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FISHING A FAR NORTH WILDERNESS
by Howard Frank Mosher
Buoyed up on its aluminium pontoons, our red-and-white Cessna taxied
in wide ellipses in front of the floatplane base in Schefferville,
Quebec. Then we were ripping down the lake straight into the waves
and lifting off the surface like some primitive reptile trying to
fly for the first time : airborne, with the vast array of northern
Quebec's stunted boreal woods and water stretched out below us like
a gigantic green and blue jigsaw puzzle of a world only partially
completed.
Jacques Cartier once called Canada 'the land God gave to Cain,"
certainly an apt description of the interior Canadian barrens bordered
by Hudson Bay on the west, the Labrador Sea on the east and Ungava
Bay on the north. A huge infertile wilderness of uninhabited and often
mountainous terrain, interspersed by tens of thousands of unexplored
lakes and rivers, who else but banished Cain would want it?
The answer is simple : a brook trout fisherman. Any serious brook
trout fisherman would all but sell his soul to spend a week in Ungava,
Quebec, as my 19-year-old son, Jake, and I did last summer. For this
inhospitable land is the world's largest stronghold for truly big
brookies, and many of the tumultuous rivers where they live have never
been fished.
Two hours after leaving Schefferville, we were flying over the great
sub-Arctic lake where our outfitter, Jean Paquet of NORPAQ Adventures,
operates a brook trout outpost camp. Paquet himself met us at the
lakeshore : a slender, fit-looking man in his 30's with the two requisite
qualities of every successful Far North outfitter - complete candor
about fishing conditions and the services of his camp, and a sense
of humor.
We planned to spend just one night at the main lake before beginning
our week of fly-out wilderness fishing, and I was eager to talk with
Paquet about the Ungava territory before we left. After supper, he
told us that during the three years his camp has been in operation
the brook trout fishing has been nothing short of fantastic, with
his guests averaging 30 to 50 brook trout a day apiece, the fish weighing
from two to more than five pounds. He believes that these catches
are the result of near-perfect local water conditions combined with
a very strict catch-and-release policy : expect for two trophy trout
to take home and a few fish to eat in camp, fishermen in Jean Paquet's
watershed must release all their trout unharmed.
Until our arrival, nearly all of Paquet's fishing parties had confined
their angling to the first three or four miles of the big lake's outlet
river, five miles north of the camp. With Jean's help, however, we
had arranged to fly out to explore new water, and he seemed nearly
as excited by the prospect as we were. Again that night, as we reviewed
our topographic maps with him by lantern light in a tent a thousand
miles north of Montreal, he assured us that to the best of his knowledge,
none of the three rivers we'd selected to explore had ever been fished.
Early the next morning, August 14th, we woke to a howling wind, driving
snow and near-zero visibility. But by 8 a.m. the sky was clear, and
we were able to fly out from the base camp to our first river.
"Living in the bush adds 20 years to your life," residents
of Canada's Far North like to say. In the case of André Maille,
our veteran bush pilot, this maxim may turn out to be true. André
looks a full decade younger than his early 50's and, though he's far
from old, a pilot's maxim came to mind after we'd flown for a day
or two with him : "There are old pilots and reckless pilots,
but no old, reckless pilots." As the events of the next few days
would prove, André Maille was neither reckless nor timorous
- just very, very good.
With no ado he dropped us off in a pondlike opening in a medium-sized
river 20 miles from the big lake. Half an hour later our camp was
in order, and we were on our way down a steep esker toward the first
set of rapids below the pond - and our first day of wilderness brook
trout fishing. The river here was no more than 100 yards wide. It
was icy cold and full of a wondrous variety of deep glassy runs, plunging
falls, dark backwaters, clear riffles and white-water rips. Better
yet, it was full of hungry brook trout from a foot long and up to
three pounds.
As we fished on for mile after mile through the morning, we caught
trout by the dozen from every likely looking spot. Surely this water
had never been fished before. Picture it if you are a fisherman, or
even if you are not: the perfect trout river, powerful enough to drown
you at a single misstep, yet so beautiful you had to stop to admire
it around each new bend. I ran over a bottom cobbled with stones of
every bright color, between treeless ridges radiant with white caribou
moss. High overhead, eagles and ospreys screamed at us, jealous of
their private pools, and the trout were even larger and more plentiful
as we moved downriver into the afternoon.
Intermittently it rained, spit snow and hailed. Then, just when we
least expected it, the sun would come out and the temperature would
soar into the 60's. Once a rainbow appeared, occupying a full third
of the sky. We used seven-foot-long bamboo fly rods, floating lines
and plain brown Muddler Minnow flies, two to three inches long, which
we cast upstream across the current and retrieved in swift jerks.
But as we quickly discovered, in the unfished barrens of Ungava, nearly
any fly will do the trick, including a miniature replica of the brook
trout, Mr. Salvelinus Fontinalis himself, since these crimson-sided
behemoths are every bit as cannibalistic as they are colorful. One
fish I caught had the rear quarters of a lemming sticking partway
out of its mouth - and still wanted my fly.
Walking a virgin trout river is addictive when the fish are hitting,
and it was 6 o'clock before we knew it. We hiked back up the esker
above the river in the clear late-afternoon light, stopping once to
catch a couple of poundsized trout, which we grilled for supper back
at our camp at dusk. Just before we turned in an hour later, the northern
lights appeared, shooting wide green, blue and silver rays from the
horizon to the zenith on every side of us, until I felt connected
to all Ungava by their exhilarating current.
By 5 the next morning we'd cooked and eaten our breakfast and were
trekking up beside the pond's inlet river in a thick fog. Slipping
along a well-traveled caribou trail in the mist, I imagined that I
felt some small part of the excitement the French Canadian voyageurs
had experienced two and three centuries ago, seeing country no European
settler had ever seen before.
Our discovery of a set of wolf tracks headed the same way we were
did nothing to dispel this fantasy. They were as large as my entire
hand, and so fresh that in low places near the river, water was still
oozing into them.
Judging from our map, the most promising rapids on the inlet appeared
to be four to five miles upriver. Even after the fog lifted it was
chilly, and today the walking was tough, through boggy lowlands and
thick copses of stunted black spruces. After slogging along the bank
for an hour or so, and covering less than a mile, we climbed a high
ridge paralleling the river. Here the ground was hard, though littered
with enough stones of all sizes to drive Cain himself to distraction.
Suddenly, a large, light-colored animal appeared about 100 yards ahead
of us, loping across our path so naturally and unexpectedly that I
didn't really have time to be surprised.
"Look at the caribou," I called to Jake, who was several
yards in front of me. "No", he said excitedly. "It's
a wolf !" My son was right. The animal moving across the rocky
plateau in front of us was a white wolf, so longlegged that at first
I'd mistaken it for a young reindeer. And what is more, in its jaws
it was carrying a chunk of meat that must have weighed a good 10 pounds.
The wolf, which appeared to be larger and much taller than a full-grown
German shepherd, ran laterally to our path rather than directly away
from us. Although it covered yards at every stride, it did not seem
to be hurrying. Nor did it seem frightened. Several times it turned
its head and looked at us over its shoulder, and when it did we could
see that the meat in its great jaws was red and dripping. Then it
vanished into a dip, leaving me with one of the finest outdoor moments
of my life.
I will admit here and now that I am far too avid a brook trout fisherman
to suggest that the fishing that day was an anticlimax after having
seen the great white wolf. The fishing was as phenomenal as Jean Paquet
had predicted it would be, even better than the day before, though
once we located the trout they were concentrated in just two rapids
so that we did not have the pleasure of walking the river and fishing
as we went. But they ran up to six pounds and were in full spawning
regalia, with deep orange stomachs, lavender halos delicate as wood
violets encircling their crimson spots and milk-white fin bands half
an inch wide.
Yet it was the image of the wolf that stayed with me that day, so
much so that when we returned to our campsite in the evening to pack
up our gear for the flight to our second river, I felt almost exuberant
upon discovering that a marauding black bear had devoured half our
food and ripped a two-foot rent in the roof of our tent. As far as
I was concerned, it was just another wilderness experience to relish
in the retelling.
Not quite 24 hours later, Jake and I stood on the shore of a tiny
lake surrounded by mountains, waiting again for André to pick
us up. We had just hiked a dozen miles along the northernmost fringe
of the tree line, flushed hundreds of snow geese and Canada geese,
been delayed 10 minutes by a large and fearless black bear gorging
itself on blueberries in our path and fished 10 rapids on the best-looking
trout river I've ever laid a line over. Yet we'd caught only six small
fish. Why? I had no earthly idea.
For some reason, or for no particular reason, the trout simply weren't
there. It happens, even in Ungava. For once, though, we weren't thinking
about fishing. Three solid streams of caribous were swimming across
the lake toward us - the first caribous we'd seen on this trip. There
were hundreds, maybe thousands of them, of all sizes, from this year's
white calves to giant dark bulls with monstrous double racks like
old-fashioned wooden porch rockers turned upside down.
A minute later they were passing on both sides of us, close enough
to reach out and touch with our fly rods if we'd wanted to. A few
caribous seemed curious about us, many looked wary and quickened their
pace somewhat, but they all trotted by unswervingly, impelled by that
age-old migratory urge before which even their natural fear of something
they'd never seen before paled.
I'm no mystic, but, nonetheless, I believe that standing with my son
in the midst of the migrating reindeer herd on the shore of that nameless
little lake in the Ungava barrens may be as close to a mystical experience
as I'm about to come. Once again I was moved and exhilarated beyond
words, not just by the proximity of this teeming northern wilderness,
but by being, however temporarily, a small part of it.
The caribous were still swimming across the lake when we heard the
faint, reassuring buzz of André's plane over the mountains
to the southwest. He had to circle the lake twice, waiting for them
to finish crossing, before he could touch down.
"Not today," André said with relief a few minutes
later as we cleared the stunted treetops at the far end of the lake,
with fewer than 100 feet to spare. And I was reminded of the dangers
involved in landing a bush plane on rocky, unknown water where almost
certainly a plane had never touched down before. There may be some
small risks entailed in merely coming to see this splendid country,
but far greater ones are run by even the most experienced bush pilots
every time they urge and coax their battered, ancient Beaver and Otter
de Havillands and fearfully light Cessnas over the primeval fastness.
The pilots, too, as much as the caribous and wolves and the big red
trout, are a part of the mystique of the contemporary Far North, and
I never think of them without gratitude and a kind of awe.
Our trip to the land God gave to Cain was drawing to a close. Only
one day of fishing was left. We planned to try the last of the three
rivers we had selected, which Jean Paquet had told us might very well
be the best of all : the river I had already christened "the
Unknown" because that is exactly what it was.
Almost certainly, no one had ever wet a line in its waters since the
last great glacier retreated from the Ungava territory 6000 years
ago.
To reach the Unknown, Jake and I had to cross a good-sized mountain
and a tricky piece of muskeg swamp. We started before sunrise to give
ourselves plenty of time, took a quick compass bearing off our topo
map, correcting our reading for the astonishing 26 degrees of magnetic
deflection this far north, and struck off up the steep mountainside
above the lake where we'd camped. It turned out to be a fine day for
hiking, sunny and about 60 degrees, with a strong gusting northwest
wind to keep off the black flies and mosquitoes. Snacking on ruby-red
dewberries and bright orange cloudberries as we climbed, we reached
the mountaintop in an hour.
The view was magnificent : treeless barrens to the north, west and
east, black-spruce taiga stretching south to the horizon and then
500 miles in a straight shot to the St. Lawrence. Much closer was
the Unknown River. From our vantage point we could glimpse two of
the eight rapids we hoped to fish that day, sparkling in the early
sun. A mile and a half to go, and then a whole day to fish what could
conceivably be some of the best virgin brook trout water left on the
face of the earth.
The muskeg turned out to be less daunting than we'd anticipated, though
the Unknown, where we struck it just below the first good rapids,
was perhaps too small to be truly spectacular. But it was as lovely
a stream as any trout fisherman could imagine, comfortably negotiable
in most spots with waders, a succession of rock bars interspersed
by riffly quick water running over bright yellow sand and clean gravel.
Yet the first run we fished seemed to be as sterile as the Dead Sea.
I looked at Jake and shrugged. Even the best rivers in the Far North
are apt to be spotty - excellent fishing in one stretch, nothing at
all in the next. But I am sure we were both thinking that just the
day before, the day of the caribous, we'd fished half a dozen miles
of an equally beautiful river with hardly any luck at all.
We reeled in and trudged up to the rock-bar pool, where thousands
of stones, from pebbles no larger than playing marbles to boulders
the size of deluxe Oldsmobiles, had come to rest, forming a kind of
natural barrier dam at right angles to the current. We worked our
way carefully out onto the rocks and unlimbered our rods, knowing
that it was now or never. Trout pools simply didn't come any better
than this one.
I don't remember who cast first, but seconds later each of us was
playing a gigantic brook trout: our rods bent nearly double in the
brilliant northern sunshine, our leaders vibrating, and the fish racing
through the crystalline water below the dam like streamlined red torpedoes.
Jake was the first to net his trout, a six-pound beauty as scarlet
as an Arctic sunset. He extracted the fly and held the fish facing
upstream in a riffle just off the current. A moment later it swam
leisurely out of his hands and slowly submerged, its colors facing
into the amber depths of the pool. That was where it belonged, I thought.
No taxidermist on earth, using the most advanced airbrush techniques,
could ever recapture those reds and oranges and blues and whites.
I don't know how many brook trout we caught that day. Maybe 100, maybe
more. It hardly matters. There's no way to quantify the experience,
and to try would be pointless. I do know that time and time again
as I fished near my son, up to my knees in icy current, playing one
of those tremendous red trout, I felt a part of the wilderness around
us - just as I had watching the streaking blue and green aurora and
standing in the midst of the migrating caribous.
I remember one scene in particular, a picture I never took. Late in
the afternoon, miles upriver from where we had started fishing, I
happened to glance at Jake, standing in a shallow riffle perhaps 50
feet downstream and fighting a big trout. Near him in the water I
noticed a bright red flash, then another, and yet another, until on
all sides of him in the riffles I saw dozens of huge trout, driving
their way upriver with their green backs and orange tails jutting
out of the water.
"Look !" I shouted to Jake. "All round your feet."
"I know," he called over his shoulder as he continued to
play the big brook trout. "I know!"
Not at the time, but a few hours later, on our way back to camp over
the mountain at twilight, I thought once again that for a fisherman
to see such sights as I had seen might indeed be close to a mystical
experience. Better yet, that to visit the Ungava wilderness and to
participate, however ephemerally, in some of its natural mysteries
with my son and fishing partner of more than 10 years was a deeply
human experience.
Perhaps, without quite knowing it at the time, that is why we had
come to the Far North in the first place. Certainly that is why we
would return.
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