Preparing for Labrador

So you’ve finally done it – taken the plunge and booked your trip to Labrador – big land, float planes, big trout.

Like most traveling fly anglers who have Labrador in their sights, you have probably spent many quiet hours day-dreaming about this “land God gave to Cain” – are the rivers pure? can I wade them?  are the brookies really that amazing?  Fish daydreams can be fun with their haunting visions of slabs of trout rising in freestone rivers (visions inspired, no doubt, by cool drinks on lazy, Sunday afternoons).  But such imaginings may not always be that close to reality.  One fantasy dreamers seem to have is that in wild places like Labrador there are creel-loads of unsophisticated lunker trout savagely fighting over each drifting fly.  Truthfully, such marvels do occasionally happen.  But such an anomaly is very unlikely to coincide with your trip.  Daydreams typically are and should be overly optimistic.  Like night dreams, they can be rehearsal for coming challenges, a big help in preparing for your adventure.  At their best, daydreams can get you fired up for the awesome adventure you’re about to take.  But at some point, you got to snap out of it!  You’ve enjoyed your fantasies, now get to work.

Practice, Practice

My favorite golfer, Bob Jones, said  ” . . . any endeavor worth doing is worth doing well”.  Carelessly mixing metaphors, golf’s ‘big boys’ feed first at the prize money trough because they pursue quality instruction and put in endless hours of practice.  Casting an artful, true fly is also a life-long aspiration. The right presentation will be there, in the right place at exactly the right moment, only through your patience, practice and persistence. You’ll betray your dreams if you bring less than your best to Labrador or any other intriguing fishy destination.  Treat yourself to your best chance by working out your casting kinks.  Time spent in back yards, on local ponds and perhaps even at a fly casting school will reward your investment not just with more fish to the net, but with a far better use of your rare and hard-earned fishing time (fewer tangled lines, less fatigue and sore muscles). The most rewarding feeling for any golfer is not so much having his shot on target, but it is that flush crunch of a ball well struck.  Whether or not your fly presentation elicits the bite of a big trout, casting a smooth and accurate line effortlessly is in itself a most gratifying reward.

Wasn’t it that famous football coach who said something like ‘success is where preparation meets opportunity’?  You’ve chosen Labrador as your opportunity.

Come prepared.

Patience, Observe

Granted, you’ve traveled far and put a significant dent in your savings account.  When the travel has ended, your gear stowed in your cabin and you’ve buckled your wading belt, chances are that you’re just squirming to snare your first big brook trout.  After all, you’ve earned it, right?  The boat ride to that first rattle may seem endless and unless your guide reads your anticipation and snaps you back to reality, you’ll probably step into the river, give it a quick once-over, and then hurriedly cast to the undercut bank on the far side of the run.  Odds are that you just stepped over a trophy trout or two lying under the near bank and ‘lined’ several more fish holding in mid-river.

Did you notice? Any flies hatching?  Fish rising?  See any minnow forage in the shallows?

Relax, Look Around

Point is, catch your breath and observe, then string up your rod.  One July morning a few years back, experienced anglers A. K. Best, John Gierach and Jim Babb first wet their boots in the Woods River down at our 5^th Rapids outpost camp.  They left their freighter canoe and worked their way up the shoreline to a pile of boulders at the confluence of three currents.  With rods unstrung, they each found a seat, chatted, and spent the next fifteen minutes looking the water over.  In no hurry, A. K. said “So what do you think, John?  That little gray dun look good?”  John nodded. They got to their feet, rigged their rods, and over the next four hours, netted and released over 225 pounds of Labrador Reds.  Those few unhurried moments of relaxation and observation were no doubt an important key to their successes.

Be patient and observe.  Succeed and enjoy.

Team Up With Your Guide

During more than one hundred fly fishing shows and in as many presentations to fly angling clubs and conservation groups, I’ve fielded countless questions about Labrador’s angling opportunities.  Second only to “How bad are the bugs?”, folks want to know how many brookies a competent fly angler can expect to catch in a day’s fishing.  That is a very subjective query and I usually fend it off in a rather smart-assed way answering “Not as many as a beginning angler.  You see, the expert knows the answers.  The novice will ask his guide.”

It Takes Two

Through a guide’s career, he develops a set of skills particular to his location.  The rivers, the environment, the clientele and their expectations will, through the years, shape the guide’s profile.  A Newfoundland and Labrador guide typically chooses his career because he has a passion for wild places.  Though he grew up in a subsistence environment, he soon adapts the vagaries of fly fishing.  He has always known innately where the fish are.  Once a guide, he learns how to lure them with a fly.  These skills coupled with uncanny, inherited proficiency in handling small water craft and observing weather bestow on him the needed pedigree to confidently guide sports through this magnificent but often formidable wilderness.  And in such a remote place, his first duty is your safety. But his worth runs much deeper than simply keeping an eye on you.

Before John Gierach came to Labrador, he wrote (a bit tongue-in-cheek, I suspect) that all he expected of his guide was to point to the fish and carry his lunch.  Last year, on a flight back to camp from a successful trek to the coast of Labrador, John told me “Robin, I wouldn’t have caught a single one of those fish without my guide.  He was on top of it all – the fly, the right drift and the timing.”

Given that your Labrador guide is most concerned with your well-being, rest assured he carries a wealth of valuable fishing information.  Partnering with him, teamwork, and congeniality are not only your best hedge against fishless days, they are the sure-fire way to receive and enjoy a rare learning experience.

Changing Flies

With no real biology background, I am admittedly guessing (confidently, however) that the species salvelinus fontinalis evolved in water.  I know that they live watery lives now.  Seeing how they have survived and flourished in lakes and rivers for eons, I’m also going to guess that they see pretty well under water.  My personal experiences give credibility to that assumption.  I have observed a brook trout travel thirty or forty feet to attack a fly that I obviously cast into the wrong end of the run.  (I’ve seen even more hurry off in the opposite direction!) Does it make sense, then, to continue to offer the same fly in pretty much the same way to the same location over and over again?  If my assumptions are correct, Mr. Trout saw the first pass.  How many refusals does it take before you rethink your strategy?

Of course there are occasions when multiple presentations do make sense, for example, when you’re drifted dun imitation is lost among hundreds of naturals.  Or even perhaps when you’re bouncing small nymphs through white water.  But when you strip a big streamer in front of an observed trout, and when you’ve given him second, third and fourth chances to bite, it might be time to switch the menu.  The first pass may have startled him.  The second tweaked his curiosity.  But if the third turned out not be the charm, the fourth probably bored him to tears (aka ‘put him down’).

Change your fly.  Or at least step up to the next run and fish it there, giving the first pool a rest.  Then change flies, maybe even change approach angles, and try the new offering.   And when you’re tying on that new fly, run your fingers down your tippet.  If you feel even the slightest nick or abrasion, change out your tippet as well.

You Got Them, Use Them

Labrador is a unique wilderness, distant and unsullied.  Its vast waters hold true treasures for fly anglers.  Now that you’re finally coming north, bring your best and take home a pile of memories, wrapped, of course, with a renewed reverence for wild places.

Beech Leaves

It’s spring! I know it because at dusk for the past couple of evenings, the peepers have been laughing at the last of the melting snow. This passing winter was significant in my life, one I’ll long recall.

After selling our Massachusetts family home last summer, I landed in a cabin in a secluded patch of the New Hampshire woods. It was late September. Each window offered a view of the woodlands and to the east, the lake beyond. The color and movement of forest life streamed relentlessly through the glass and tugged at my attention, begging a break from desk duties.  My two furry walking buddies always demand it, and all too often I caved. It was a flashy autumn that deeply faded into soft grays of winter.

These woods vary in age, but are largely uncut and offer mature specimens of both evergreens and hardwoods. Across the lake, there is a dark glen of ancient cathedral hemlocks.  Very little grows in these giants’ understory and when there, I am overcome with a primeval sense of time and mystery. This side of the water, gnarly sugar maples line gravel roads and the largest specimens often betray the location of bygone homesteads, now just foundation holes in the forest rubble. Sentinel pines own the ridges and are scattered randomly down hillsides overlooking younger hardwoods that have taken back old fields cleared by farmers long gone. Only tumbling rock walls remain to honor the toil our forefathers endured to keep family and flock. Cherry, ash, birch and maple trees fill out the forest and their fallen leaves, nutrition for coming springs, crackle under boot and paw. Game trails cut safe routes through these hills crossing countless small streams and circling boggy bottoms.

This winter-time, the beeches struck my eye. Though winter now has mostly passed, they cling to their leaves as do their taller cousins, the oaks. The horizontal beech branches conspicuously contrast with the verticality of the bare winter forest. Their leaves are paler now, tan and missing their pink and gold hues of fall, somewhat bleached, I suppose, by sun and cold wind.

I wonder why they hold fast to their foliage when all about them have long since dropped theirs. I’ve read that early on in Earth’s history, all trees were evergreen, much like our white pine, and lost only a small percentage of their leaves annually. Across the millennia, some specimens began to drop all their leaves as they adapted to changing climate and soil conditions. The birch, cherry, maple and such have completed this adaptation. The beeches and oaks remain caught somewhere in between then and now. Some tree biologists propose that beeches hold their leaves to extend the period of mulch nutrition while others say lingering beech leaves capture moisture from rain and snow.

On my fall and winter walks, I developed my own beech leaf theory. They linger, for me anyway, to glow as they snare the winter sun rays before they fall in blotches on the forest floor. They’re my compass, the leaves on their outstretched branches always pointing away from the prevailing winter winds.  Beech leaves stay to rattle in the first snow in late fall – half sleet, half flake. Then, as winter thickens, collect more than their share of downy flakes.

Geraldine Legg was my senior English teacher.  Though her manner was gruff, she was direct, fair and inspiring. Her kids thrived in literature and language usage. One Georgia winter, she required each student to memorize a poem and stand before the class to recite it. And repeat the torture, if necessary, until your presentation was flawless.  Miss Legg gave me the gift of this Robert Frost poem. (If you know it, try singing to the tune ‘Greensleeves’. It works nicely.) Lyrical and fitting, it was in my head all winter as I walked Frost’s New Hampshire woodlands.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

The warm seasons approach and I, too, have promises, duties. And though they’ll take me  to points north, hot days are sure to arrive. When the summer heat bears down, I’ll escape to these winter woods – and delight in the beeches.

Fridays

“Plane!”

“Plane’s here.”

“Plane’s here, b’y!”

It’s a strange little undeclared competition amongst the camp regulars, to see who can first hear the float plane drone into the camp’s air space. After all, keen ears are a key attribute of the accomplished outdoorsman. If you’re not wearing the winning ears that particular flight, then you chime in instantly after you hear that first pronouncement and embellish the word ‘plane’ with a higher inflection or by adding a word or two.

Regardless of who sings out first, it’s a call to arms. Chairs push back from the table and warm cups of coffee are drained in a gulp. Women step quickly, drying their hands on soiled aprons and removing hairnets. It’s a scurry, especially on Fridays – changeover day.

The staff and guides make their way directly to the dock wearing their ‘Friday Blue’ denim shirts. Bear and Georgia, camp dogs, are already there. Georgia looks out to the Otter now taxiing in, awaiting the arrival of ‘new’ friends.

Everyone to the Dock

Docking the Otter

Bear, though equally excited to visit the newcomers, cannot resist the water, checking each ripple for the movement of minnows.  Always fishing, never catching but forever filled with Labrador optimism.

Hunting Fish Under the Dock

Friday mornings bring a myriad of emotions. First-time guests, filled with expected anticipation, will finally discover if they chose the ‘right spot’ to hunt brook trout. Returning guests smile at familiar faces and swear it could not have been a year since they last said good-bye.

Old Friends Return

The previous weeks anglers, many with a tear on their cheek, limp a little with the fatigue served up by a week wading wild rivers. Sad to be leaving, they look past the long return trip toward the comfort of home and familiar surroundings. Most pose with their new ‘family’ to capture a final memory.

Family and Friends

When the Otter is off-loaded of the new week’s anglers and their gear, the departing folks board the big float plane and buckle into their seats to begin their journey home.

Buckled Up

With a last look from the water, the port hole serves as a lens to focus thoughts on the wilderness home shared, the power of a trophy brookie. And the laughter, the food and spirits, camaraderie and adventure.

Shoving Her Off

The nine cylinder radial pops to a start, hums up to pressure and hauls the floats off the water. Passengers on the port side have one last look at the camps. A diminished figure waves from the dock, then gives the ‘thumbs-up’. Travel safely. Enjoy the ride.

Sail Away

The Otter’s drone fades over the ranges. A new week begins. Arriving guests settle into their cabins and assemble their gear. The staff bustles – girls dive into the day’s meals, boys pull on damp waders that are as much Aquaseal as Goretex. All parties will soon gather in the cook lodge for orientation and licensing. Compliant and informed, anglers wader up and make their way to the dock – to the fishing.

Prepared for Battle

It’s Friday at Three Rivers Lodge. It doesn’t get better than this.

‘And May All Your Christmases . . .’

Be White

From all of us at Three Rivers Lodge, to each of our friends and family members, may your Christmas be filled with cheer and love, may your bodies be healthy and lithe, and may the New Year bring you many days, together with friends, on the rivers of your dreams.

 

Brook Trout Tagging Program

Four years ago, after persistent requests, Three Rivers Lodge agreed to host Provincial biologists on our waters to begin a three-year tagging program to study the movements, growth rate and vitality of our brook trout population. We did agree, but reluctantly. Our concern was simply that catching brookies with signs of human tampering might put off guest anglers who had traveled far to experience a wilderness fishery. But we reasoned that the knowledge that we would learn from such a study would make a significant contribution toward our work to maintain the health of our fishery, and would be worth the risk of ‘tarnishing’ the pristine beauty of the Woods River brook trout. Now we’ve learned from twelve years tending these waters that the brookies were healthy. But we knew little about their habits and movement.

So in the spring of 2009, biologist Amanda arrived in camp with lots of gear and passed out to each guide a tagging gun, tags, digital scales, tape measure and a logbook where they could enter all their data. She accompanied the guides on the water for several days instructing them in the ways of a biologist.  The guides caught fish, Amanda weighed, measured, tagged and logged them.  Then Amanda caught fish and the guides applied their new skills.

Biologist Amanda with Guides Dave and Cliff 

TRL guides weighed, tagged and logged brook trout caught by guests for the first two weeks in each of seasons 2009, 2010 and 2011. And for the remainder of each of those three seasons, they logged in each tagged fish that was caught. At the end of each summer, log books were forwarded to the Provincial Fisheries Department. In total, over 1,100 brook trout were tagged and released ranging from 1.5 lbs to 7 lbs, quite a nice lot of data to be evaluated. The tagging program ended with the 2011 season, but we will continue to gather and report data when tagged fish are caught through the coming years.

Brook Trout with Tag by Dorsal Fin

To date, we have received no report or data synopsis from the Department of Fisheries. Though we are eager to dig into their report, we are very satisfied with Amanda’s on-site comments and other trout behavior deduced by our own laymen’s observations.

1.  The abundance of 1-1/2 – 2 pound brook trout is indicative of a very healthy fishery and bodes well for a future population of large fish.

2.  A 1-1/2 – 2 pound fish is three years old. By age four, it reaches four pounds having enjoyed its greatest growth rate in that fourth year. Thereafter, brookies grow about one pound per year and live up to ten years.

3.  Several studies of cold water fishes suggest that, come spring, brook trout vie for feeding stations and the larger, stronger fish take the prime locations. Furthermore, they tend to stay in these prime spots throughout the feeding season until a larger specimen chases them out. Our observations do not support this theory at all. On dozens of occasions, we have tagged fish in one location and caught them again within a day or two up to 25 miles further up or down-stream. In one instance, we tagged a fish at 5th rapids, caught him again the next day 10 miles up at 2nd rapids, then caught him a third time two days following back down at fourth rapids. What natural events would cause a fish to move that dramatically in such a short time?

Frequent Swimmer

4.  We often observe brookies lying in shallow water under overhanging alders and willows. They show zero interest in a fly. None!  They barely move when prodded with a rod tip. Amanda explained that these fish are recovering from a long journey made most likely the night before. Because of the heavy population of predators in the flat water (northern pike and lake trout, many of which are capable of eating a five-pound trout), brook trout move quickly and ‘wind’ themselves in their flight. Once in the next rapids, they seek the safety of shallow water where they spend a day or two recovering.

Winded Warrior

5.  As the summer moves toward fall and spawning season, most brook trout move upstream through the big rapids and lakes toward the smaller feeder streams. It is here in the headwaters that they will congregate in late August, then pair for their September ritual.

All that we have learned ‘hands-on’ through the years about trout behavior and whatever else the Fisheries reports will eventually teach us will be of great interest and may occasionally even help us more often put our guests over trophy fish. But the grand scheme of nature in this unsullied wilderness is much too old and mature for us short-timers to totally figure out. So each day will continue to be an adventure. Would we have it any other way?

 

Busy?

My mother used to say, “Don’t tell me you’re busy, sugar. Everybody’s busy, and they don’t need to hear it from you.” When your actions were pleasing, my elder southern females called you “honey”. When your deeds were questionable (but not outright naughty), they called you “sugar” – endearing, but not quite as sweet.

Point is, I guess we’re all busy and I for one haven’t stopped since I returned from Labrador in early September.  Hence, no posts here.  My busy-ness has taken me to Maine (Magalloway R.), Vermont (Victory Bog),  New Hampshire (Pemi R. for brood stock salmon), the Adirondacks (Bouquet R., Fourth and Fifth L. for LL salmon), and countless stops in between.  So you see, I’m not complaining about anything at all. Just happy to be back and settled into my desk, un-piling piles and trying to cull out what fishing stories need to be told.

And thar’s some good ‘uns.

 

Last Day – 2012

Today’s our last day in camp. The final week’s guests left this morning at 9:00 am. We’ll finish our closing chores this afternoon, pretty much a routine now, but hard work nonetheless. Tonight we’ll have a last meal together, hot roast beef sandwiches and french fries, we’ve been promised. Even perhaps a bite of ice cream for desert. Then the big Otter will fly in in the morning and take us out to town, back to our real lives in the real world. The new wifi system is still on so I’ll post these parting thoughts before that, too, is shut down for the season.

We had another fine summer in 2012. We suffered no injuries save Jan’s broken wrist, no illnesses, good fishing, informed and interesting guests, spectacular flora and berry crops, and bright, powerful fish. The weather tested us many weeks as the finicky Labrador climate can, but we successfully sailed through these tribulations as well. This season, more than most, will be remembered for the especially receptive guests, most of whom truly enjoyed all the offerings this wilderness so freely gives. Dinner and after-dinner conversations were about the fishing, of course, but more often than not about eagles and ospreys, weather and rainbows, northern lights, berries and mushrooms, caribou and wolves. So many guests enjoyed the challenge of the big brook trout and the new and varied methods required to fool them. We talked a lot about strategy and flies and how the clouds and sun affected the feeding behavior of the brookies. This summer was one of inquiry and hypotheses, successes and failures.

And threaded through these fishing experiences and conversations was a feeling of awe. So many anglers were fascinated with the newness of the character of the rivers up here. Two our most enchanted guests were Owen and Robert from Ireland. They came over for two weeks so they could fully emerse themselves in Labrador. Each day when they returned from their river adventures, their faces were alert and fascinated with their day on the water. It was the challenge that they adored, the different waters, various skill requirements and strikingly handsome brook trout. They could have been no more infatuated with each moment had they been eight-year-olds on a Christmas morning.

One of Robert’s Gifts

Owen Wins Grinning Contest

So thank you, Owen and Robert, for your inspiration. And thank you to each and every one of our guests for your patronage, your personalities and your good cheer. You are the reason we are here, on the Labrador, awaiting each summer every new face and all the familiar friends we’ve made through the years. Now get out on the rivers and have a wonderful fall season and beyond.