EASY IN THE ISLANDS

Tea and Texans

At mid-morning, after we had hooked and released gratuitous numbers of salmon, Mick Heath suggested a coffee break. Ironically, given Heath's background in the designer coffee business, we're not talking slow-roasted, fresh-ground, Italian-style gourmet java. We're talking singed boilerplate with overtones of pond sludge and battery acid-in other words, regular old, standard-issue, bulk-brewed, thermos-bruised brown stuff, which masquerades as coffee. But never mind the debatable chemistry and composition of he shipboard coffee, what this was all leading up to was the question of tea...and Texans.

Fellow journalist Tracey Ellis, coordinating editor for B.C. Outdoors SPORTS FISHING, and her daughter Madison, both declined the coffee, but then asked about the possibility of perhaps scoring a spot of tea. "Tea? Tea?" Heath deplored. "We have a rule at Legacy: No tea and no wild Texans allowed."

Giving us a few moments to turn that concept over in our minds, Heath slurped at his coffee in bemused silence. Then he launched into an assurance that said proclamation should not be construed as political and in no way belied an intent to cast aspersions on the current leader of the free world. And that, yes, he'd only been joking about pansy-ass tea drinkers, too. After a decent interval of quiet rumination - one might say a pregnant pause - I couldn't resist blurting, "So, what about the Texans?" Still mirthful, but not without the glint of steel in his eye, Heath calmly intoned: "I meant exactly what I said about Texans. The lodge policy is no Texans...Ever."

It's clear that Mick Heath enjoys a little controversy now and then, mixed with a constant infusion of good-humored banter and debate. However, when it comes to the health of salmon runs and the destiny of the sport fishery in B.C., Heath is stone-cold serious. Due to stringent management (no targeted net fishery) over the last few years, regional coho populations - once teetering on the very brink of extinction - have staged a remarkable resurgence in Rivers Inlet. Naturally, with this revival has come the renewed threat of exploitation by the commercial fishing industry, the very same culprits responsible for drastically depleting salmon stocks in the first place. Immediately following the collapse of the coho fishery back in the '90s, both provincial and federal agencies vowed that "never again in our lifetime" would we see the commercial fleet harvesting coho. "Well, guess what?" Heath scoffs. "We must all be dead...because the commercial guys are making noise about getting back in the game. And the politicians are listening."

In the meantime, rebounding salmon stocks have provided the nutritional slurry necessary to keep the entire food chain in south coastal B.C. lubricated and humming. Every creature has benefited, from the lowliest fungus to the tallest fir, from the deepest-diving Orca to the highest cloud-bumping eagle, from the most in consequential sand mite to the gloriously dreadful and imperious brown bear.