Week 5 Update: Despite The Weather, The Fishing Trophies Keep Coming

It was an auspicious week. We didn’t just celebrate Canada Day on July 1 with flags, toasts, a rousing performance of O Canada and a glorious feast of elk loins, maple glazed cedar plank salmon and ribeye steak topped off by a Maple Leaf birthday cake; We celebrated the 150^th birthday of our host country, the land of polite people, hockey madness, French fries with gravy AND cheese and the land of giant northern pike. To make that point absolutely clear, our intrepid group of anglers put on a real pike show for the week. Leading the way, with one of the best pike days ever seen here, John Green put his guide’s memory skills to the test. Without writing things down could you remember this string of landed trophy pike: a massive 48-inch pike, two 44s, a 43, a 42, a 41, a 40.5 and a 40? John wasn’t alone with big fish: there were 28 trophy pike caught on that day alone. For the week, there were seven pike over 45”, our designation of a “supersized” pike. Gerry O’Brien got his personal best with a 47 on the first day. John Green two days after his orgy of big pike caught another 47 and added three more trophy pike. On that day, though, he played cameraman more than a few times for his fishing partner, Brent Laing, who landed not just a hefty 46.5” pike but he added six more trophy pike to his memorable day. We specialize in memorable days here. All 26 anglers in camp caught at least one trophy pike. That’s spreading the love around. Jim Klenk did double duty this week, landing a 45” pike and one of the biggest trout of the season, a very fat 42 incher. Earl Zagrodnik kept another iconic Canadian fish in the mix. He and his fishing partner, nephew James Zagroknik, had a spectacular grayling day on a river 30 miles north of Scott Lake. Earl landed a dandy, a 19 incher. With so many big fish with big teeth around, the arctic grayling tends to be a forgotten player. For those with a love of fly fishing a day on one of the rivers in our region can be very satisfying, even their most memorable day of the trip, as it was for Earl and James. Gerry O’Brien successfully went after grayling on his final day, getting a 16.5” sailfish of the north and hitting 101 total trophy inches to earn his 100+Club jacket. His fishing partner Andrew Troop just missed the jacket but got his Trophy Triple hat as a reminder of his great week. Quite a week that boat had. Weather-wise this was not a perfect week by any means. On the third day of the trip a cold front moved in with a nasty east wind, predictably dropping the trophy count to just ten that day. The temperatures changed the next day, maybe too fast. It hit 80 but in the far north with that kind of heat often something gives. It did. We had a savage thunderstorm. Being in a boat with graphite fishing rods that double nicely as lightning rods just isn’t smart. Most of the boats on Scott Lake came in early that day and just enjoyed the light show from shore. But that was only on Scott Lake. On our fly out lakes our anglers (16 of them that day) enjoyed a perfect day, proving yet again that all weather is local. All in all: it was an excellent week, with 93 trophies landed, and, despite some bad weather, three more hog pike were put in the books. Through five groups we have now tallied nine 47” pike, six 48” and one 51”, putting us on track to meet or beat the all-time big fish record of last season when 34 pike of 47 or better were caught. Stay tuned.