THRILLING SPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 37, 13 February 1936, Page 8

THRILLING SPORT

SKATING DOWN FISH

ICE AS WINDOW PANE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, January 16.

One of the most thrilling winter sports in Canada, in which old and young join, is known as fish skating. In certain districts of British Columbia, where the freeze-up is not accompanied by snow, the lakes become so transparent that they resemble gargantuan window panes, through which fish, visible to a depth of twenty feet, can be followed for miles by skaters. The spears carried are from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and are often the means of saving the lives of skaters who crash through the ice.

At the age of 71, Duncan McKinlay, son of a former Hudson Bay Company factor, is still an ardent fish-skater. Before a fish can be speared, it must be skated to a standstill. Some favour skating hard on the fish's tail, and "winding" it, in a short and continued burst of speed; in this, the wild horse "hazers" are most adept. Accustomed to heading off the mob in the ranges, they can anticipate the movements of a fish, and keep it travelling in the direction of shallow water near the shore. Others prefer skating to one side, at some distance from the fish, after it is "spotted," and in this way prevent it from reaching deep water before it is played out. When a char has just finished a meal of trout or squaw-fish, it is much easier to skate down; a slim-bellied char is much more agile than one which has gorged itself on a couple of pounds of whitefish. Char range from eight to forty pounds in weight. Driven to desperation, a fish will raise a smoke screen of mud from the bottom. Yet, when buried thus, it is often an easy mark for the skater's spear. Holes are cut in the ice when the fish are tiring. Skaters may cut half a dozen holes before a fish is speared. To skate down a char requires a fair amount of skill, but to capture a rainbow trout one has to be as expert at dodging as a cowhorse or a polo pony. The proportion of char to rainbow taken is fourteen to one. The sport is aqtively followed by aspiring ice hockey players. When snow obliterates the fish, the skaters return to their normal winter occupation of sleeper tutting, trapping, or hunting down wild horses, which are sold for fox feed in Vancouver.