Well, our annual Canadian fishing trip is history for another year. It was, in my opinion, a great success. My fishing buddy, Joel Buck of Lewisburg, agreed. It was the best pike fishing he'd ever had, as I'd promised. You always worry when you've convinced someone to go somewhere that the fishing won't be nearly as good as you'd described it. That didn't happen.
We, again this year, fished the massive LG-4 reservoir with the folks from Mirage Lodge. It's located in far northern Quebec. You fly about 500 miles north from the city of Rouyn-Noranda, about a 13-hour drive from here. It actually took us about 16 hours, but that was because every Canadian was heading north for their Canada Day weekend and we got caught in the traffic jam that ensued.
Mostly because of the weather, the fishing this year was actually not as good as it had been last year, but it was plenty good enough. Last year the weather had been unusually sunny and hot; this year it was cold, rainy, and extremely windy. On the 4th of July, I was wearing long underwear, a light shirt, a sweat shirt, a fleece vest, and a Gore-Tex raincoat, and wasn't sweaty at all. Summer is mostly an illusion in that part of the world.
The wind was so bad a couple times that we probably shouldn't have been out on a body of water as large as this one. A couple times I had visions of people saying to my wife, "Judy, think of it this way -- he died doing what he loved to do; it is too bad they never recovered the body though."
Fortunately our guide, Billy Coulombe, was about as good a boat handler as you could hope for. We only had water coming over the bow on one occasion, but we did have some extremely hairy, and rough, rides. Had to head in early one day because it was just too rough, but we only lost a couple hours fishing time.
The wind did keep us off the lake one day, but we wanted to schedule a day of fishing on the Le Grande river anyhow. It turned out to be a great day on the river.
Things I'll remember about the trip are catching some nice speckled trout on my fly rod. (The biggest one, as always, got away). I'll remember standing on one rocky shore and catching 40 or 50 pike on my No. 4 weight fly rod. What a thrill! I wasn't using a steel leader so I'd lose a fly every now and then. When I'd run out of flies, Billy tied a couple out of some colored rope we had in the boat, and I caught a dozen more on those. I told him he had a good future as a professional fly tyer. I also remember letting Joel lure pike up to the boat with a spoon, and then dropping a streamer in front of them and catching them on my fly rod. Lots of fun. We didn't catch any huge pike, but did get a half-dozen around the 20-pound mark. I'll take that any day.
n Don Steese, of Northumberland, writes a weekly outdoors column for The Daily Item. E-mail comments to jdsteese@yahoo.com.
Sports
Don Steese's Outdoor Perspectives column: Cold weather, but good fishing
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