A new Fishing BC video aimed at promoting Quesnel Lake is garnering thousands of views.
Featuring professional snowboarder, Eric Jackson, from Crowley Lake, CA, the video depicts him out with Doug Mooring of Cariboo Rivers Fishing Adventures and Skeed Barkowski of Northern Lights Lodge.
“The trip introduced me to an area with so much beauty that I didn’t even know existed, ” Jackson posted on his Facebook page about travelling to the Cariboo region to shoot the video in the fall of 2018.
Speaking from Quesnel, Mooring said Fishing BC was formed to promote sports fishing in B.C. to the world.
“The numbers of people who are fishing in B.C. have fallen off so years ago the government took initiatives to do things about that and the Freshwater Fishing Society promotes that,” he told the Tribune. “What we try to do is promote destination marketing.”
Not wanting to divulge the exact location of the spots he took Jackson to for the video, Mooring said suffice to say it was on Quesnel Lake.
“It’s pretty remote, which is good.”
Read more: Tale of survival on Quesnel Lake
As for the selection of Jackson to star in the video, Mooring said Fishing BC selects people who have a big following in the fishing world.
“They find people who are good hosts,” Mooring said. “We’ve had April Vokey up here for a feature on the Blackwater River to feature the incredible dry fly fishing we have. She’s a big name in the fishing industry here in Western Canada and the United States.”
Post the Mount Polley Mine breach in August 2014, Mooring said he has never seen as many fish return as he saw last fall.
“Mount Polley definitely affected the river where the fingerlings were and we didn’t see them in the Quesnel River for a year or two, but they are coming back, which is good,” he said. “Any contamination can be quite detrimental to small fish. They seemed to know it and just moved away.”
He said the timing of the breach was “super fortunate” because it was in between runs so the sockeye salmon were not as impacted as badly as they could have been.
“It was pure luck,” he added. “Basically the Horsefly, Mitchell River and Horsefly runs to the lake were not impacted too bad at all, which was so concerning at the time. I think we have weathered the worst of it. But, we will see how it rebounds. We don’t know the long-term effects, only time will tell.”
Historically, he added, tons of silt was added to the lake every year from the Bullion Pit mine, once called the largest hydraulic place mine in the world.
“Nature is resilient if you give it a chance,” Mooring said. “We are fortunate to have what we have in the Cariboo, but we face a lot of challenges up here compared to people in the Lower Mainland. That’s the idea of doing these videos — to push that out the world and let them know what we have.”
Mooring said he promotes catch and release as a fishing guide.
“I don’t kill a business associate and that’s what those fish are.”
Read more: Part three: Mount Polley Mine’s sampling of Quesnel Lake questioned by local resident
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