Mink Ranching.

Ausland's grinding house boasts "the world's biggest grinder". It was manufactured to his specifications and can turn out 3000 pounds of ground fish an hour, powered by a 120hp Chrysler engine. Almost as impressive is his mixing machine, which can mix 4000 pounds of finished mink feed an hour. He mixes 1100 pounds of feed for an evening feeding.

Ausland thinks there is a big future for mink ranching in the Buffalo Narrows region. The remote environment, combined with the abundance and easy availability of rough fish (he uses more than 100,000 pounds yearly), are among the most desirable factors here.

Actually, the mink ranching Industry has been growing by leaps and bounds in the Buffalo Narrows region, with 61 ranches operating now, compared to only eight, In 1945.

For the last month I have unwittingly been publishing the facts of a fisherman's diary, Halvor Ausland's trips out of Crescent Beach, British Columbia. Because fog and rain lay heavy on Boundary Bay, Thursday, we had lunch with Halvor and just talked about fishing.

Ausland has taken 36 bright spring salmon, ranging from six to 24 pounds, from Boundary Bay since February and in the most exactly charted positions.

This is the breed of man we have always found to be a continuously successful angler, deep troller, or dry fly angler. Every one of these successful anglers, whom we've known; keeps a diary of times and places, even to the day and hour in some cases. From this comes the undeniable fact that fish follow a very precise pattern of movement, migration and feeding. Once you learn the pattern and adhere exactly to it, success follows.

Although I knew of Halvor's daily catches of spring salmon ranging from 10 to 5 pounds; caught in limits, the brant migrations, (another precisely dated pattern) were in their final surge of the last few hunting days. We just couldn't take the time off to go after him.

However, on the afternoon of the last brant shooting day, as Norm MacDonald and I loaded gear into my Jeep, Ausland walked up the dock end with a 50-pound basket of salmon on his broad shoulder. One of the tails, about 10 inches broad, caught my eye, irresistibly.

I followed him up the roadway and hailed him. He stopped politely and suggested that, rather than put the basket down, and pick it up again, he would show me the fish at his nearby car. Norm, who had followed me, also admired the excellent catch of fish, a 24-pounder, a couple of 17-pounders and a "little one". The latter, Halvor apologized for keeping. It was about six pounds.

As we talked Norm turned to me and said, "Don't you wish you could catch salmon like that, Mike!" He touched a bit of a nerve with that remark, and I was barely able to grin. To cover up, I asked Ausland how long he had been fishing in the area. He replied, about five years. That is a short time to be in any area and do as well as he does. I said so, then asked him how he learned so quickly, and obviously, so well.

He said, "Well, when I first got here the guys wouldn't tell me too much, and I didn't do too good, Mr. Cramond. Then, I got your book, and I've been doing pretty good ever since."

I looked over at Norm. He was grinning as broadly as I was. So, I asked Halvor Ausland if he did this well every time out. He said his diary proved that. I already knew his fish recorded with Rob Colbourn at Crescent Beach Marina backed up his statement, Norm and I went away, talking about it.

This week, Monday to be exact, I phoned Ausland about going out to the Boundary Bay Bell Buoy, and a couple of other spots with him, to see how and what he did. He said he'd be glad to go, but we wouldn't get any salmon. That interested me because I had reports that springs had now entered Sergeants Bay and Lees Bay, and the "A" Frame areas, I asked Halvor about the reasons for saying we wouldn't get fish, just as emphatically as he had earlier told me we would.

He said, "They have left, except maybe a few stragglers. They always leave about March 15th, each year. I won't get any more until April 16th, maybe. They will be off East Point, Cabbage Island and Active Pass. I went over to Cabbage Island this week after I tried the three regular places here. They weren't around there. We can go and look though."

Well, yesterday, as related earlier we had lunch with Halvor and his wife Violet at White Rock. I learned how Halvor got that way. He emigrated from Norway to Canada in 1920. He trapped for years in Northern Saskatchewan, where a fellow named John Diefenbaker was his personal lawyer. Then, he built up one of Canada's largest mink breeding farms and fished the lakes commercially.

Breeding mutation mink is a very exact science, in knowledge of genes carried by the breeding stock. He was one of the more successful mink breeders, a knowledge aided by his years of trapping wild animals. But, he had to feed his mink and that meant fishing the lakes.

He had to learn the nature of fish migrations. He told me that a commercial net could be set in a manner over a hummock of land under water, and one-half of the not would contain one species, the other half, as if divided by a fence, another species.

If the net was set on the other side of the hummock, a third species would be caught. Fish he found were highly territorial as to location, and extremely exact in their dates of appearance, and movement to another area.

Well, we have his authenticated records and diary to prove it. Next week we'll try the other end of the migration, Pender Harbor.