Friday, Saturday August 9-10, 2024
The coffee pot was full at 5:00 in the morning and kept on until 7:00 when breakfast was served. Friday morning was eggs cooked to order by Yves, bacon or sausage and toast from fresh bread baked by Patti. By 8:00 we were in the boat with Mike, whose real name is Michelle.
Last night we tried to solve our problem of not getting down deep enough. I put on a sinking tippet and pinched on some ball weights. Ron had a better solution with three hanging weights, which may not have been pretty, but they did the trick.
It worked well. He caught two pike, one nice Brookie, one lunker Brookie and one Laker (Lake trout). Even so, we still needed to be able to get down easier, which meant we needed sinking line. Jimmy saved our trip by bring us a half spool of sinking line, which we measured, figured it would be just enough for both of us, cut it in half and added it to our reels.
Ron is very good at knots and helped me a lot with solutions that would not come apart at critical times. We were not well-aware of the potential size of some of these fish, so we tied on #1 leaders, but cut off the ends tied on 10 lb. tippets. Even that might be broken by some of these fish, especially the pike with their sharp teeth.
A VERY important floating fly for these waters is the Orange Bomber. We had bought four at Canadian Tire, but they didn’t float. However, Jon had brought us one that was a little beaten up, but far better than ours. We celebrated with a drink before heading over to the lodge for dinner, which was moose stew and cake covered with raspberry and whipped cream for dessert.
I don’t know if that is a raspberry compote, but it is not a sauce. There is a huge raspberry plot in back of the lodge. Like wild blueberries, these wild raspberries are small. Just picking enough for 9 people would be a job.
Saturday
Each day we were a little better prepared. Now we had sinking lines. Bead-headed streamers were working pretty well, but we were still experimenting with dry flies. We also rigged four floating flies with dropper nymphs – Copper Johns and Prince nymphs.
Michelle turned northwest this morning for 30 or 40 minutes. I know it looks cold. With all the clothes we had on, I felt lite the Michelin Man. With the boat going full speed, it is pretty chilly. With a shirt, sweater and a rain parka it was fine. Always while the boat is running hard, you must wear a life jacket. Rain pants are essential along with a good hat. We had great weather though. In the middle of the day, we started shedding layers.
Michelle turned north up a river. When the lake is up, he could travel a big loop, coming back out to the main river, but the reservoir and river were down about 4 or 5 feet. At Churchill, there is a huge dam that makes electricity for Canada and the U.S. As luck would have it, that affects the fishing, especially the Brook trout. The pike and Lake trout don’t seem to be affected as much.
We worked our way up the river. I lost a couple, one untying my knot at the fly. Another took my fly and took off upriver 100 yards before shaking loose. Then I hooked a big, heavy, fighting fish – a big, beautiful Ouananiche, a land-locked salmon. Ron was coaching me to keep my rod tip up since I had lost a couple by not doing that.
I think we caught one Ounaniche, four pike, one lake trout and one hen Brook trout.
We saw a few other boats today, but maybe five boats for the whole week!
