Some people stumble upon their calling. Others seem born to it. Both apply to the Veloso family’s ties to the Comox Valley’s fishing industry.
Steve Veloso’s grandparents, Joe and Nilda Veloso, moved to the Comox Valley from Portugal in the early 1960s. “They started with nothing,” Steve says. “They lived in a chicken shack.” But they were enterprising and hard working.
The birth of Portuguese Joe’s
Back then, there were no fish stores. To buy seafood you had to know a fisherman. One day, according to family lore, Nilda bought some shrimp off a boat, cooked them up, and sold them to her friends. A few days later she did the same thing with some prawns. She kept it up until one day she and Joe opened their own seafood shop on the Dyke Road between Courtenay and Comox. They would run Portuguese Joe’s for nearly 53 years at the same location.
To supply the shop, Joe started commercial fishing. His sons followed in his gumboots; Steve’s uncle and father were both commercial fishermen. Steve was on their boats as a baby. By the age of ten, he had his own small boat and was allowed to set crab traps off Goose Spit. A few years later, he started stashing the boat at Bates Beach and would fish for salmon whenever he could get away.
“I liked the sport fishing side more,” Steve says. “It’s faster and more active.”
So when a tourist staying at Bates Beach paid 14-year-old Steve to take him out fishing, it seemed too good to be true.
“I was just a young kid who loved to fish every day,” he says. “I was like, ‘Sweet, someone is giving me money to do my thing.’ I didn’t even know what guiding was. But I’ll never forget that feeling of coming into the beach with a cooler full of fish. I knew it was for me.”
Becoming a fishing guide
His dad introduced him to some of the sport fishing guides who worked out of the Comox Marina. They let Steve tag along. The next couple summers he worked as a fishing guide at Painter’s Lodge in Campbell River and then graduated to higher-end lodges up and down the British Columbia coast. In 2006 he bought his own boat and started Island Pursuit Sport Fishing. Today he’s a full-time sport fishing guide with two 29-foot boats, running about 300 charters a year with the help of a couple of contract guides.
“As a pro guide I feel a lot of pressure,” he says. “I probably feel a lot more stress than I did on that first trip off Bates Beach.”
And he also feels a responsibility to ensure his kids have the opportunity to make it four generations, whether it’s a calling or an opportunity. That’s why Steve is putting a lot of energy and time into proving that sport fishing for salmon is sustainable in the Strait of Georgia.
“I think a lot of people think sport fishing only takes from the resource,” he says. “I can tell you that’s not true.”
Avid Anglers program
For instance, Steve is one of 155 people involved in the Avid Anglers program. Whenever he or his clients catch a chinook or coho salmon, Steve collects a small tissue sample from the fish’s tail, records information about the fish (where it was caught and other observations), and sends it all to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for analysis. This helps DFO better understand things like where the fish are from, their migration path, and their age and size.
He also volunteers in the fall, catching year-old salmon to affix them with a PIT tag (tracking device). When those fish return to spawn, hatchery staff and salmon head recovery program workers can scan the tags to learn about the fish’s life cycle and survival rates.
“The data is showing we have a healthy local fishery,” Steve says. DFO agrees that most coho and chinook populations on Vancouver Island’s east coast are abundant and stable. However, they also believe those populations migrate through the Strait of Georgia at the same time as endangered stocks, like fish heading up the Fraser River to the interior and a run of chinook that spawn in the Puntledge River during the summer.
Protecting endangered stocks
Aiming to protect those endangered stocks, about five years ago DFO reduced the retention of chinook salmon in Area 14 around Comox, from year-round to July 15 through March 31, and cut the limit from two fish per day to one during the summer.
Steve’s view is that the shorter season concentrates pressure on healthy stocks. He also points to data showing that sport fishermen in Area 14 rarely catch endangered fish. Allowing anglers to keep more salmon will be better for his business. He hopes the Avid Angler and tagging programs will change DFO’s assessment.
Even more concerning is the fact that less fishing means fewer passionate fishers. Already, Steve is by far “the youngest guy in the room” when he volunteers at hatchery programs, restoration societies, and salmon enhancement fundraisers.
“Having access to sport fishing makes people want to be involved and help protect the fish,” he says. “We need to provide fishing opportunities, so young people have the passion.”
These days, sustaining sport fishing in the Valley motivates Steve as much as a tight line, a bent rod, and a full cooler. For him it’s personal and nearly genetic. His grandfather Joe passed away in 2003; Portuguese Joe’s closed when his grandmother retired in 2017. Steve is one of the last year-round fishing guides in the Comox Valley.
After 60 years and three generations, he’s nowhere near ready to give up on the family’s calling.
