Welcome to Rudy's Tips & Tales

Day 1

The trip began with our arrival in Prince Rupert. It was a beautiful clear day, and the smell of saltwater filled the air. My father, Rudy Nielsen, and I looked forward with anticipation to what the next day would bring. We drove to the Crest, one of my very favorite hotels, and were given an ocean-side room with a huge bay window that looks out over the harbour. The Crest is an older hotel, built with generous use of wood, brass, marble and leather, all dating back to a grand era of B.C. history. A quick pint of beer on the deck (built high on the bluff some 500 feet above the ocean shore) and then down to Smile's Restaurant for dinner. Smile's is part of the Prince Rupert experience; built cafeteria style, and located right on the commercial docks, this is where the fishermen eat. There's a King crab dinner there, fresh off the boat, and each crab leg is as big as a medium-sized cucumber. It takes a hearty appetite to finish this meal. After dinner it was straight back to the Crest for an early night's rest - the next day our adventure would begin.

Bear Attack- What Would YOU Do?

I well remember my first bear encounter when I was still a very young boy. The only bear I had ever seen prior to this encounter was a drawing in a childhood storybook in Holland. My family immigrated to Canada from Holland in the early fifties and moved to a remote hunting and fishing lodge on a lake in north-central British Columbia. My mother worked at this lodge and it was here that I was given my first job at the age of 10.

My job was to round up the horses into the corral, when needed, and to clean and smoke the fish caught by fisherman staying at the lodge. In the early fifties there was no limit on fish and most of the fisherman staying at the lodge were Americans who would charter large floatplanes and fish in the surrounding remote lakes. They would arrive back at the lodge in the early evening and unload 100-150 trout on my fish-cleaning table. I could be seen many a night outside the lodge cleaning the fish by lantern light until midnight, with the winds howling off the lake and the guests only 20 feet away inside the lodge in front of a roaring fire, drinking and telling fish stories. After I had finished cleaning all the trout I would place the majority of them into a brine ready for the smokehouse early the next morning, and the rest went into the fridge to be cooled for breakfast. Pay for my first job was 25 cents per day.