As one of the first group of assessors for the Tidal Angling Guide certification program, Ian Hickenbotham looks forward to seeing this new initiative move forward, bringing a higher standard of professionalism to the sport-fishing industry.
While Hickenbotham has always been a passionate fisherman, he in fact worked for many years for the phone company, first with BCTel and then with the merged Telus. When the company began to lay off significant numbers of workers in the mid-1990s — including Hickenbotham — he knew it was time to find a new career. “I had a little phone company for a year,” he says, “installing phone lines and jacks. But here I was, now in my 40s, back in attics and crawlspaces where I started. I asked myself, ‘What would be a fun job?’ The answer was fishing.”
On the recommendation from a neighbour’s brother who worked at Langara Fishing Lodge in Haida Gwaii, Hickenbotham found himself in a 90-minute interview with John McCulloch, the much-admired “top employee” at the lodge. He was hired for the role of dock manager, leading a team of seven who cleared and cleaned incoming boats. “After a year being dock manager, I became a guide and began to build up a client list,” says Hickenbotham.
He has nothing but good things to say about Langara; the last few years, his two sons have been employed there during the summer. In 2002, Hickenbotham became head guide, but by mid-2009 health issues caught up with him. He had hoped to retire as a full-time guide, with the occasional week on the water, but recent hip surgery means it could be some time before the 59-year-old veteran regains his sea legs.
“In the meantime, this assessor thing is perfect,” he says. “I’m well qualified to do that job, and I think the TAG program will be good for the industry. There should be the perception — and more than just the perception — that all guides have some training and standards. During my time at Langara, there were three deaths in the industry — none of them having to do with Langara, which always maintained the highest standards. But it can be a dangerous business, if the guides and operators have no awareness of safety standards.”
Hickenbotham says he learned a lot from several veteran colleagues at Langara and looks forward to passing some of that knowledge on to younger guides. “We would basically police the whole island, unofficially,” he says. “If we saw weather building and there were people still on the water in little boats, we’d round them up. I hope the TAG program will bring people up to that level. The safety issue alone is so important. If the lodges decide to make TAG certification a requirement, that would be a good thing.”
Hickenbotham says aspiring guides currently have two ways to get into the industry: either use their own money to buy their own boat, or find a job with a lodge. He says lodges up and down the BC coast are “eager to find guys who want to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week away from home.” The long days do come with perks, however, especially for those who love nature ― with its bubble feeding whales, herring shoals and great fishing, to name just a few attractions. Hickenbotham also says he has met numerous celebrities from the sporting world and elsewhere: “Brian Burke, Kelly Hrudey, Glen Sather, Doug Risebrough, Rick Hansen, Hollywood producers and business stars. We get a lot of these and other interesting folks coming up every year.”
