Bé - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, May 15, 1996 : | TERRACE, STANDARD SPORTS... DAVE TAYLOR “$KEENA ANGLER ROB BROWN Paper solution T'S A WEEK and a day into May, Paper las spread across my desk like a garden of weeds, Many of the envelopes and memos have lain there so long they've become detached from the urgent tasks to which they belong. Still, they nag at me, a mute, insistent chorus; it’s time to sort and sift and reconstruct and dance to the tune tach one sings. It’s time to stop procrastinating, but the leaves are greener than they were yesterday, the days are longer than they were a week ago, the air is clear, the sun is shining, and the magnetic pull of the river is strong. I decide the paper is going nowhere, but the trout are constantly on the move. Trout season is short, and every year there is one less. Forty minutes later I’m splashing through Herman Creck on my way to the river, over newly fallen trees, down the trail through the second growth where the air is rich with wood musk, The wading boots of thousands of anglers have pounded the path to the hardness of pave- ment and burnished the exposed roots of stumps and trees, : There were some questions that needed ans- wers, I was out two nights earlier. The river was crowded, Nobody seemed to be catching many fish, including me. At 10:30 there were only three of us still in the water; at eleven we were two when 4 wave of salmon fry decided to take advantage of the subdued light and migrate. I met them crossing below the flats in a foot and a half of water. So did the trout and char. + . Where an hour before the‘water was low and clear and clearly devoid of fish, it boiled. I threw my minnow among the slashing rises and was rewarded by fish after fish, twenty-five in all, in under an hour. Curiously, eighteen of them were dolly var- den. Why, after years of scarcity, are the char outnumbering the cutthroat? Would they still be there in these proportions? If so, would they still be taking minnows? I sit down on a stump to repair a damaged leader, then slip into a Lakelse River that I can’t remember seeing so low and clear at this time of year, There are no rises, which is bad news, and no anglers which. is good news, since one seldom gets to fish in such heady solitude here these days. As usual there is a menagerie of birds: an. eagle wings past me. I hear a flicker or wood- pecker beating a tatioo on a snag, There are thrushes and robins, a kingfisher, and an osprey who hunts brazenly nearby as ] work my way down river, Neither of us do well. I do fool a foot long cutthroat by stripping a Minnow through a shallow pool at a furious pace, They appear from nowhere, three of them, gray and distinct in the clear water, all chasing the fly on the first retrieve. But, after I’ve released the winner of the chase its colleagues will not come back, At Finlay’s favourite beat, some good looking fish are working. A dozen casts tells me they have something other than minnows on their mind. My choice is to splash downstream in search of other opportunities or to stay and at- tempt to find out what's whetted the appetite of the fish before me. Since there's nobody else on the river I can camp on this spot — probably the best section on this part of the river — without stepping on anyone’s toes. I do that, The solution is not a long time coming, A Squadron of swallows jets from the brush and begins working the airways just above the water with surgical precision. They dip, swoop and dart, flashing white, violet, white, then the iridescent green of their backs on more complex maneuvers, The Snow Birds I'd glimpsed a day earlier were wooden compared to these fluid flyers, J Strain to see what they hunt, I see a trio of mayflies rise straight up until a detail of swal- lows makes a pass and plucks them from the air, The wind gusts. The hatch stops. The swal- lows disappear. The wind stops. The fish rise. The birds reappear. [ grab a hapless mayfly, It’s small and delicate with two tails and thin, banded, brown body, a dun that, because of the dry cool air didn’t need to make the perilous float in order to dry its wings. This, I decide, ex- plains the urgent rises of the trout. I try a dun, fool one fish, then make enough fruitless drifts to determine an emerge is called for. The closest match is a pheasant-bodied soft hackle held together with fine copper wire. The simple brown fly fished on a free float is the right medicine, Problem solved: [ leave to retum to the tyranny of paper, a problem for which I already know the antidote, Ed goes the distance Marathon man wins gold in Vancouver LOCAL ATHELETE Ed Ansems outdistanced the competition May 5 at the 25th International Vancouver Marathon. Ansems finished first in the 45-49 age group, crossing the line at 2:51.40. The 48-year-old teacher placed 41st out of nearly 2,300 people in the gruelling 26-mile race, “T was fairly pleased with my time,’’ says Ansems, a married father of three who has been teaching at Cassie Hall school for 25 years. “Two years ago [ ran it at 2:57, which was OK but I was training mostly with short distances. This year I stuck to longer distances.’? The longer practices paid off for Ansems, al- though it wasn’t until long after the race that he found out how well he had done, “You never really know how the race is going until the end,”’ Ansems says. “People ahead of you may drop out and take a taxi home and you end up finishing better than you thought.” Ansems finished 34 minutes behind the leader, J.S. Gonzalez of Brooklyn, New York. Gonzales was the first to finish the billy course which began at B.C. Place, wound through the downtown core, over the Lion’s Gate Bridge, through North Vancouver, then finally over the Second Narrows Bridge and back to the stadium. Ansems had run the Prince Rupert Half- Marathon in six-minute miles, so he says he tried to keep up that pace. ‘But I went too hard at the beginning,’’ he says. ‘'And I paid for it in the end. When I got to 15 miles my legs just wouldn’t go as fast and [lost aboul a minute every mile.”’ Ansems points out that half the race was in the sun and he hasn't had much training in the heat because of this year’s late spring. “| went too hard at the be- ginning. And ! paid for It in the end, When !| got to 15 miles my legs just wouldn't go as fast and I lost about a minute every mile.” “*You lose a lot more Quids in the heat and | wasn't used to that,’’ he says, Ansems usually trains long and hard for marathon mins, His schedule has him running between 80 and 90 miles each week to prepare, “You have to go at it gradually, and wear good shoes so you don't hurt yourself,”’ he SAYS. Ansems estimates that since he came to Ter- race 25 years ago, he’s run over 37,000 miles — that’s equal to more than one and a half times around the earth. Along with the training, Ansems adhered to a strict diet —- cutting out fat and cating more car- bohydrates. He went from weighing 195 pounds Ed Ansems al Christmas to 171 pounds for the race. “They say that every extra pound is an extra minute on your marathon time,” be says. ‘It’s hard because you’ll go out for a 23 mile run and be really hungry afterwards, but you have to hold back,’’ ; Ansems ran his first marathon in 1979 and plans to continue running for a long time to” come. He hopes to compete in the Calgary u Who’s on first? TERRACE T-BALL is now well under way. Games are played at Cassie Hall where Terrace Minor Baseball and Terrace Minor Softball each chipped in $15,000 to build new play- volunteers armed with rakes and hoes helped to clear the fields of st complete, but hopefully they will be available for play In the near future. fields and backstops. Hard work by ones. Some of the fields are still in- Chills, Spills mark opener . THE, FIRST. PITCH of ~ the Kitimat-Terrace Men’s Fastball League was thrown last week in Kitimat. A handful of hardy fans braved the evening chill at River- lodge Park to see Ter- race’s TOC Communica- tions beat the Methanex Mariners 7-3, The match was sloppy but entertaining as both teams tried to shake off the long winter’s hiberna- tion. TOC COM slarter Cam Ratcliffe piched a strong game, allowing only four hits over seven innings, The lanky right-hander put his signature curveball to fuil usc throughout the contest, leaving several Methanex batters shaking their heads at the plate, Earlier, player and coach Len Jackson announced the he would come out of injury-induced early retire- ment to play with the team. “T figured if Jim Peplinski and George Foreman could make comebacks, so could 1,”’ be said. Jackson played weil in the game, making a strong con- tribution te the offence with two perfect drag bunts for infield singles. Afier a scoreless first, TOC COM broke the ice in the second inning with a run, then added three more in the third, Centre fielder Shane Ziegler led the of- Record falls at track meet MORE THAN 170 athletes competed in a track Girls. Terrace finished third fence with 2 RBI. and field meet at Skeena Jr. Secondary, May 4, The tumout was greater than usual as seven teams representing towns in the region, along with two youths from Houston were entered the competition, ‘Heather Kelly, a grade nine student: from Terrace, broke the mect record in Triple Jump.. Heather also won aggregate for. Midget overall at the meet with 153 points for the day. Smithers finished first with 229 points, while Kitimat came in second with 175, The meet was the result of hundreds of hours of volunteer work. If the coaches and volunteers have any energy left they plan to Organize a fun-meet to raise funds to get the jump run- ‘way rubberized, - cs OVER THE TOP: Smithers hi weekends ago at Skeena Jr. rs gh jumper clears the bar at a track meet two school.