SKEENA ANGLER -
ROB BROWN

Happy returns

HEN I emerged from the brush he

was sitting on a rock almost at

midstream. His legs dangled in the

water. He was staring, intent on

something, his eyes fixed on the
steep wall of gray rock across the river or some-
thing in its reflection. He was hunched as if
ready to spring.

I knew that I'd arrived in the middle of an act
borne of solitude and concentration. The rush of '
the rapid below had masked my coming. I took
a step back into the woods and gently sat down
to watch things unfold. —

I looked where he was looking. There was a

‘wrinkle on the glassy surface, then, perhaps a
minute later, another.

Fish were feeding in the shadow of the bluff,
leaving their rocky lairs, and climbing through
the cold, clear water to sip something small.

It's a long thraw, I thought. Sixty feet, maybe
more. He won't be able to cover those fish.

It was a good ten minutes before the angler
stood up. He rose slowly, evenly.

His reel barked as he stripped line from it

thythmically. It was a Hardy, the complaint of
. its pawl unmistakable,
He lifted the line, cast it downstream in an
‘angle directly below him, changed direction,
made a short cast of some forty feet, hauled on
the line and sent his fly out to a spot just shy of
the granite.

I expected something small. Instead a great
| bushy fly hit the water. It drifted a short dis-
tance. [t-twitched like .a‘-marionette: when:the -
: fisherman’. mended. his* th
| drift, but not far. The river erupted below it... .
The fisherman hesitated a moment then lifted
- the rod. The reel sang; the song a howl, with a
long accelerando and crescendo. The line poin-
ted at the far side of the river, the fish took to
the air on our side, re-entered the water and
burned off as the fisherman cranked furiously to
- regain some measure of control.

The fish cartwheeled at the rim of the glide
then plunged into the chute below. The fisher-
man had to follow. He glanced away from the
fish. obviously charting a course to shore
through and over the subsurface boulders.

All his fly line and a great length of backing
were stretched out over the river

You can't make it — no time, ] thought, then the
whole works fell to the river.

“Quite a performance, sir,” 1 extended my
hand.

The angler was almost ta shore, He looked
up, startled. “A big fish, eh?”

"You bet,” I agreed.

“T caught one seven pounds, from the same '
rock, a couple of years ago."

Gary Wray was the first angler I met on the
Stellako.

His approach was simple: he fished a big
Tom Thumb, tied to his bushy specifications by
| his good friend and fishing partner, Soji Inouye,
and with it caught lots of trout, some of them
- magnificent,

That was a long time ago, ‘the year before
Kelly, the former MLA from that riding, and the
man who defiantly stood in the river and dared
the loggers to drive their booms over him and
halted that repugnant practice, sold his Stellako
Lodge to the Swiss.

“Twenty years ago,” said the Swiss, whose
name, surprisingly, I’ve never learned despite
the fact that we’ve been using his campground
for that length of time. “It's the anniversary this
summer.” ’

Not much had changed when we artived this
summer, thankfully. The swallows were still
hunting bugs over the river’s outflow at Francois ;
Lake. The osprey were still there. The old woo- |
den bridge had a new deck and 9 new coat of
paint, but otherwise it was much the same, The
phone booth sitting incongruously on the side of
the dirt road below the campground was still!
there. The ‘generous hatches — sedges, stones.
and mayflies ~ were still so thick at times they
were reminiscent of snow flurries:

After jawing with the Swiss, I set out across the
bridge. Leaning against the rail was 4 man in his fif-
ties. He wore a baseball cap with a few bedraggled
flies embedded in it. A small, serpeatine earring
squirmed across in his left ear lobe. A few day's crop
of reddish stubble, covered his cheeks and chin and
gathered into a grey-flecked red moustache that grew
luxuriantly in the shade of a red and weathered nose.

“Ya don’t need that fancy old Hardy reel and that

bamboo rod to catch these trout,” he said with a U.S.
American drawl as he beckoned me to the rail. He
tore a corner from a Graham cracker an¢l pitched it to
the stream below. It floated a few feel and was hun-
gtily swallowed by a trout that was five pounds if it
was OUNCE, :
I liked this middle-aged hippy. We talked of hat- |
ches and hatcheries, of fish and fishing: We shook
hands, and i made my wey downstream to Gary
Wray’s Rock.

TERRACE STANDARD

- 638-7283

e. then‘ continued to") =

WILO RIDER: Terrace n mountain bike rider Chiron Kantakis, seen n here negotiating z an 1 Aug. 19 race in Terrace, clinched top spot in his

category for the season at Quesnel’s Dragon Mountain two weekends ago. SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN PHOTO

Kantakis roars his way
down the Dragon’s face

| Victory. i in.Quesnel. cements top. spot in wild descent series for Terrace rider

By SARAHLA. ZIMMERMAN .-
A STEEP root- and tock-strewn pitch
atop Quesnel’s Dragon Mountain was the
summer’s final proving ground for Ter-
race mountain biker Chiron Kantakis.

And no force — physical, human or super-
natural — could stop him from capping a stel-
lar season in his trademark style.

The 30-year-old expert category rider blas-
ted his way down the Dragon Aug. 26 to
place first in the final race of the McBike
Downhill Series.

The win also clinched top spot for Kantakis
in the point series — and delivered a $1,000
pay day,

The series kicked off in Prince George in
early July, followed by races in Quesnel, Smi-
thers and Terrace.

Competitors earn points based on how well
they place at each race,

The fifth and final race of the series saw ri-
ders back in Quesnel to tackle the longest
course on the circuit.

And this time the ante was upped by putting
double the points on the line, as well as a
$1,000 purse for the overall series winner.

Kantakis and Mackenzie rider Shaun Litster
were sitting only seven points apart going into
the final race of the series.

The duel for top spot was shaping up to be a
close one.

But the day ‘before the race at Dragon

7 “Mountain Litster broke one of his fingers dur-

ing a pre-run and was unable to race the next
day.

Without Litster in the race Kantakis was al-
most guaranteed first but he still had to have a
solid run to take top spot in order to collect his
prize.

The Quesnei course proved to be a good
challenge for the roughly 26 competitors that
took part.

“The technical section at the
top separates the good riders
from the people who just go
fast.”

The average run there took a good 4:30
compared to a course like Shames Mountain’s
that took top riders less than two minutes ta
finish.

Two days of rain before the race loasened
up the run somewhat and it was looking like it
could be mucky ride. But when race day came
the sun was out in full force and the riders
were able to compete without battling rain and
mud on the already difficult line.

The course combined a tough technical
section at the top with tight corners, berms and

jumps ‘along. the ‘final section closer to the bot-*
tom.

The course is easily the most challenging
on the circuit, according to Terrace rider Craig
Hansen.

“The technical section at the top separates
the good riders from the people who just go
fast,” Hansen said. “It’s fairly rocky at the top
section — super technical stuff.”

Having solid technical riding skills is es-
sential to downhill riding.

There’s no doubt speed is important, but
without control in rocky, root-infested areas a
tider can quickly lose control and waste pre-
cious seconds on the descent.

To place well overall, a rider must be con-
sistently aggressive, agile and confident en-
ough to handle the technical areas while
Maintaining speed.

And that’s exactly why Kantakis took top
Spot overall, ;

He’s easy to spot on a downhill course, He’s ©
completely in control yet very aggressive,
Even when he’s blazing past spectators his tra-
demark form makes him easily recognizable.

The local rider typically rides ower than
others which makes his descents just a little
more aerodynamic and because of that a few
seconds fall off his time.

Kantakis easily negotiated the Dragon
Mountain line in a time of 4:26. The McBike
series continues again next summer,

@ Summer school

Nuptial
putting

FOR SOME it was wedded
bliss. For others, it was
matrimonial mayhem.

But the Mr. and Mrs,
tournament at the Skeena
Valley Golf and Country
Club certainly added an
element of relationship in-
trigue to the usual dyna-
mics on the links.

Husband and wife duo
Don and Jane Olson must
have had their marital
mojo working for them, ~

The couple swung and
putted their way to a low
gross score of 158 to take
the top spot.

They finished with a 10-
stroke lead over second- .
place couple Blair and
Melaney Pytot,

Third in overall low
gross was Pat and Heather
Gallagher, followed by

YOUNG ATHLETES gathered at the Terrace
Arena for the annual summer hockey school,
which ran fraém Aug. 20 to 24. Players picked
up both on and off ice skills from local coaches.
CRAIG BATTLE PHOTOS

Harold and Audrei Cox,
Overall low net winners »
were Carol Cresswell and
Jerry Gilcherest, who had.
a two-stroke lead over
Datlas and Joy Stevenson,