More Lab stuff

Our drive from southern NH to Labrador City took over 20 hours.  The first half was pretty uneventful.  Then when we headed north from Baie Comeau on the St, Lawrence River things got interesting.  We pretty much left civilization behind, other than a blighted landscape of high tension power lines, huge dams destroying entire watersheds and huge mines scraping off mountains and filling lakes with rust-red effluent.  All necessary(?), but unfortunate by-products of modern life. Anybody following events in NH has heard of the Northern Pass project that would run high tension towers/cables across northern NH to bring "green" power to the northeast urban corridor.  At least 40 additional miles of towers would be built around Pittsburg, NH and additional high towers would be built on existing right-of-ways.  This video is a sample of the swath of destruction that would be cut across northern NH. From our float plane you can also see some of the huge mines that have leveled mountains and filled lakes in northern Quebec and southwestern Labrador.

Enough depressing stuff - on to the the fun stuff:  In Labrador City we stayed in a nice motel and made our last visit to a WalMart where we wisely bought bug nets - the best $1.97 I ever spent! The 150-mile float plane trip to the lodge showed us that where we were going to fish was unlike any other place I have ever fished.  The landscape made Minnesota's Land-of-Lakes look like a desert! Water everywhere and probably fish everywhere, too. In addition to water, we saw patches of snow both on the July 8th flight in and the flight out on the 15th.

The trees were quite a bit smaller, due to lack of nutrients and shorter growing season.  And the ground cover was white lichens, or caribou moss.  It was soft and fluffy and blanketed the ground, covering boulders. In past years the caribou would migrate through here and we hiked along their trails to reach some of the areas we fished.
Each evening after dinner Kevin, camp manager and head guide, would discuss plans for the following day.  We were assigned an area to fish and our guide for the day.  Each area was like having your own private river.  Some days we would get in a boat with our guide and motor across to an inlet or outlet of the lake.  The inlets were rivers and we would fish a few hundred yards or a mile or more of river. Some areas required a hike around lower rapids and then another boat ride and another hike. 

  My best day of fishing with a lot of fish caught was one of those ride, hike, ride, hike trips.  That is where I caught the lake trout pictured in the previous blog and this 5+ pound brook trout. It is also where I stood on a flat boulder and caught 8 brooktrout - smallest 2 pounds and largest a little over 3 pounds.  What a rock! These fish were caught on woolybuggers and woodduck orange streamers, but the water was so clear and the pool so deep that I saw the take on almost every fish.  In addition to landing 8, a couple others got off the hook. That day I was fishing with Dave from another group of anglers from Maine and guide Anthony.  Here is a video of Dave with our guide Anthony landing a fish in the middle of the rapids on the next boulder down from "my rock."

Unlike the rivers in NH and ME and other northeast states, these rivers were not dammed or channelized for log-drive purposes or to harness the water power for industry.  It really gave a flavor of what the rivers, lakes and fishing would have been like in New England before our European ancestors "tamed" it.  That's it for now.  Stay tuned for the next installment of "The BSC goes to Labrador."

Labrador Rocks!

Just got back Saturday night from a week at Three Rivers Lodge in the wilds of Labrador.  Five of us caravaned almost 1,000 miles north, then took a float plane another 150 miles to the lodge on the Wood River system.  Short synopsis: wild country, many black flies and mosquitoes and many LARGE brook trout.
Here is a video of my fishing buddy Randy landing a "small one" of about 2 pounds.

A 2-pounder was what we called a "tagger" as a couple of the guides would weigh, measure and tag any untagged fish over about a pound-and-a-half.  Most fish over 3 pounds had already been tagged and they would record the tag number in their log.  We caught some fish that had been tagged three years ago (this was the third year of a three year tagging effort.)  We didn't catch many fish that were too small to tag.  Most were probably about three pounds.  My biggest brook trout was 25.5 inches long and about eight pounds, caught on a size 12 Royal Wulff.

Quite a few were in the 5 to 6 pound class.  About an hour before I landed the one pictured, I caught a five pounder and on the next cast got a six pounder.  That was pretty unusual, but very memorable.  My biggest fish was a 12-pound lake trout caught on a Woodduck Orange streamer.

I probably caught the most fish on large black woolly-buggers, but also quite a few on Royal Wulff, Royal Bomber, Prince nymph, red brassie, Alder Fly dry, and Woodduck Orange streamer.  I hooked and lost what was probably my biggest brook trout on a Wood Special streamer.  I had been trying to catch that fish all afternoon and when I finally hooked him he swam to the surface, turned and slowly swam away and when I put pressure on him he came unbuttoned. Drat!!  My last fish of the trip was caught on my Black Ghost Clouser fly, that is also deadly on LLS in ME and NH.  I'll be adding a few pictures and videos over the next few days.  Wow, what a trip!