A November Nature Tour
It was one of those rare days on Vancouver Island; the weatherman called for sun and it was the weekend!
So, the nature tour season having ended about two weeks ago, I said to my better half, lets go for an outing this afternoon. I suggested we go and see if the Sockeye Salmon were spawning in the Taylor River. So after lunch we hopped in the car with the dog and took the twenty-minute drive to the Taylor Arm rest stop.
I thought there might be some fish spawing right close to the picnic area. But I was wrong. The habitat was a little too deep and the water was a little too fast. We decided to work back along Highway 4 toward Port Alberni. We stopped several more times along the river. At only one place we found fish. It was a shallow area away from the main current with pea to toonie-sized gravel. I said to Patti, “Boy, it seems that the Sockeye have really had a bad year!”
However we went on a little further. I noticed a small turnoff the highway with a concrete abutment at the end. We sat there on the curb and wondered if it was worth getting out and going the short distance to the end of the track. In the end I was glad we did. This was where the best show was! And literally at our feet. There were about two dozen Sockeye in a 100 meter stretch of a side channel to the main river. A beaver dam was at each end. And there were all these bright red fish with green heads swimming around. I was surprised at how much they varied in size. There were a few that were no bigger that the average trout. We figured these were the Jacks, or males that had returned after spending only a year at sea.
The dog, a golden retreiver, wanted to get after these fish so badly he was quivering. I had to be quite stern with him to prevent him crashing into the water and sending off in a panic. As it was they were pretty skittish. The stream here was no more that 8-10 feet wide with lots of gravel and spots where the fall leaves had accumulated in the water. After I had taken a bunch of pictures we let him go and be a dog. But not for long. We didn’t want to prevent the fish from spawning.
Here are a few pictures.
Male Sockeye salmon
