Carefully wading through the stream running through Goldstream Provincial Park, Alan Dick and his two sons, from the Songhees First Nation, attempt to corral chum salmon into shallow waters.
Ready to strike is Dick's son, Allen Junior, who thrusts his gaff into the water, pulling out a large chum salmon, much to the delight of onlookers watching with baited breath on the shore.
The father and son trio, with the support of Dick’s daughter, Carmen, and his three granddaughters, are harvesting fish using the traditional method of gaff fishing, which uses a handheld five-foot long pole with a sharp hook on the distal end.
"We try to get them in shallow water because the pools are too deep, and the gaffing is too hard," said Dick. "If we had a spear, we could throw it into the deeper pool."
Under the Douglas Treaties, the Songhees First Nation community is permitted to hunt on unoccupied land and fish in traditional territories, explains Dick, referring to the series of treaties signed with fourteen Indigenous groups on Vancouver Island in the 1850s.
"We've been coming here for generations," he says.
Taught how to make a gaff and use it to fish by his grandfather, 51-year-old Dick remembers coming to Goldstream from as young as five, roughly the same age as one of his granddaughter’s observing the action from the shore.
He has since passed on the teaching to his two sons, Allen Junior and Jordan, who during the annual salmon run attempt to fish at least once a week – when work allows, says Dick.
And he hopes the fishing tradition will continue with the next generation of his family, but he notes that his distracted eldest granddaughter Blake, is perhaps not paying as much attention as he had hoped.
“It was a good return, there was a lot of fish come back ... it was a lot of coho,” he says. “And now the chum season’s just starting, this will go for about another month, maybe a month and a half, if that.”
But so far the chum season has been a slow one, says Carmen, who explains her father and brothers have explored waters as far as Sooke to harvest salmon. The fishing trip on Oct. 24, however, was successful yet modest, with two chum salmon gaffed from the steam.
As for what they plan to do next with the salmon, the answer is an easy one for Carmen – they are going straight into the family's smoker.
