Catch the big one

The Trophy Hunter: The Final Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide
by David Giblin

Victoria: Heritage House, 2025
$24.95  /  9781772035551

Reviewed by Marianne Scott

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For 15 years, David Giblin served as a salmon fishing guide at Big Bay’s Dent Island Lodge on Stuart Island, one of a cluster of ten major islands that make up the Discovery Island group. Looking at a chart of this archipelago reveals how tidal currents can run high in the narrow waterways separating the isles—creating enticing, but sometimes dangerous fishing spots.

In this, the third (Giblin says last) of his books on the fishing-guide life and the odd, quirky  characters of this profession and region, The Trophy Hunter: The Final Chronicles of a West Coast Fishing Guide, we renew acquaintance with the Lodge’s residents and their favourite fishing holes.

As in the previous volumes (The Codfish Dream and Gilly the Ghillie), we again meet such ghillies as Troutbreath, Vop—last name “Vopnstrom”—Gillie and lodge manager Nelson. (“Ghillies” as Giblin sometimes identifies fishing guides, is a Scottish term defined as “a man or boy who attends someone on a hunting or fishing expedition.”). A new guide, Lawrence, gains a reputation as a “Wild Indian,” something several guests want to experience first-hand. “So what are you,” a guest queries Lawrence. “Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee?” “Oh no,” says Lawrence with a straight face, “I’m Bella Coola.”

In any event, the guides all vie to help clients catch the big one, win fishing competitions, and they hope, receive equally big tips.

The first new persona we encounter, however, is a geriatric cougar whose hunting days are in decline and who’s looking for easy meals. Although written in the third person, the reader enters into the cat’s reflections and joins in watching the antics of the Lodge’s denizens as he sniffs the enticing smells of moose, venison, and salmon roasting on the barbecue. The cougar waits for the tipsy crew to retire, then gorges on the leftovers.

But as he passes the Lodge’s large windows in the moonlight, he can’t trust his eyes: another cougar stares him in the face. “The cougar’s lips twitched,” writes Giblin. “His opponent’s lips twitched. They both curled their lips into a vicious sneer. The cougar knew he was in for the fight of his life.” His loud snarl designed to scare away this competitor wakes Nelson who creeps into the kitchen clad only in a T-shirt, making him feel “vulnerable and acutely aware of his dangling man parts.” He reaches for his rifle. Suddenly spotting the old cat’s reflection on a shiny chrome toaster, he reacts instinctively, fires, and kills the eight-slice commercial toaster. As the cougar lopes into the forest, his old heart gives out. His body ends up with a Seattle taxidermist. And Nelson is now the trophy hunter.

Every character’s foibles are amusingly described, be they client or guide. One Idaho-based road builder queries Giblin endlessly on Canadian tax law so the latter roars the engine to stop the conversation. A staffer from a large yacht is sent out to collect mussels. He crushes them as he ambles over a thick bi-valve field slathering his gumboots with orange-yellow carcasses and then yells: “So, where’s these mussels at?”

Vop tries to install two comfortable swiveling, cockpit seats.  He finds lining up bolts with bolt holes in the cockpit’s sole is “a job that could bring a grown man to tears.” But his real trial comes after he’s installed a brand-new outboard engine and tries to run into some boiling rapids. As his bow rises into the eight-to-ten knot rushing water, the engine rises too—in his hurry to serve his clients, Vop has forgotten “to install the two heavy duty bolts that locked the engine into place.” His only remedy? Sprawling his whole body over the engine to keep it from plunging into the briny while simultaneously directing his tiller out of the white water surge. Everyone, including the engine, made it back to the dock.

Gilly goes to Campbell to provision for the Lodge. At the checkout she realizes she forgot one item. She asks the clerk if it can be delivered as she unloads her overfull carts. The clerk calls over the store’s intercom for an employee to bring Tampax to the front. But the staffer needs clarification. “Thumbtacks?” he asks, his voice again echoing through the store. “No, No. Tampax.” Mortified, Gillie doesn’t talk to anyone for two days.

We also meet Carl, who’s cleaning his stash of pot—called Fish Warp—a strain he fertilizes with eulachon oil, when two RCMP officers rumble up in their RHIB. They ask Carl if he has seen a thief who’s been looting marinas. Carl hasn’t. All seems OK, until one officer plucks a marijuana leaf out of Carl’s beard. The evidence is clear and Carl’s stockpile is confiscated, although the officers reassure him that as a first offender, he’ll likely get off. Carl has another crop maturing on a different island with which he’ll soon be able to supply his customers but the first order of business to shave his face fur. Later we learn Carl received a $100 fine and a stern admonition from the judge to sin no more, a command completely ignored by Carl.

Giblin ends this volume with a short chapter where an older man sets out solo to fish the Second Hole. In “One Last Tide,” the fisherman, covered with zinc ointment and gauzy sun-protecting cloths, expertly directs his boat so that it circles around the Hole in an endless circuit. His lips move soundlessly while he continually adjusts his fishing rod and tiller. “Perhaps this would be the time,” he murmurs to himself. “This would be the moment that gave it all some kind of meaning….”

Is this Giblin’s epitaph? He started guiding in 1978 so perhaps the old man he depicts so poetically  mirrors the recognition of his own advancing years. As does his announcement that The Trophy Hunter is his last autobiographical step into the literary world. Too bad. I’d like to have read more of his coastal lore.

Giblin’s series has been delightful, making me chuckle and sometimes laugh out loud. All three volumes tell us witty, thoughtful tales that both inform and entertain. These stories are gently humorous and are quintessential reflections of BC’s coastal life complete with rapids, forests, wildlife, fishing, musings, and human eccentricities.

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Marianne Scott is an award-winning Victoria-based writer who has specialized in marine topics since she and her husband, David, sailed from Victoria to French Polynesia in a 35-foot sailboat. Marianne has written for many marine and other publications in Canada, the U.S., and Australia and is a long time volunteer at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia. She authored Distilleries of Vancouver Island: A Guided Tour of West Coast Craft and Artisan Spirits (Touchwood Editions, 2021), co-authored Vancouver boat-builder Ben Vermeulen’s memoir, Before I Forget (2015), authored Ocean Alexander — The First 25 Years (2006), and wrote Naturally Salty — Coastal Characters of the Pacific Northwest (Touchwood Editions, 2003). [Editor’s Note: Marianne Scott has reviewed books by Peter Freeman, Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones, M. Wylie Blanchet, John Dowd & Bea Dowd, and Ron Holland for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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