One of our sons, through his work, is involved in a conservation project whereby they set nets in one area to trap salmon who need to be released to another area. Over the last couple of weeks the nets have been cut where they were anchored to the trees from the shore. Multiple times, multiple nets in an isolated area which is 20 minutes by bushwhacking to the nearest public access. They could not figure out who would go to that trouble to get to such a remote area to vandalize the nets and why. So they set up cameras to catch the guy.

We continue to have people fish illegally in front of us. We live in a rockfish conservation area. These guys drive me nuts. If they went 100 feet in either direction they wouldn’t be breaking any laws. The only plus is that they rarely catch anything. Our neighbour, who fishes legally on the other side of the island, caught an amazing 31 pound cod this week. As I always say, good things come to those who aren’t jerks. Fortunately for us, our very kind neighbour shared a large piece of his catch with us. I see some fish and chips in our future.

A million years ago, I spent some time going to school at Dalhousie in Nova Scotia. While there, I was invited to go on a cod jigging day trip. This was long before the collapse of the cod fishery on the eastern seaboard, when you could still drop a line with a hook on it from your hand, jig it a bit and catch a fish. I am very proud of this picture, which I can say with great pride, captures for all time proof positive of the wide legged jeans we wore in the 70’s.

We have neighbours who catch prawns very successfully. We see them on the dock bringing their spotted bounty back to the island and we are envious. We have tried and tried. Our current cost per prawn is at about $75.00. Our traps have been stolen, lost in the tide and dragged by a tugboat. Even if the traps are where we left them when we return to haul in our catch, there is often just one or two prawns. So our sister in law went out with the prawn whisperer to see what he does. She then came out with us to impart her newly learned skills. It turns out we were doing one very important thing wrong. I can’t explain it but suffice to say we are expecting the tide to turn on our prawn catching success rate.

So the cameras were able to catch the culprit. I cannot imagine how he thinks he will benefit from

cutting the rope