(Host) Commentator Willem Lange has been spending a few days in the brook trout country of northern Qu bec, a region that seems to be improving with age.
(Lange) I’m standing at the head of a heavy rapid at the outlet of Lake Assinica in Qu bec. The western sky is blood red with smoke, and darkening; in the east, the moon rises above a distant, blinking Hydro-Quebec microwave tower. Skeletons of dead spruces, victims of a great bush fire here years ago, rise against the sky like gaunt Giacometti bronzes.
The evening is dead quiet, except for the roar of the rapids below. And a brook trout the size of a canoe paddle blade has just risen to my streamer fly, sniffed at it, and sunk back down into the river. It’s like having a tyrannosaur run across the road in front of your car. Both creatures are improbably large and aggressive; and both live in a forgotten, irretrievable past.
“Mmm, big fish!” murmurs Roger, the guide. “Now, my fren’, you change da fly.” I know better by now than to argue with Roger. Especially now, with the last light fading. “If he want dat fly,” he says, “he have it in his mout’ right now. He don’t want. You change!” I change – clumsily in the twilight, fingers shaking with excitement. I straighten up and cast the big white Muddler just above the spot where the streamer was rejected.
We hold our breath. The fly floats seductively on the slick surface. Suddenly there’s an explosion – like TNT going off under a blasting mat – a huge humped back rises above the water, and the line pulls taut. The rod bows almost to the water. The power is unbelievable. I may have died and gone to Heaven.
We’re spending a few days about sixty miles northwest of Chibougamau, Qu bec. We arrived in a little Cessna with a load of beer for the camp that had us flying uphill all the way.
By pure good luck, we’re the only guests in camp. We were here once before, in 1979. I brought home a five-pound brook trout, which was the largest I’d ever seen. This week we’ve seen half a dozen larger than that, the biggest over eight pounds. The difference is the result of conservation. Used to be, anyone could fish with any gear and take home five fish. Now it’s fly-fishing only, and guests may keep one trout. This rule wasn’t made for noble reasons; they were purely economic. But they work!
With only two guests in camp, Roger and the cook, an energetic Canadienne named Gigi, we have some time to spare. We’ve spent it bridging the linguistic gap. Then there are the loons calling, and the islands floating far off in the lake, the moon shimmering on the water. And then there’s tomorrow morning, when we have to go. But right now there is a huge trout on my line, and he’s headed down the rapids. “Uh-oh!” says Roger as the fish enters the first standing waves. “OK, my fren’!” he whoops. “‘Ere we go!”
This is Willem Lange up in the bushes of Qu bec, and I gotta get back to work – but not right now. I’m busy!
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in Etna, New Hampshire.