|
||||||||||||
  By Mark Hume with Photography by Nick Didlick & Mark Hume Roll out a map of Canada and let your eyes wander North. Not far into the vastness of the country the web of highways and secondary roads unravels, thread by thread, until only a few lines snake across the paper. There is no name on the map to describe the huge region of wilderness beyond the last road. Let’s call it the unfished land.
Here is where you’ll find rivers where two and three pound Arctic grayling rise from the bottom to fight for a dry fly, where pike the length of a canoe paddle swirl out from under the boat in pursuit of a gaudy bucktail and where lake trout push up a bow wave as they chase a streamer into the shallows. Going into the wilderness of the far North can be a risky business. There’s no one to turn to if you need medical help; no neighborhood stores when your groceries run low; no local gas dock when the last few gallons of fuel are sloshing around in the tank. But neither is there anyone to bother you. No noisy campers nearby playing their radio; not another boat in sight when you push out onto a lake at dawn, no cabins on the shoreline - indeed no sign of a human presence anywhere. It’s just you and your friends and the wild, empty land. You can catch fish from beside your tent, watch moose feeding in shallow bays and hear wolves howl in the night. For many, getting into the northern wilderness means a trip to one of the many lodges found advertised in fishing magazines. They provide food, shelter, boats and guides. For $2,000 to $5,000 you can make a trip into the wild regions of Canada and let somebody else worry about the basic problems of survival. You can relax in comfort in the evening, and be in the care of an experienced guide during the day. As a former guide and lodge operator I think those services are well worth it. But as a wilderness traveler I also think the do-it-yourself trip is the most rewarding, the most memorable, and the one that often lead to the best fishing. If there is a lodge, afterall, then there is also a concentration of fishing effort. You will get great fishing, but you will be sharing it with all the others that have come to the lodge, which may have been in operation for years and which may not enforce catch-and-release. The trophy fish could already be gone. While on a two-year assignment for a Canadian newspaper in the Northwest Territories, I logged thousands of miles in bush planes, flying over country where there were no roads and few fishing lodges. The blue lakes, I soon learned, were trout lakes, while those the color of tea were owned by pickerel. Northern pike dominated some waters, and whitefish seemed to co-exist with all the species. In some places, usually in the rivers, there were schools of Arctic grayling, smaller lake trout and, in season, big, colorful Arctic char.
During that two-year odyssey in the Arctic I stopped where and when time permitted to fish, sometimes from the pontoon of a floatplane, or by walking along the shore. If a lake had a lodge on it, we passed it by. What delighted me then, and what amazes me on recalling it, is that there were fish everywhere. Most of the lakes out there beyond the last road yield a strike on every cast. Frequently half-a-dozen fish will swarm after a lure - often trying to take it from the mouth of one that’s already hooked. Sometimes huge pike or lakers would suddenly loom up out of the depths to attack a smaller fish twisting frantically on the end of your line. Having a six pound pike mauled by a 36 pounder, in clear water just beyond your rod tip, is unnerving. In one grayling river that emptied into Great Slave Lake, a short flight East of Yellowknife, fishing called for teamwork. One angler hooked and played a grayling wilt the other threw rocks at the pike that charged in from beyond the drop-off, in full attack. You had to play those fish into the shallows fast or they’d come back ripped in half. One day in late August four of us in a Cessna with floats stopped on a long, narrow arm of a lake that fed into the Coppermine River, in the central NWT. We were a little over an hour’s flying time from the nearest road, which dead ends in the bush not far North of Yellowknife. The plane nudged in against the rocky shore and as the pilot - who’d flown over the spot before and thought it looked fishy - made us secure, I strung together my fly rod and looked out across the tundra. The barrenlands at that time of year, with fall coming on fast, are aflame with shades of orange, gold and red. Night frosts have driven off the mosquitoes and black flies. In the distance I could see a group of caribou, and down the lake the racks of a few more could be seen above the surface as they swam to the far shore. The barrenland caribou were pushing south towards the treeline where they’d spend the winter.
As I stood and gazed at this natural spectacle, the others began to cast. Almost immediately they were all into fish. I had just laid out my cast when the first fish was landed: “Trout!” came the call. “About 12 pounds.” The next fish weighed about 16 pounds. Standing on a rocky point where the lake spilled into Coppermine River, I cast an orange streamer halfway to the far bank and watched as it swung with the current toward the lip of the rapids. One draw into the retrieve, a bulge appeared in the slick water behind the fly, then another, and then a third. I threw a loop of slack and saw the fly settle back a few inches - and a fish struck. It turned into the fast water and stripped me into the backing before I could move my feet. I ran, my rod held up over the waste-high willows, following a caribou path that had been pounded into the tundra, perhaps for centuries. In a deep pool 30 yards downstream I tailed a 10 pound laker. Six more followed in the next hour. Back by the float plane they were still catching 12 and 14 pounder on every other cast when I returned, and one had pulled in a 20 pounder. One of the fishermen, Rick, a gold miner from Yellowknife, had an ankle cast on. He hadn’t hobbled more than 15 steps from the plane. We fished for the day, then the pilot loaded us in and flew us back to Yellowknife. The price of that outing? A few hundred bucks each. Some of the northern lakes beyond the roads must be barren of fish, but in two years I never found one that was. Those lakes that were obviously shallow we passed over and the deep ones we chose for our float plane pilots, usually picking a point where a river ran in, were always productive within the first few minutes. Most northern bush pilots love to fish and take every opportunity to explore new water. You can call up a charter operator and ask the pilot to recommend a fishing destination. Chances are they will take you to some remarkable place.
Only two roads run into the Northwest Territories. One runs out of northern Alberta, and goes into Yellowknife, the territorial capital on the shores of Great Slave Lake. The other cuts into the NWT from the northeast corner of British Columbia. They are great, adventurous drives, or you can take a jet into Yellowknife, and charter float planes on the waterfront, practically in the middle of town. All four of these northern access highways are in good shape from June through September, which are the months to be fishing in the North. You can drive them in a car, a van, a pick-up truck with a camper on the back; some even tackle them on mountain bikes, or by hitch-hiking. I often see fishermen driving these roads, bearing license plates from as far away as Texas and Florida. They are on great driving adventures, and are thrilled to be surrounded by wilderness. But most of them fish near highway bridges, roadside pullouts or camp grounds. What they fail to realize is that those waters have all been thoroughly fished over. By some standards, the fishing might still have been good - perhaps even great - but it is nothing compared to what lies just a short trip away by float plane. Fly for 30 minutes beyond the end of the road and you can get into virgin water. Unfished land. Almost all the small towns in the North have bush plane operations, with pilots who will be happy to taxi you around from lake to lake, or to drop you somewhere for a day or a week. The pilots know the best fishing places - and if you want to find a lake where even a bush pilot hasn’t fished, just tell them you want to do some prospecting. You can fly out over the wilderness and pick anyplace that looks good where there is safe landing. One one charter trip, two fishing partners and I, together with a pilot who loved to fish, spent a day just skipping about from one spot to another. The last place we stopped was ideal for a camp. Lake trout were schooled at the mouth of a river inlet and up in the white water big grayling rose to dry flies. The flight cost us about what we’d pay for a day in a top lodge - and we didn’t have to share the water. I doubt that anybody’s fished that spot since.
|
||||||||||||
