BB - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, September 18, 1996

DAVE TAYLOR

: SKEENA-ANGLER. -
ROB BROWN

Naming names

he Root Cellar —- now there’s a

fine name for a piece of fishing

water, You can find it on the

Kispiox, a glide and a riffle below
Marty Allen’s field . Knowing its name and a
little bit about steclhead water, you’d be hard
pressed to miss it: a hard rock taj] out, with a
slot on the far side where a curtain of gnarled
roots belonging to the cotton woods that strug-
gle to hold the undercut bank together shade (he
river.

A productive run on the Bulkley/Morice was
dubbed the Captain’s Locker by a steelheader
with poetic inclinations. The beautiful litde Co-
guihalla, now disfigured by the superhighway
that bas crept into and occupied most of its
scenic pass, had rugged little sweet water mins
and pools with poetic attributes too.

Lear and Othello took their names from stops
along the precipitous Kettle Valley Rail line.
The British engineer who designed the line had
a fondness for Shakespeare. Portia, Desdemona,
Romeo, and Juliet were taken over by the mod-
em engineers and planners and live on along
with a host of other dramatist personae to mark
the viewpoints the imaginative old Brit
entrusted to them,

To communicate clearly, fishers need to name
parts of their favourite watercourses. Figures
from literature are rarely assigned to runs, rif-
fles and pools, but, names of nearby landowners
.are, The Dundas, after the red-headed Kispiox

farmer-of the same name, is one. Closer to home ~

there is the classic bit of steelhead water a mile
above the Clore River on the Zymoetz. At a

spot where a transmission tower stands atop a,

rock bluff, lies Rawlins’ Run, dedicated to Ter-
race steelheading pioneer Ted Rawlins, On the
Kalum there is Grieve’s Pool, a good winter
hole named for the landowner whose sumptuous
cabin presides over a tea-coloured pond nearby.

The pastoral run on the lower Zymoetz has
become known as Weber’s, after the ranch
owner living on the other side of the dike from
it. And, just above that very productive run is
what remains of Baxter's, a formerly glorious
piece of river named for the fellow who opera-
ted a mill of the same name nearby. Rusting
metal remnants of the old mill can still be seen
in the woods there.

A quarter of a mile upstream, just past the
spot where a waterfall spills into the same river
is a long roadside run. Jt was here that Blackie
McConnell took the biggest steelhead ever from
the Copper, a 26 pound buck, Gene Llewelly —
whose name should mark a prominent Zymoetz
run — told me of this fish years ago. Finlay
Ferguson shook his head in amazement when he
told about it as we fished the run one day.

To commemorate the achievement, and Mrs.
McConnell, who, sadly, passed on recently, I
started calling the run Blackie’s. That was ten
years ago. Lately I’ve noticed other angling
stalwarts calling it that, which is fitting.

The formerly spectacular fishing water above
the Highway 16 bridge is the Ombudsman,
called that for Jim Culp who, two decades ago,
fought for angler’s rights as provincial sport-
fishing ombudsman and was the first to show
how productive that run could be.

The runs found at the junctions of rivers and
their tributaries, if they’re not called the Func-
tion Pool, will more often than not bear the
name of the smaller water course. There are
some find examples of these high in the
mountain passes of the Copper: Many Bears,
No Gold, Treasure, and Red Canyon, for exam-
ple.

A prominent feature or landmark will often be
used to mark some good water. This explains
how a Dike Run and a Big Spruce Pool comes
to be, On the Thompson, the Y-shaped railway
intersection sits above the Y Pool. Roger Bligh
told me of another Thompson run named Green
Rock for a large green rock thal disappeared
one day because, unbeknownst to the fishers, it
was solld jade.

Other notable waters gain their names after a
memorable event. The long, channeled run be-
low the Highway 16 bridge on the Zymoctz is
Channel Three, named by Mike Whelpley alter
he intercepted a TV set floating down it. The
Moose Crossing, Little Grizzly, the Maul Run,
and the Frustration Pool are three pieces of
stream that probably have stories to tell.

Perhaps the most ulilitarian and unimaginative
tiver designalion was that done by a fishing
guide working the lower Bulkley, So that his
putative guides could find the right drifts, this
fellow nailed letters 10 trees leaning over or next
to them. “Got two at the R pool this morning.”
“Yeah the P run is holding well.” Let us pray
that il never comes to this.

By DAVE TAYLOR

“RIGHT, RIGHT! No, your
OTHER right!”

The scream came from a

desperate navigator during a bag
race at the Terrace Speedway’s
demolition weekend.

It didn’t work.

The confused driver, head cov-
ered with a brown paper bag,
veered -to. the left, off the track,
through the wet infield and into a
pile of old truck tires. The car came
to a rest and steam poured from its
hood.

Everywhere drivers were per-
forming similar antics. Unable to
see, they relied on directions from
their navigators. But when commu-
nication broke down, the cars
smashed into walls, tires and each
other. They roamed off the track
and careened into bushes and bogs.

It was complete mayhem and the
crowd loved it

With the exception of a blizzard,
the weather couldn’t have been
much worse for the speedway’s
final event of the season.

But that didn’t stop hundreds of
fans from turning up to witness
what has become one of the track’s
most popular annual events. And
they certainly weren’t disappointed.

The day began innocuous
enough, with several traphy dashes
in the condemned vehicles. The
field of entrants was smaller than
usual this year, with only 11 cars
taking part. But the vehicles were
really decked out — many in super-
hero motifs, including Batman,
Spiderman and the Riddler.

Ken Hawkins’ spider-sense was
really tingling when he took the
first dash in the. Spiderman car,
number 14.5. Jules LaFrance took
the second dash in car O1, Ed Hess
drove the Batmobile to victory in

_ TERRACE

SPO

STANDARD .

CLOCKWISE FROM top left: that’s a bagged Darcy McKeown sliding off the road — maybe he should have

chosen plastic. The messy aftermath of the demolition derby. Ken Hawkins slings a web of destruction.
And a rare peaceful momentin the backwards races, before the cars got crunched,

the third race, and number 15
Darcy McKeown drove the ugliest
car of the day to victory in the final
dash,

Things gota little hairy in the two
backwards races, won by
McKeown and the Batmobile, Then

all Hell broke loose in the bag
races,

It was hard to tell who was win-
ning, what with cars lapping each
other, stalling and smashing into
everything that couldn’t run away.
But in the end, Vic Devost in car

388 was pronounced winner of the
first bag race, with number 15,
McKeown taking the second race
and Bob Ellis, the third.

Then someone from the speed-
way had a brain hemorrhage and
decided it would be a good idea to
have a media event, putting
reporters behind the wheels of
speeding race cars

And as the vehicles lined up,
news anchorman Rob Cooper —
driving the Riddler — performed
some sort of supervillain mind-

trick, convincing the rest of the
field (including your humble nar-
rator) that he should win.

Cooper blazed off the line, leav-
ing the other zombified media
people in his wake. They quickly
recovered from their daze, but
Cooper managed to hang on to his
lead for the win.

With the crowd still jubilant from
the previous events, the drivers
launched into the demolition derby.
Total destruction was the order of
the day, and drivers didn't let up
until they couldn’ move,

With only a couple of cars left
limping around, drivers were given
15 minutes to repair their vehicles
for round two. Tool of choice for
Tepaits was the multipurpose
sledgehammer, and drivers
knocked off bumpers and fixed
flats to get back in the derby,

Amazingly, many of the cars
made il inte the second, and even
third rounds. In the end, veteran
driver Richard Devost in car 911 _
was the sole survivor, with number
15 and the Batmobile placing sec-
ond and third,

The derby was the perfect ending
to the speedway’s season. At-
tendance was down this year, large-
ly because of the wet weather.

“We had full fields of cars,”
says Tim Fleming, speedway presi-
dent, ‘But the rain was a big draw-
back for the fans.’

Fleming says next season should
be better, since it’s unlikely to have
two Wet seasons in a row. It will
also mark the track’s 30th anniver-
sary. More hobby stock entries, a
return of the sportsman (fibreglass)
racers, and the introduction of regu-
lar go-cart races at the track are
other goals for the anniversary