Tag Archive for: BC

Yvette Cardozo

Ice Fishing Time Coming Up

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Other Things To Do In Winter For Seniors.

Ice fishing on Heffley Lake near Sun Peaks Resort with Elevated Fishing Adventures. Here, the guide and guest try their hand at outdoors holes. Credit: Yvette Cardozo

Some folks fish for sport. Some for relaxation. Some to “just get away.”

I fish to eat. If I can’t eventually put it in a fry pan, I’m not really interested.

So enter Elevated Fishing Adventures, near Sun Peaks Resort in British Columbia, Canada, where you get all three. Especially the eating part.

“Probably half the people who come out with us cook their fish that night,” said owner/guide Campbell Bryk.

Owner/guide Campbell Bryk picked my friend, Nancy Slye, and me up at 7 am and we drove out to nearby Heffley Lake, which at this point in the year, was covered with 20 inches of ice.

The lake is stocked with rainbow trout, a mild fish that makes great eating. The red glow is sunlight coming through the red canvas tent. Credit: Yvette Cardozo

A few hundred yards out, Campbell set up his fishing tent, got a portable heater going and re-drilled three of his fishing holes. Then he baited our hooks with natural looking lures that not only wriggle, they glow in the dark water below the ice.

This is really popular with families that have kids. “As soon as  you see fish down there, you can get kids to sit for hours,” Campbell said.

And anybody …really ANYbody…can catch a fish, he insisted, describing one morning where a mom was breast feeding her infant with one hand and hooking fish with the other.

“Her three-year-old caught a 24-inch fish,” he added.

The BC government each year stocks Heffley with 5,000 rainbow trout, a fish that Campbell claims, “Anybody can cook and virtually everybody likes because it’s so mild tasting.”

The best fishing, he explained, is just before Christmas. The most any group has caught in a day is 36, though folks are limited to keeping only five per person. And the largest fish anyone’s ever caught was 30 inches, big enough to feed six people.

The lake has both wild and stocked fish. The wild ones are dark red and green, the stocked ones are shiny but they both taste the same, so we were told

As for us, we were pushing the end of the season. And the fish were nowhere to be found. Have any groups ever come up completely dry?

Only two out of 50 trips. Campbell invited them to come back the next day, free of charge.

Okay, we were running out of time.

And then, with maybe 15 minutes before we had to pack up, something nibbled Nancy’s line. She set the hook and reeled it in. It was cute. It was tiny. It was too small to keep.

So we went back to fishing and now, with merely five minutes to go, Nancy got another one (I was busy taking pictures). Again she hooked it. Again she reeled. Again it came up.

And this time it was over a foot long, one of the stocked fish, holding a good pound of edible meat. A keeper. Campbell filleted the fish and delivered it to us later that day.

As for the cooking part, we removed what tiny bones remained, cut the fish so it lay flat, tossed it into a frying pan with lots of butter, garlic, a bit of salt and a splash of lime juice.

Even I, someone who joyfully eats but doesn’t necessarily cook fish, did a yummy job.

Next year, Campbell said, he will have a permit to fish on Paul Lake, which is stocked with landlocked sockeye salmon, called Kokanee in these parts. He’ll be making salmon sashimi for those who want it and cooking lunch.

Nancy and I WILL be back.

Click for more about Elevated Ice Fishing at Sun Peaks Resort.

After cleaning, there is about a pound of rainbow trout, perfect for two for dinner. Credit: Yvette Cardozo

Yvette Cardozo

Wonderful Winter Walk With Wolves

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Why Wait When Wolves Want Wise Well-Wishers.

Wolves walk with visitors during a guided wolf walk in the forest and play in the snow near Golden BC. Credit: Yvette Cardozo

Okay, in the picture, it looks like she’s being licked by a dog. But trust me, that’s NO dog. It’s a real grey wolf. In the woods. Walking with my friends and me.

Woman meets Scrappy Dave, one of the wolves on a guided wolf walk through the forest with Northern Lights Wolf Centre, a wolf rescue and education center in Golden, BC.
Credit: Yvette Cardozo

It was part of our morning at Northern Lights Wolf Centre just outside Golden, BC, Canada, where we learned about wolves and definitely got close and personal.

Shelley Black and her husband Casey have been raising wolves for nearly two decades. Their aim is not only rescuing abandoned wolf cubs but educating the public.

“There’s so many misconceptions about wolves,” Casey told us.

For one, they really don’t lurk around woods just waiting to eat people. They’d rather avoid people. But thanks to a lot of fiction where hapless folk are forever being devoured or myths that are really morality tales warning women of attacks by men (Little Red Riding Hood, for one), there is an ingrained public fear of wolves.

There are many wolf rescue/education centers around North America but only a handful that let you actually walk with the wolves and interact with them.

And so, we gathered one late winter morning at Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre to learn, prepare, and walk.

The wolves have been exposed to people from birth and are used to walking with visitors.
Credit: Yvette Cardozo

Scrappy Dave and Flora, our wolves that day, had come from a zoo that had too many wolves. They were brought to the center in Golden when only a few days old. So, like all the wolves here, they are totally used to people.

“They lived in the house with us for the first several months,” said Shelley. “We treated them like human babies, fed them and slept with them.”

When not out in the woods on wolf walks, the wolves live in acre enclosures, two each to an enclosure.

But these ARE wild animals. For that reason, Shelley and Casey explained, the walk is totally on the wolf’s terms.

“We don’t approach them but if they come up to you, you can touch them.” (um, more about that later).

More Wolf Walk Rules:

  • If you don’t want the wolf to jump up on you like a friendly dog, hold your hands together and down in front of you, push him down and say “Stop!”
  • Don’t spin away because they see that as a game.
  • Don’t kneel down. Kneeling is a sign of aggressive behavior in the Canidae family.
  • Keep your hat on and if you take your gloves off don’t think you can just hold them. Scrappy Dave will grab them. And they’re gone, lost in the woods. Forever. Best to just keep them on.

One of the more interesting facts is that wolves don’t need to run; they aren’t sled dogs. They’re actually quite lazy, which in the wild is a survival tactic to conserve energy.

With all this in mind, we headed for the woods.

We walked down a logging road a few hundred yards when suddenly, Flora, all 60 pounds of her, trotted up to me and raised up on her hind legs. She was almost as tall as me as she leaned in, put her huge, muddy paws on my shoulders and sniffed my face.

She was saying hello in wolf talk. She did that to one of my friends, though on her back, leaving muddy paw prints that looked like a painted design. And I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

At this point, it was time for our “wolf moment,” which involved standing next to a tree stump while Scrappy came up from behind and did his best to lick us into oblivion. All I can say is, who knew wolf tongues were soooo soft and warm.

One could point out that this whole adventure was staged and quite artificial. But the purpose, Casey and Shelley said, is to let people know the wolfs’ place in the environment and, especially, to let people know wolves don’t have to be universally feared.

Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre is a 15 minute drive from Golden, BC. The programs are open year round. There’s a talk led by a guide where people walk around the edge of a fenced wolf enclosure. It is open to all ages.

The Wolf Walk age limit is 16 and above, lasts most of a morning or afternoon and costs $335 CDN for two people. The interpretive talk at the center is $12 CDN for adults, $35 CDN for a family of four.

The wolves have been socialized to people from birth and are used to walking with visitors
Credit: Yvette Cardozo