sides block any roads into the valley.

When I started the fly-fishing web magazine www.ariverneversleeps.com, it was with a small collective of writers, artists and photographers who were looking for a vehicle to connect with fellow anglers. It wasnt then, and it isnt now, about publishing for profit. Without ads, except for a handful auto-posted by Google that provide just enough to cover Internet costs, we were free to write about whatever we wanted without any concern for advertisers interests.

But we were also without any income to pay writers. And how many people do you think are happy to write for free in this mercenary world we live in? Not many good ones, I can tell you, but those who are belong to a special group.

Peter said yes the moment he was asked to contribute and has for over a decade been one of the magazines most steadfast supporters.

When the magazine co-publisher, photographer Nick Didlick, took on duties as head guide at Pitt River Lodge, we saw a chance to reward Peter, and invited him for a weekend of fishing after the main season was over and the last of the clients had left.

Id known Peter for several years by then, first encountering him when I was a journalist working in Vancouver and he was the head public relations official for BC Hydro. He was an old-style flak, a kind now mostly gone, who felt telling the truth and answering hard questions from reporters was his duty. In other words, he served the public, not the executive staff of the day.

He brings that same honesty to his storytelling. If he says he caught seven salmon between 6 and 14 pounds, you can bet there werent any 5- or 15-pounders in there. And he did get seven.

Unlike many, Peter doesnt count pulls, hits, or lost salmon as part of his daily tally. Oh yes, he remembers each one and will gladly share the stories with you, blow by blow, but he wont say he got ten fish, when he means he got three and seven got away.

I know this having fished with him and having edited his stories.

One day on the Pitt I learned just how good he is with a fly rod, a skill he has never boasted about. As we fished up the river, my younger legs, and my eagerness to explore around the next bend, carried me ahead of him. But as I moved up, every time I looked back I saw Peters rod was bent and hed fallen into that fish-fighting stance he has with his feet spread to balance his weight. I imagine thats how he fought on rugby pitches too, alert and calm, and ready to knock you down.

Fish on, hed shout. Then later, as you could see him kneeling to release another salmon: A beauty!

That day Id say Peter probably took two fish to every one I got. He never gloated or compared numbers. He did recite with absolute delight how this one had fought and that one had taken with a jarring strike. How one went down the rapids into the pool below. And how another threw his fly back at him. All of them, even the lost fish, delighted him equally. And he was just as thrilled to hear about my fish as talk about his own.

On another day we fished hard, didnt do nearly so well, but better than anyone could hope for, all of us taking nice bull trout. We got back to the lodge before dark, and as others gathered for cocktails by the airtight stove Peter suggested we go out to fish a slick run just below the lodge. He felt sure it held one more big fish. As the light faded I pulled out and headed back to the warmth of the lodge, calling out to him that Id see him soon. I fully expected him to come back with a story of a big fish, taken just at last light. But he got far more than that.

About an hour later he came in out of the blackness, shed his coat and came quietly to stand by the fire. This wasnt like Peter. And he was pale.

You look like youve seen a ghost, someone joked.

Not that, said Peter. A black bear stalked me.

He had been fishing in the promising run when he felt a chill and turned to find a big black bear watching him from near the waters edge. Then it moved closer, wading chest deep until it was only a rods length away. Peter was as deep as he could go into the rivers strong current. He faced the bear, and here is, I think, where many anglers would have gone wrong and panicked. Peter may have felt like trying to swim to the far bank, but knew in waders that would be fatal.

So he had a standoff with the bear. Experts on bears tell you to talk to them in a low steady voice. But they also say you should be instinctive. You fight if you think you have to, or, in Peters case, you belt out as loud as you can every foul curse word youve ever learned. Then he shook his wading staff at it. The bear froze, I can only imagine that its eyebrows arched in shock, and it turned and lumbered away, stopping once or twice to look back as if to say, Did that really just happen?