At B.C.’s Nootka Sound Resort, I watched my angler son follow his heart | Canada Voices

Some moms are soccer moms or baseball moms or hockey moms, spending what would otherwise be their glorious leisure time at the pitch or the diamond or in a chilly, dank arena.

I’m a fishing mom. I spend my time tripping over chest waders and untangling myself from nearly invisible line and prying hooks out of my unsuspecting fingers and laundry.

Mostly, though, I spend it trailing after my 17-year-old son, Charles, on the bank of some waterway or another, at some ungodly hour of the day, lugging a mess of rods and boxes of lures, while he seeks out the Big One That Didn’t Get Away.

This morning, however, despite the fact that the sun is barely up, I’m feeling considerably less cranky about it than usual. We’d woken up ensconced in fluffy queen beds at the Nootka Sound Resort, a red-roofed floating paradise nestled in a sound on Vancouver Island’s western edge.

For Charles, it was already the trip of a lifetime.

The day before, during our drive across the island from Campbell River, we’d pulled over at what seemed to be a promising stream and hiked our way down to the rocky shore so he could try his luck in the cold, clear water. Within half an hour, he’d hooked his first B.C. rainbow trout, on a stonefly he tied himself, and declared that Toronto (our home) was officially dead to him.

That was far from the main fishing event, however. We pulled up at the Nootka Sound dock after a hair-raising 40-minute drive from Gold River on a switch-back-heavy dirt road, followed by a 30-minute speedboat ride into Galiano Bay (part of the traditional and unceded territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples).

It seemed like virtually the whole Nootka crew came out to meet us – an assortment of dock hands, guides and servers, all calmly herded by resort manager Bruce Pashe, who arrived here from Portage, near Winnipeg, and never left (a recurring theme, as it turns out).

Twenty-odd years ago, this place consisted of one small guest building and a primitive cabin for the fishing guides. Then a retired developer stumbled on it, fell in love (see what I mean?) and built it into about as luxurious a place as you can imagine in such a remote locale, where every single morsel needs to be boated in, along with the diesel it took to keep the place running before they upgraded to solar power.

Within minutes, Pashe had rigged up a rod for Charles, and he jigged off the dock while translucent jellyfish lazed by and the bay’s resident seal, Lionel, cavorted along the rocks.

Being the landlubbing sort – which is to say, horrifically prone to seasickness – I was tempted to starve myself ahead of what would be 10 hours on the blustery Pacific the next day. That resolution fell away quickly.

After a leisurely kayak and a canned plum-and-sage cocktail from local distillery Strait & Narrow by the cozy outdoor gas fireplace, I sat down with Charles at a candlelit table in the resort’s dining room for a meal of Dungeness crab chowder with sourdough croutons, crisp chicken with velvety mushroom risotto and a strawberry pana cotta I could happily eat till my dying day – all while staring out at pine-covered mountains.

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In the morning, barely past 6 a.m., we dove into an irresistible breakfast of eggs, sausages and bacon that I worried would come back to haunt me in a very visceral way later on. Somewhat optimistically, we filled lunch bags with cold-cut sandwiches, chocolate bars, bags of chips and other snacks, and barely an hour later, our fishing guide, Redbeard, a.k.a. Mike McGowan, ushered us aboard a 32-foot aluminum boat. With a roar of the massive twin engines, we set off in search of chinook.

Like 80 per cent of the people we met at Nootka, McGowan is an Ontario emigré who came out here from St. Catharines to snowboard and never left. Within a few days of starting at Nootka Marine Adventures (which owns another two resorts in the area) five years ago, someone called him “Redbeard” on the radio and the name stuck.

His excitement was palpable. He spends the entire season out here on the Pacific, helping guests catch as many salmon and rock fish as their licences allow. Today, though, the fish were not co-operating.

Sometimes that’s the way it goes. Sometimes fishing is strike after strike after strike. And sometimes it’s waiting. It’s patience. It’s staring hard at the rod tip, your hands cramped with cold even though it’s July, willing it with all your might to bounce, dammit, bounce, all the while worrying that you won’t recognize a hit when one finally comes.

“You’ll know when there’s a fish on because I’ll be like this,” Redbeard assured me, and he flung himself at the rod holder, arms flailing. “Oh, you’ll know!”

And he was right.

Redbeard was also right when he said I’d be fine on the water. I’d expected to be yakking my guts out the entire 10-hour trip – Charles did too. Neither of us have a great track record on the ocean. But Nootka’s fleet use Seakeeper gyroscopic stabilizers, which claim to eliminate 95 per cent of boat roll and the seasickness that comes with it. To whomever invented this technology, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my guts.

Even if I had been bent over the gunwale, it would’ve been impossible not to notice Redbeard explode from the helm toward the back of the boat, grab a twitching rod from its holder and thrust it at Charles.

What he reeled in wasn’t the hoped-for chinook but a small, mottled-brown lingcod (and small here is a relative term). Both Charles and Redbeard whooped with glee.

“We broke the ice,” Redbeard declared.

“We’re not skunked,” Charles crowed. “Now it’s big chinook time.”

But it wasn’t.

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Charles got one little fella up to the boat, but it was deemed too tiny to land. Hours ticked by – nothing. Eventually we decided to park our salmon ambition and bounce 30 minutes offshore, to a spot called the Ammo Dump – for reasons that are exactly what you’d expect – to jig for rockfish. (Bonus: We stopped a few times along the way to train our binoculars on breaching humpbacks.)

The shouts of “fish on!” started almost immediately. Drop, wait for the gigantic lure to sink 100 or so feet to the bottom, jig, jig, jerk. Charles pulled up linger after linger, including a 25-pound dragon-sized beast that even Redbeard could hardly fathom.

But no true fisherman is satisfied by such easy catches. So we headed back inshore to take another stab at salmon.

It finally happened late in the afternoon – the hit Charles had been waiting for. Right away, he and Redbeard both knew it was a chinook. A big one. Charles’s arms strained as he reeled, the tip of his long rod bent toward the choppy water.

And they knew the second the monster wiggled off the hook. The line went slack and so did Charles’s face. Sometimes, the big one gets away. He wasn’t disappointed, though. He was hooked – on this place, these people and, of course, on the fish.

Back at Nootka, Charles fell into enthusiastic conversation with the crew, swapping tales and sharing favourite spots back home. By the end of our stay, they’d all but offered him a job as a dockhand next season. Put in a couple of years there, a season or two in fish processing, and one day he could be a guide, too.

As a mom, I was dying inside, knowing I’d all but lost my kid to Vancouver Island. As a fishing mom, I was overjoyed.

And hey, at least I’d have the perfect excuse to keep coming back.

If you go

Nootka Sound Resort is open June through early September. The cost for three nights in a private suite is $5,500 per person. That includes all meals, snacks, fireside happy-hour appetizers and alcohol – plus two full days of guided fishing (about 20 hours) on a Seakeeper vessel. All fishing gear is provided; guests just need to buy a B.C. tidal-water fishing licence ahead of time. Be sure to pack a fleece, slicker, rain pants, gloves and non-slip boots – it gets wet, wild and chilly out there. Kids up to 15 stay for half price. Transfer from Moutcha Bay included; the dock is a just over two-hour drive from Campbell River on Vancouver Island. nootkamarineadventures.com

The writer was a guest of Nootka Sound Resort, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.