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Story and Photography by Van Egan Its name sounds like a cry of anguish (or an Ogden Nash take on a ketchup bottle). Wowo Lake lies at 1500 feet above sea level on a bench overlooking the Oyster River on Vancouver Island, off British Columbia’s West Coast. It is a small lake and it has the blessed restriction of fly fishing only.
Unlike so many Vancouver Island lakes it has broad shallows and a fauna nicely sufficient to fatten up its trout denizens. There are sedges and chironomids and tiny mayflies, dragonflies and damselflies and with the right conditions of sun and rising air temperatures certain woodland terrestrials, those that take flight to spread their legions, thicken a banquet table already affluent with zesty fair. A bit of wind helps too. In August the surface of Wowo Lake warms well into the 70’s (F) and trout lie languid in its deeper parts. The cool of evening may bring a trout up to snatch a struggling insect but rises are far apart in time and space. Yet there are events that can change this discouraging scene. One is a day following a spell of rain and wind which turns the lake’s surface into trout’s comfort zone. Another is the appearance of flying termites. So you cheer on a summer storm or welcome the termite mating extravaganza of late August, knowing that either a good turnover of top water or a lake of stranded insect bodies will bring Wowo to living perfection. Should both occur simultaneously. . . well! A day near the end of August following a week of rain...a day in which the sky is thin and lumpy with residual clouds...a day neither cool nor cleansed as comes with a hard change of wind direction. The air is sullen and close and surprisingly warm as if the storm is yet all around, threatening to strike again, but being scorched out of existence by a blistering sun. And there are signs of termites on the wing. Out on the logging road. . . driving through a blizzard. But the precipitation is flying insects and my wife and I suffer the heat of a closed car rather than chase termites around the dashboard or pick them from each other’s shoulder’s. At the landing they are everywhere - flying ants among them - scurrying among the rocks, swarming over decaying logs, hovering in clouds among the second growth trees. A steady array of individuals plunge awkwardly into the thickness of fern and huckleberry, their flight aborted by fatigue or loss of a wing. Over channel and fen their numbers thin, and thin again above the main body of the lake, but everywhere their collapsed bodies speckle the water. Among them are a scattering of bees and beetles and fleets of dead chironomids, one wing aloft, like a sail on a tiny dory, caught by the gentlest wind and drifting in countless multitudes. With cool surface water and the table set, the trout are in tune. We anchor quietly off a smartweed bed and Maxine puts up a dry Steelhead Bee. Almost at once she is taken by a good rainbow trout that, feeling the hook catapults into the air and falls back in a fury of spray. Rushing the boat, Maxine strips quickly to recover slack, then gives it all back as the trout races for deep water. The run is long and powerful with sudden changes of direction, slowing finally as ten or twelve yards of backing leave the reel. Now it swings wide in a semi-circle around the canoe and Maxine recovers the backing and some of the fly line and deftly forces the fish closer.
The rainbow is showing near the surface now, broad and bright and lightly blushed with pink. She lunges and twists and works her jaws convulsively. There is a moment when she arcs toward my end of the canoe, dives and races for the opposite side, and Maxine lets up on the tension and swings her rod around the bow. It is a curious movement to watch, but having done this she is able to draw slack line from beneath the canoe, all accompanied with gasps and short moments of doubt. And when the pressure comes on, the trout bolts. But there is fatigue and the fish’s will and means are not one. There is a kind of desperate plunging as Maxine leads the trout toward the net, and one final plunge into it. The trout lies quietly on the floor of the canoe and the fly comes easily out. A quick check with a tape - 20 inches - and a photograph and then back into the net and into the water. The trout lies on its side and I tip her upright and provide a supporting hand under the belly, moving her forward and backward to aide the flow of water over the gills. Gradually the gill covers increase their pumping action; body and tail motions are evident, and then with a quickness she noses into the net. Clearly now she has regained balance and I lower the net and she moves slowly forward over the rim, turns downward and with easy oscillations swims from sight. A straggler of the storm moves in and from a dark cloud we feel the first drops of rain. A cool breeze sets up as the shower hits and we sit hunched over rods in rain jackets and hoods, our flies bouncing on strengthened waves. The canoe pitches and rolls but we stay on, confident the squall will be a short one. It is and 20 minutes later the air is fresh and comfortable, to us if not to the flying hordes of insects. The wind has changed the dynamics of the lake and as the surface settles insects are everywhere, dead or struggling, but the trout, in their mysterious way, are no longer at the buffet. All that fare and not a trenchman among them. Maxine and I decide to take up where the trout have left off. Our basket dinner holds crispy chicken and fresh salad; a delicate liebfraumilch sets it nicely in tune with the improving sky. While the plates are in preparation Maxine casts the Steelhead Bee again, out amongst the water-stranded insects. Now there is calm and a time to taste of the good life, to admire the spreading sky over Mt. Adrian, to lose oneself in all the nice things that surround one between catching trout. Somewhere within this mind-softening harmony there is a sound, much like an underwater vacuum, and there are little rings melting away from where Maxine’s fly once sat. Dinner goes a little faster. The sultry air of mid-afternoon has been pushed out. There are fresh breezes to liven the lake and periods of calm to rest it. The sun shines and warms the air and more ants and termites appearing in tottering flight over the water. Knives and forks and plates are back in the basket and our rods in hand, and the trout have take over dining where we left off.
Thinking back over the next short hours, it seems we had trout on more often than not. Perhaps digestion had moved along the spoils of earlier gluttony. Perhaps changing light had augmented the comfortable water temperatures to candlelight an already attractive table. Perhaps the very uncertainty of such profligate fare was forcing austere appetites. Whether with the Steelhead Bee that Maxine continued to use or the imitation termite I had tied to my tippet, the trout seemed to have no fastidious concern. Twitch it slightly and one had it. Of some 25 trout netted only one measured less than 13 inches. Most ranged from 14 to 18, some as bright as Maxine’s 20-inch rainbow, others a soft coppertone, and one in nearly full spawning colors, no less wild and strong than the others. Clearly, it is good for the angler’s soul to have one now and then - a day when trout feed wildly, appetite replacing caution. A day when the rod is more vigorously stressed by the trout than by the casting. A day which you will remember as a highlight of your angling year. We all know fishless days and those when you are asleep on the rare chance of a good striking fish. Perhaps too often. But fishless days have their place for they hone the edges of pleasure on those days when all goes to your satisfaction. Days like those when the ants and termites are flying in the wind. |
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