Every day starts with a great breakfast. Yves and Patti are a delight to be around. By now we had heard bits and pieces of the story about them building this lodge 90 miles from Labrador City. Yves came out in winter, pulling equipment, including a sawmill, and built the lodge in 39 days! He cut the trees, them cut into lumber and built it. Caribou were here in abundance. Huge black bears, like the huge Brook trout, grew here.
It is especially devastating to the Inuit people whose lives are intertwined with the Caribou. Some disease seems to have devastated the herd. The effect is not unlike the loss of the plains buffalo in the U.S.
As I walked down to the boat, I passed Yves in his workshop/tool house. I commented that I had never seen such an organized workshop. He smiled and said it has been a process. He has been robbed several times. He reinforced the front door with steel, but they hooked the back door to an ATV and pulled it off. They came in masks and cut the security camera wires. They shot the satellite dish, broke into the lodge and took cushions to put the motors on. Out here in the wilds, this is a difficult thing to prevent. They followed the tracks back toward town, but when they got close to the town, tracks were going everywhere, so they lost the trail.
Then there are the bears. This morning I noticed two white things in cellophane next to our front door. I thought they were peppermints. Perhaps someone thought we had bad breath. Then when I went over to the lodge, they were in all the windows. Yves said they were moth balls to keep the bears away. Last week Patti had put an apple pie in the window to cool. A bear came and ate it, then tried to get in the window, so Yves had to shoot it. Now she cooks with the back windows closed, so it gets a bit hot.
If you fish enough, you are going to get tangles!
Due to a fire ban, this was the first day we had a shore lunch. It is in a beautiful spot with great views. Pike, cod, potatoes, toast and onions.
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.
Weights looked like an extracted molar
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.
Pike, or Northern or Northern pike. there are lots of these!Lake trout or “Laker”This is the trophy fish we came for
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.
These snowshoe hares are quite tame. Patti feeds them cabbage
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.
What a dork! Have to have surgical glasses to tie flies on.
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.
Small pikeNice Lake troutBeautiful Brook trout!
I think we caught one Ounaniche, four pike, one lake trout and one hen Brook trout.
Our cabinA little too much sun!Yves showed us a map of all the water surrounding us.
We saw a few other boats today, but maybe five boats for the whole week!
Can’t remember, but that might have been the night with the world’s best lasagna
I wanted to fish the Green River with Ron Lowry, but he said it had not been fishing well lately. After some discussion, we agreed to go after the monster Brook trout in Labrador. Actually I don’t care about big ones, but I wanted to catch a lot of them.
Some of the fishing lodges have struggled since Covid. Getting shut down for two seasons made it difficult to get up and running again, and to find staff and guides. Northern Lights Lodge on Shaw Lake and Smallwood Reservoir was highly-rated, so we booked it.
It is quite a trip getting there. Ron was flying from Idaho, and I from Virginia. I landed in Montreal at 2:30 on Wednesday. By the time I walked the long way to customs, got through, picked up my bag and walked all the way to the other end of the airport, I was tired. Ron wouldn’t get in until 11:30, so after checking into the airport hotel, I went back down to find Pal Airlines for Thursday’s flight to Labrador City, but couldn’t find it. We would have to be there at 6:00 for a 7:30 flight we did not want to miss. Finally a nice lady pointed me to the right place.
On Thursday morning, Ron and I checked out of the hotel, walked downstairs to the airport and found Pal Airlines. It was a local, with stops in Quebec and Sept-Isles on the way to Labrador City. Two guys across the isle were also going to the lodge, this being their third year at Northern Lights Lodge.
A nice gentleman named Javier picked us up at the Wabush airport adjacent to Labrador City. He then took us to the grocery store to get any drinks or snacks we wanted, and there was a liquor store next door. Then he took us to the Two Seasons Hotel for the night. After cocktail hour, we went to the hotel restaurant, which is reported to be the best in town. It was surprisingly good, efficient and friendly. We discussed the need for a $600 deposit on the room. Javier had told us this is a big iron ore mining town. Maybe there are some cowboys that come to town and make a mess.
On Friday morning we were to take a float plane to the lodge, but it was delayed due to weather or low ceiling. Finally we got the go-ahead and Javier took us to the dock. A tall young man weighed us and our gear before loading. Javier had bought supplies for the lodge as well.
It was my first time on a float plane, so I was a little nervous, but I also wanted to see the fire damage. Just 10 days ago the whole town of Labrador City, 7,412 people were evacuated due to a big fire approaching the town. There is only one road in Labrador, so they all went east. It was pretty scary. Fortunately, they were able to stop the fire before it got to the town.
We must have gone in the opposite direction because I couldn’t see any burnt areas. Looking at all the thousands of lakes, it is a wonder a fire could spread very far. Flying north and a bit east, we saw infinite numbers of lakes or ponds. Woven in between was rocky land with black fir trees. I was surprised to see a railroad track. The Canadian Shield is a huge area of eastern Canada that was scraped of all but a thin topsoil by glaciers, leaving bedrock, boulders and round rocks polished by water, snow and ice.
I was surprised to hear that Quebec province has more lakes that Labrador, at a half million or so, but it is also a larger province. By any measure, it is a whole lot of water and difficult land to travel. Some lakes had a house or cabin on them, especially close to Labrador City.
After a 50 minute flight, we landed smoothly on Shaw Lake, and our pilot expertly glided next to the dock where four men helped tie the plane. As we got out we were introduced to Yves, Jimmy, Brad and Mike. They told us to go to our cabins and they would unload the plane and bring our things to the cabin.
On the lodge grounds we met Patti, with whom we had exchanged many emails and messages. Just in those blind conversations, one could tell this is a good-hearted person. She showed us to our cabin, which was very nice with two bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting area with a small table and a serious, iron wood-burning stove that was quite warm. That would be the only time it was used on our trip. The group from the previous week were going out on the plane as soon as our gear was unloaded. I talked with one gentleman from New Brunswick who had been coming every year for 30 years!
Once we got settled, Mike came by to see if we wanted to go fishing for a couple of hours just the get a feel for the water. On the front side of Northern Lights Lodge was Shaw lake, which is full of pike apparently. We went out back to a HUGE body of water, known as Smallwood Reservoir, that covers some 2,500 square miles behind the dam at what used to be Churchill Falls. The rivers leading into the reservoir are the Ashuanipi River and the McKenzie River.
I don’t think we caught anything that afternoon. One major problem was we didn’t have sinking lines, so we were not getting down enough in this big water. Dinner was at 7:00, but we gathered at the lodge to see what the two Johns did. Actually one was Jon, the tall one, and one was John, who was a retired oral surgeon.
“Supper,” as Patti called it was superb, as was every meal at Northern Lights Lodge. Patti and Yves are married, and they do everything, with the help of the two guides.
Ron’s flies. We would use the streamers and Orange Bombers most
We collapsed in our beds with the windows open and the ceiling fan on low, and it wasn’t long before I was asleep. I was startled by a couple of sounds in the night, but slept well.
