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North to Canada!

Luke Clayton

 My longing to spend time in what I call the “North Country” began when I was a youngster reading accounts of hunting and fishing trips in Canada. This past week, thanks to the organizational skills of my friends Canadian outdoors writer Brad Fenson, Pat Babcock, owner of Cree River Lodge and the Saskatchewan Department of Tourism, my lifelong dream came to be. The fishing and scenery in this wild country was everything I had hoped it to be and… more!

I am always amazed at how quickly one can travel to just about anyplace on the globe today. One morning, I was out in my little cabin behind the house putting the finishing touches on a book I’m writing on hog hunting, the next, I am casting for northern pike and arctic grayling on a remote lake in northern Canada!

The airports got progressively smaller the farther north we traveled. From Minneapolis-St. Paul, we flew to Saskatoon and from there the next stop was Prince Albert. I knew I was in a remote area when our plane landed here.

A few passengers disembarked and a few new ones climbed aboard and we were off for Stony Rapids which has a population of a little over 200 people. Here, I began seeing more and more First Nations people, many of the Dene, Cree and Chipewyan people. These folks were in transit to and from their jobs working in the mines or remote fishing camps. Fifty yards beyond the landing strip was boreal forest and the countryside looked much, I would think, as it did eons ago.

From the moment we landed in Stony Rapids until we departed, I knew I was in the “back country.”  This is the land of remote rivers, lakes and very few people. Moose, woodland caribou, wolves, waterfowl of all sorts, bear and a host of furbearing animals call this remote country home. This is a land where humans are far outnumbered by wildlife.

From Stony Rapids, the crew from Cree River Lodge met us and we began the 1.5 hour drive down a rock road that traversed the most remote country I have visited. From the time we left the airport at Stony Rapids until we arrived at a boat launch on the Cree River, we encountered only one other vehicle.  At this point, the road ended. It was bush plane or boat from here on!

At the River launch, we unloaded our luggage and fishing gear from the van into boats for the trip down the Cree River to the lodge. As we motored through a stretch of fast moving water, I was told that this is where the arctic grayling fishing takes place. I later learned that the grayling are hatched and spend their entire lives in fast moving water. Now I understood why these fish that have interested me since childhood have such high dorsal fins; the sail like fins serve as inverted rudders to help stabilize the grayling in the swiftly moving current.

During the boat ride to the lodge, we spotted several golden and bald eagles and a bear that was feeding along the shoreline. With each bend of the river, a new vista awaited us. This was big, wild awesome country and I was wondering why I had waited so long to experience it!

One more sharp river bend and there was the lodge nestled into a stand of spruce and aspen on the left. There was the fishing dock in front of the lodge where Fenson had told me the fishing is often as good as when fishing from the boat. We were greeted by the folks at the lodge and although far, far from our home in Texas, I felt like I was with home folks. This was home for the next week and I was anxious to explore the area and sample the fishing.

Thirty minutes after arriving at the lodge Phil Zimmerman, an excellent photographer and good friend, and I were catching pike right off the dock using big, flashy Mepps spinners. We boated several 20-inch pike and I was instantly hooked on catching these hard-hitting fish of the north.  It’s funny how reality alters one’s mindset. Before the trip, I thought I would enjoy catching a pike or two and photographing them but it was the walleye and grayling that excited me most. This was before I had CAUGHT A NORTHERN PIKE!  Before this trip concluded, I had the opportunity to catch many fish of all three species, but, since I hooked that first pike, I have become a self-confessed pike addict!

Our trip coincided with the longest day of the year in the North Country and the sun never really set. It was twilight for a few hours at night but never dark. I had been warned that it would be necessary to pace my fishing because with all the sunshine, it’s possible to fish around the clock! I was assigned a guide for the next morning and, surprisingly even with the midnight light, I enjoyed a good night’s sleep.

Next week, we will talk about the awesome fishing and daily shore lunches!

To learn more about the area, head on over to the Saskatchewan Department of Tourism.   

Outdoors writer, radio host and book author Luke Clayton has been addicted to everything outdoors related since his childhood when he grew up hunting and fishing in rural northeast Texas. Luke pens a weekly newspaper column that appears in over thirty newspapers.