Northwest of Nowhere
The starting of the old De Havilland Beaver is a visceral force that all who search for adventure can feel in their souls. With a brief whine and a series of coughs, the nearly 80 year old radial engine kicked into life ready to continue its role as the ‘taxi of the North’. With the handsome old plane laden with a week’s worth of provisions, fishing gear and eager fishermen, we took to the skies over Northwest Ontario flying low over countless lakes on our way deep into the backcountry.
We say this all the time but this was a trip we had dreamt of for years. Chartering a float plane and flying out into the bush for a week in the Canadian wilderness, what self-respecting fly fishermen wouldn’t yearn for the chance to catch hundreds of pike, lakers and walleye? Collin and I had been formulating this dream-come-true for some time as we wanted to bring our dad’s in tow to show them something of the adventures that we regularly partake in. So, after many hours of research, fly tying, preparing and finally traveling, we were here, in the Great North.
Though our travel had been stressful and one of our companions was still not yet with us, the silence of the boreal forest quickly eased the anxiety of our journey. As the float plane departed leaving us alone on the narrow peninsula, we began to take in our surroundings. The lakeshore was ringed with spruce, jack pine, and firs as well as trembling aspen and birch trees. The water lapped against granite boulders mere feet from the rustic cabin we would call home for the duration of our stay. In an environment like this, the term “real world” takes on new meaning. It is ubiquitous in our society to refer to the real world as the place where we live, conduct business and generally go about the more mundane aspects of our lives. Places like this though, have always seemed more real to me than any suburb, strip mall or construction of man. This was the place of expansive wilderness, clean air, open skies and unpressured waters. This was a glance into our collective pasts. This was our opportunity to live at least briefly as we were meant to.
Not long after the float plane left us alone to our thoughts, we assembled our fly rods as well as a plan for the remainder of the day. Large, threatening clouds patrolled not-so-distantly above the lake’s banks so we decided it made sense to find the most sheltered coves nearby to our cabin in case we became in need of near-immediate shelter. As the final portions of 8 and 9 weight rods were inserted into their respective ferrules, so to did our plan come into more complete focus. We would take one boat, first ensuring the motor’s trustworthiness, and then run a short ways directly into the wind in order to utilize our windbreak most effectively. In our last moments before departing the dock, I decided to make the first casts of the trip while waiting for my companions to ready their own gear. I threw my first cast with my 8 weight to the edge of a field of lilies 50 feet from where I stood on the rocking dock. Giving my Blue Line Cooter Brown a moment to be pulled under by my sinking line, I then began to strip in quickly with long, hard pulls. On my second cast I flung my fly slightly deeper into the nearby weeds. I repeated the stripping process and as soon as my fly pulled out of the sheltering structure, I felt a thump resonate through the fly line. The battle and the fish were both short but I was nonetheless thrilled to have already taken the skunk off! Particularly so as it wasn’t on the first cast and, superstitious as I can be, I believe the ‘first cast curse’ is a real thing! This was my first Northern pike on a fly rod. I’ve caught them with spinning gear in great numbers and to tremendous size but the first opportunity I’ve had to catch them on fly had immediately endeared themselves even more so to me.
So, with a menagerie of rods of various styles and weights, we loaded our boat for the short ride into the wind. The bay a quarter mile to our Northeast was properly sheltered from the increasing breeze and appeared to have the depth and structure we were looking for. Namely, thick weed beds and depths of three to seven feet. We must have been a funny sight as 9 foot long fly rods waved through the air from the bow and stern while a stout spinning rod was utilized in the center of our diminutive 14 foot v-hull. Still, we caught some fish and my dad proved that the preeminent Five of Diamonds spoon was no-less effective on this lake and on these fish as we had come to expect of all Canadian pike. We drifted at a steady pace from inside the bay out towards the mouth as the wind pushed us away from the bank. We repeated this easy drift a time or two before something more notable than a small pike came to hand. For whatever reason, I turned from my position in the stern of the boat to watch my dad cast a long arcing throw back into the water we had drifted through a few moments before. The moment, and I mean the split second, that his spoon hit the water, it was obliterated by a hyper-aggressive fish. The explosion on the bay’s surface looked as though a small bomb had gone off! Dad’s hookset was true and from the eruption emerged a massive caudal fin and a thick back of a different color green than the pike we had been seeing. The pressure was on and the rod was kept deeply bent by the predator which had smashed the old spoon. With some quick boat maneuvering away from the weeds and any waiting branches, we pulled the fish into deeper water where dad in turn brought it boat side. With a jab and a twist Collin netted the monster fish and lifted her up towards the gunwale so she couldn’t jump back out, success! As we hooped and hollered we had a hard time convincing ourselves that we had caught (let alone seen!) a muskie this early on in our trip. It had been less than an hour from the time we left the dock and we were now bobbing in the light breeze only a few hundred yards from our starting point. It was truly incredible to see a fish like this come from freshwater. Shaped like a barracuda, the muskellunge is long and relatively thin with a mottled light green side and white belly. Red fins protruded from her pectoral muscles and stomach and centimeter long, razor sharp teeth made themselves quite evident in her enormous maw. This fish was a specimen to behold and she invoked awe from each one of us. Measuring 42 inches and weighing at least in the low 20 pound range, a true fish of a lifetime for an angler who had never even fished for muskie before! With the reputation of the muskellunge as being the “fish of ten thousand casts” and this being my dad’s first time pursuing them, cue the jokes! Collin has spent numerous days on the water in Tennessee pursuing these water wolves and I myself have spent a half dozen days hunting them and had never even seen one before! Dad on the other hand, had never spent time on the water in their pursuit and caught one in the first hour of his efforts! The joke quickly became that this catch was “unearned” and that dad hadn’t gotten the true muskie experience! To him though, this couldn’t have been less of a concern!
The afternoon came and went with more small Northerns coming to hand. We tried jigging briefly for walleye but the excitement of possibly running into more muskie was too much for us to bear. With the clouds looming ever closer, we sauntered back to the cabin with a 20 inch pike ready to clean. Camp chores were divvied out as preparation for our ensuing meal began. I filleted and chunked the pike while dad prepared our sides of french fries, rice and black beans. Collin made himself busy sifting through photos and preparing us for fishing if the nearby storms permitted it after dinner.
While the lightning cracked and the thunder rolled in the distance, the rain held off for the time being. As we feasted on the spoils of our labor enjoying Cajun style fried pike, we relaxed under the cabin’s tin roof as the rain began to fall and the lightning receded. Seeing our opportunity, Collin and I each grabbed a rod and rain jacket and raced into our waiting vessel. The rain fell cool and steadily but we had the time of our lives racing around submerged reefs and steering towards fishy bays. Here I stuck another nice “eater” pike which was fortunate enough to have been caught after our modest feast. Though my good fortune persisted, so too did Collin’s bad luck! It has long been a running joke amongst Collin and I that it is unlikely for us to both be fishing well simultaneously. As one of us struggles, the other excels! There is little accounting for this as our comparable skills should see similar catch rates. Still, the fishing-gods typically only smile on us one at a time and this was Collin’s turn to suffer. The rain continued to fall harder and harder, soaking us even through our rain gear. Twilight fell and the lightning began to return as Collin finally hooked a fish. His fly rod bent deep as he quickly stripped in and finally a fat walleye emerged beside our boat! Our laughter must have been felt from across the lake as Collin took it in good sport that his first effort for pike wouldn’t be rewarded quite yet! The small fire that we had started in the sauna around dinner time beckoned to us across the darkness. Moments later we arrived to the cabin and quickly stowed our gear, racing to the warmth of the coals in the cast iron stove. Day One ended with the promise of greatness to come.
Day Two began with Collin mirroring my first fish from the day before. We readied an early breakfast, prepped to leave and he made a few casts into the lilies hoping to finally catch the Northerns that had so eluded him mere hours before. It took practically no time at all for Collin to have a fish dart from beneath the dock he was standing on out into the open water to eat his fly! A short, violent fight erupted with the fish thrashing and racing around the dock from which we stood but finally Collin caught his first pike!
With quick success in our minds we loaded up the boat and decided that it would be the perfect time to head South scanning the new water in search of likely spots for the coming days. With a roar our small two stroke Yamaha fired up and had us racing across the glassy surface of the lake seconds later. South we went observing the bays and reefs that ringed the shoreline. We ran the little boat for a few minutes before stopping to fish a rocky outcropping surrounded by weed beds and a substantial drop off. Over the next couple of hours we caught fish with impressive regularity. The metal spoon thrown on the spinning rod proved most fruitful but the fly rods didn’t lack for action. Suddenly the silence of the backcountry was broken by the droning of a taxiing float plane. Knowing what this meant, we turned tail and raced back to the cabin to find Collin’s dad unloading his gear from the plane. He had endured multiple cancelled flights and lengthy delays only then to have to deal with a lack of rental cars and hotel rooms along our route. Finally though, Barry had made it and the trip could properly start for all of us. This father-son grouping was now complete and the stress of travel could finally be ameliorated for our companion. So then as soon as possible we endeavored to put Barry on some fish as he needed the distraction! After loading up the second boat for a quick five minute ride, we were all nearly immediately into the fish. The shallow, weedy bay we found ourselves in was nearly impossibly to cast into without snagging but the fish didn’t seem to mind at all. Frequently we hooked weeds and lilies on our retrieves and the pike still chased after and ate our flies and lures happily! Once, dad cast into the weeds only for them to immediately foul up on his spoon. He reeled as quickly as he could skating his spoon across the surface so that he could unsnag it and make another cast. Shockingly, once, twice and finally a third time a pike slashed at the lure finally taking the hook firmly in his lip. This one instance adequately summed up the next hour or two of fishing as pike practically leapt from the water to eat our offerings!
As our arms tired our appetites increased and we kept a pair of pike for the fryer. Returning to camp we all engaged in our chores and quickly had a steaming hot lunch served fresh on the table. Fried fish, French fries, baked beans and sautéed onions made up our shore lunch and the famous Canadian repast would sustain us for the next few days. I sit here writing this now day-dreaming of the aroma of fried pike, fresh caught from the cold lake. No one would claim this to be fine-dining but few can truly say they have experienced a meal quite as sweet as those we were preparing on the lakeshore far from the conveniences of home.
In the mid-afternoon we devoted ourselves to exploring more of the lake. We ran South, through a narrow channel, around a rocky promontory and back North and West. We had been told there might be enough water for us to execute a small portage into a somewhat isolated body of water off the main lake. We decided that we would try this sooner rather than later so as not to miss out on any opportunity. Well, the water was just high enough to allow us to drag over the slight land bridge but it required empty boats and slogging through 30 inches of methane-trapping silt and mud. We dragged our boats through thinking this extra work may be the key to some finding something a little larger than the cookie cutter pike we had been catching. As it so often turns out, we were wrong. The fishing mirrored the main lake perfectly and, though we had been told this is a prime walleye spot, we continued to be outmaneuvered by the quarry we most hoped would make up a large part of our diets while here. Oh well! A few more small pike to hand and a slog back to the main lake and we were right back where we started! Dad voted to return to the bays of our earlier success but with several hours of daylight left and no pressing concerns, Collin and I vetoed this and opted to keep exploring the lake. We ran still farther South past a pair of swans and more deserted islands. In an area we came to call the Thoroughfare we caught some more decent pike and a small walleye on a jig. We hoped that this narrow water between rocky points would serve as a highway to bigger fish and our thoughts served well based on what followed not long after. The shadows were lengthening and the golden hour was upon us as we ran to the southernmost extremities of the lake. Here, a rocky promontory channeled the water into the last few bays filled with weeds and lilies.
Dad and I opted to fish in the inner shore of the peninsula that served as the last bend in the waterway before the lake slowly drained from the one, surprisingly small outflow. We briefly discussed a plan with our comrades across the still water and glassy bay and then we began to cast into the rocky shoreline with weeds just off the banks. On maybe my fourth or fifth cast I threw an aerial mend in order to bend my leader and fly line around some lilies. This 45 foot cast started off as nothing special but as my fly line and then leader looped around the weeds, a boil formed where I approximated my fly to be. I stripped once, twice, hard trying to feel pressure but nothing manifested. Suddenly the tip of my fly line twitched unnaturally to the right and I stripped quickly finally connecting with the mystery fish. Almost as soon as I strip set the slack line at my feet raced through the air pulled into the tannic water by a big fish. The line shot into the water at an insane speed before quickly darting back to the right and behind me. Less than two seconds into the fight I knew that my 8 weight and I were in for a brutal battle if only we could keep the behemoth pinned! The fish raced around behind us and into open water and, with the adrenaline, I don’t truly remember the specific sequence of events that led to Collin and Barry motoring the brief way over to watch the battle. As they were en route though, the big muskie broke the water’s surface jumping once, twice, three times in full nose to tail cartwheels! The final jump was so close to my rod tip that I actually had to raise the rod so as the fish wouldn’t land on top of it! With the jumps completed the giant predator ran again around the boat, dragging the leader through lilies and weeds. As I fought the fish I could see my comparatively diminutive yellow Buckhead streamer precariously lodged in the scissor of her jaws. I was lucky, if the fly had been placed almost anywhere else she would have stood an excellent chance at biting through my 40 pound fluorocarbon leader. My luck would hold though and after multiple stabs with the net, my dad finally scooped the enormous fish into the cradle. If it was hard for me to comprehend the muskie I had netted for my dad the day before, it was even more difficult to grasp the enormity of the one he had just netted for me! A fish like this towers above most other catches I have ever made. Not only was this a truly enormous, rare fish that put up one hell of a fight on light tackle, but so too were we on a remote DIY trip far into the Canadian bush and beyond our expertise. Catching a fish like this was always a possibility but in a hypothetical way where it is technically possible but where it feels like it won’t really happen. Unreal. Taping out to 40 inches and right around the 20 pound range I was taken aback by the apex predator before me. Her intelligent eyes scanned us and her jaws almost seemed to be menacingly inviting our exposed fingers closer and closer to her waiting teeth. After a brief moment, the trophy fish was gone kicking happily out of my hands and into the darks waters welcoming her home. The evening disappeared in a golden haze for me as everyone caught and released countless pike and small walleye over the remaining few hours of daylight. The fishing was so steady we had mostly all switched to topwater patterns just to liven things up some. As fish after fish were released, we reveled in the fruits of those Northern waters.
The ensuing days came and went in somewhat of a blur. We caught pike more or less steadily every time we got in the weeds along the islands and banks of our now-familiar lake. Eatable walleye still eluded us but we actually saw several more muskie cruising the reefs in search of their next meal. With time winding down, we decided to try our hand at one of the last of our trip’s bucket list items that we hadn’t yet attempted, deep dropping for lake trout. The reason we hadn’t even attempted this until near the end of our trip was because it was intimidating. We were almost completely blind as we were without a fish finder or anything more detailed than a very rudimentary depth chart. So, here we were dropping a 150 foot fast sinking fly line to the bottom of the deepest holes whose locations we were mostly guessing at! What we did was we moved upwind of the holes, fed our fast sinking flies and lines out beside the boat and then drifted with the wind over the deeper structure. We had no way of knowing whether the fish would be suspended up in the water column or all the way down against the very bottom. So it was without much confidence that we began fishing the cold waters potentially void of fish below us. I had most of my fly line out and was occasionally bumping a submerged reef with my fly when I felt weight suddenly manifest itself on my line. I quickly stripped long a few times and eventually big head shakes telegraphed themselves back through our now shared connection! My 8 weight bent deep but I put some serious heat on the fish and quickly had her up beside the boat. My first ever lake trout on a fly made itself into our net as I was shouting in excitement! These beautiful charr are a trout in name only, though closely related. They feature the white tipped fins that are so recognizable on our local brook trout as well as spots and vermiculations too. Their bodies are mottled greens, blues and browns with yellow and white bellies.
With one laker in the boat, everyone else wanted to join in the fun! We repeated our drift a few times before moving to some other deeper channels to our North on the main lake. While we were still fishing blind but now had the slightest confidence to say that our task wasn’t quite impossible. Our hunt continued as we tried spot after spot and it looks as though my first lake trout would be the fluke. As dad and I maneuvered into the last spot we thought would likely hold these fish, we waited with baited breath. The wind pushed us slowly to the northern bank as we sank, jigged and retrieved our offerings in new water. Nothing, nothing, nothing and then finally thumps and head shakes! The pattern emerged and our location proved fruitful with everyone catching lake trout over the afternoon. Every time we dropped our flies and lures down it seemed like we might hook a monster. The anticipation was exhilarating and the loons circling an calling all around us seemed to feel our same excitement! We all caught lakers measuring between 15 and 24 inches. No monsters were caught but to catch fish like these on a new method in a place like this was nearly beyond words. After we had released the first few fish for good luck, we kept an eater sized fish for the grill. As it turned out, we all unanimously declared this to be the best tasting fish of the week.
As our final evening’s fire died beside the placid waters, I couldn’t help but to think that a part of me would always belong to the boreal forests of the northern America’s. There exists a kindred link between my own interests and those hardy ancestors who traversed this virgin landscape hundreds and thousands of years before me. The forests and the waters provide life and take it away. The bounty of the summer is juxtaposed by the difficulty of the long winters. Through my reflection, the longing call of the loons echoed amongst the forest ringing the lake’s shoreline and this, the call of the North, strikes straight to the heart. Even here in the far backcountry it can be hard to fully escape the presence of modern society. We sat on stumps and rocks, humbly, by a fire of our creation and beside the lake that had probably seen countless native tribes and trappers gather here over the centuries. While sitting here, hundreds of artificial satellites raced across the sky in reflection of the urgency of the societies that created them. Amongst the woods, we were but simple fishermen who woke with the sun and lived in accord with our most atavistic desires. Our presence was passing and would mean nothing to the landscape that had briefly supported us. The flash-in-a-pan that was our presence though, I expect to stay with me forever.
- GALLERY -
