Mike Boskovich has got to have one of the best part time jobs on the planet. For four months each year he pilots a restored tugboat around remote islands in Northern British Columbia. He anchors in grizzly and wolf country, cruises along side porpoises, whales, sea lions and eagles and eats fresh crab and fish as he overnights among some of the most compelling, and least visited, islands and fjords in North America.

His vessel, the 87 foot-long M.V. Parry, doesn’t do any tugging-other than towing seven small fishing boats-and the only heavy cargo that Boskovich lifts is oncoming supplies and offloaded packages of frozen fish. The fish belongs to passengers who have enjoyed one of the finest weeks of their lives. Just how fine it really is came to me on the fourth morning of the seven day trip last August, when my wife, Sandy, and 10 other guests, left the tugboat behind in a fleet of well-outfitted 18 foot boats to fish a nearby point. Because it was the first morning that wasn’t foggy, dark or raining, I was looking forward to taking photos.



I put out two mooching rods with herring as we approached the point. One of the boats had already landed a salmon. As we got close, I put the motor in neutral and coaxed Californian Murray Zoota into displaying his 16 pound Chinook. I’d taken a few photos when Sandy suddenly lept in front of me to grab a rod. The tip was buried in the water, and the reel back pedaled furiously. Hey yelled Murray’s fishing partner, Mike Bugbee of San Francisco. “Life is good.”

In the first three days of our week long fishing odyssey we’d landed cohos and pink salmon like crazy, taken a big halibut, followed three pods of killer whales, saw humpback whales, caught bright orange coloured yelloweye rockfish and fearsome looking lingcod, and stuffed ourselves daily with the likes Dungeness crabs, shrimp, clams, broiled coho salmon, halibut, sea bass, coho sushi, sockeye sashimi, and crab stuffed tenderloin. A correction if you please. Life is very good.

The Parry is one of two vessels belonging to Westwind Tugboats. Sport fishing is their main mission but Westwind specializes in offering a distinctive first rate experience, vastly different from the numerous fixed-base lodges located throughout British Columbia. The tugs move daily, often during lunch or dinner, and clients fish from the 18- footers in order to get away from most of the places the lodge-based boats cluster. Most of the time our boats anchored angled in undisturbed places.
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On our adventure, the Parry covered an area from just north of Hakai Passage to Milbanke sound, cruising through Lama Passage and portions of Burke Channel, fisher Channel, Fitzhugh sound, Queen Charlotte sound, Coltus Sound and Seaforth Channel. We started and ended at Bella Bella, home port in late summer; early in the season the Parry does the northern Queen Charlottes and in mid season the northern coast from Portland Inlet to Browning Entrance.

Essentially the tugboats follow the fish, pursuing mainly Chinooks at first, a mixed bag of cohos and Chinooks in mid season, then predominantly cohos afterwards. The boats have the mobility to go where the action is best and to do what the guests want.

Feisty and chunky cohos are chowing down when the tugs reach the mid coast islands in August. Our group landed cohos from 10-14 pounds (plus two 16 pounders), as well pink salmon and some errant Chinooks. The latter typically weighed in the late teens, but Seattle angler Layne Sapp latched onto a 37-pounder one morning.

Dan Kemper of Vancouver got us into bottom-fishing mode when he caught an 88-pound halibut. Dan, Sandy, and I did well on lingcod and rockfish one afternoon, and a 23- pound lingcod that we caught (which proved to be delicious) had a mouth as wide as a watermelon and monster like teeth.

As good as the fishing was, what I remember most occurred when Minnesotan Brian Woodbury and I caught up to the Parry one afternoon as it was following killer whales, and we slipped ahead of the pod. At one point a whale swam directly underneath our drifting boat. One of the photos I took-a shot with Brian in the foreground only 20 feet away from four porpising Orcas-is now on my computer wallpaper.

Every time the computer comes on, that photo reminds me of the good life. I just wish it hadn’t gone by so fast.

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