A salmon trying to make it up the Moricetown rapids (some call them falls) on the Bulkley River at Moricetown, B.C. There's an old t-shirt that has the saying "spawn or die" on it. That pretty much sums it up.

(If you look at this Wikipedia image, I'd be standing on the other side close to the river, below the motor home and on the rocks slightly downstream of the fish shack)

There's a huge pool immediately downstream of the canyon outlet from these falls (a gravel bar forces the river into a south and north channel; the photo to the right shows the south arm. I would be fishing outside the bottom right corner of the photo).

When you're beside the river and you're paying attention, you can see hundreds of salmon massing for their assault on the rapids, trying to vault one more obstacle on the final part of their life's journey -- something akin to a First World War soldier going over the top of the trench.

These fish have spent their life to this point dodging eagles, killer whales, bears and any other number of predators.

All that is partly what makes them such amazing gamefish. I hooked one salmon in that pool. That fish ran my line at will. At one point, it was holding in the middle of the pool. My salmon-fishing rod is rated for up to 50-pound-test line and lures of up to four ounces (trust me, that's a lot).

I tried moving that sucker. It didn't budge. I thought I was snagged (I'm not a little guy, and I was leaning into this fish). Finally, the salmon decided it was time to show me who's boss. It decided to move, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. After about five minutes, that fish broke off. But what a five minutes! :)

On my way back from Hazelton, I stopped to fish one more time. Another guy was just coming up from the canyon. As is customary with fishermen, we chatted about how they were biting. This guy had a level-wind reel, which allows you to use your thumb as a "drag" to increase the resistance the fish had to pull against.

He showed me his drag thumb. After two hooked fish, it was bleeding.

If you go several hundred kilometres to the northwest, you'll come to the Stewart, B.C.-Hyder, Alaska area. There is a boardwalk beside Fish Creek in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

You can see the salmon, mainly pinks and chums, skittering up the creek, looking to either lay eggs or fertilize them (the chum at right is trying to hurdle a weir on a feeder creek that flows into Fish Creek).

And when they accomplish that goal, this is what they have to look forward to:

The corpses of the spent, dead salmon lazily spiral downstream in the current, becoming trapped on the gravel bars for the eagles and grizzlies to feast on them. The living salmon push right up past them.

There is a certain tragedy inherent in this ancient process. Watching it unfold moves many people to tears. The salmon are relentlessly going to their deaths, but they must, so that the species may live.

The great wheel of life.

PS

There were signs all up and down the wild, mighty, beautiful Skeena River valley encouraging people to fight the establishment of open-net salmon farms at the mouth of the Skeena near Prince Rupert.

For more information, visit Save Our Skeena Salmon.

PPS

Salmon-dependent First Nations developed the custom of returning the bones of the first salmon caught to the river as a sign of respect for the salmon's spirit.

That respect is a quality that's missing from non-aboriginal cultures when it comes to salmon -- along with many other denizens of the natural world.

PPPS

The chinook salmon run all the way up to the Holmes River east of McBride, B.C., a tributary of the mighty Fraser River.

As an exercise, find the Holmes on a map and then determine its distance from where the Fraser empties into the Pacific. I think you'll agree that's a hellofa long swim.