THE GIANT BROOK TROUT OF IGLOO LAKE
Part Two

The incessant Labrador winds continued to battle us from the East, off the cold, ice-berged North Atlantic. They brought fog and rain, day after day. If you go to Labrador and enjoy mild southwest winds and sunny days, you are indeed privileged and will doubtless experience the world's greatest brook trout fishing.

As soon as the winds died down at Igloo, caddis and mayflies began emerging, and giant brook trout sipped them in obligingly with the relish of a Cape Codder slurping down Wellfleet oysters.

Labrador guides are warriors of the winds, constantly struggling against them to position their fly fishermen where they can cast to rising fish. East winds are a curse; they bring white caps and an early return to the lodge's woodstove and sometimes too many pre-dinner Captain Morgans.

Despite the constant threat of possible bad weather, Labrador's flyfishing veterans fervently make their annual pilgrimage. The rewards are too incredible to resist.

The flyfishing season at Igloo begins at ice-out in early June, when the great lake opens for legendary bush pilot, Jim Burton, and his classic Beaver float plane to deliver staff, supplies, fuel, and equipment. This year ran cold and late by several weeks. The first flyfishermen of early June had to come in by helicopter because Igloo was still frozen.

As we sat by the woodstove, shedding the chills accumulated from a day of flyfishing against the relentless, damp east winds, I was thankful for all the luxurious creature comforts of the lodge, including the gourmet cooking. I marveled at how every piece before me, even the 2,500 pound generator, had to be flown in by bush plane or helicopter. Even the Gander River boats, 18 to 25 feet long, had to be tied to floats of the single-engine Otter. This isn't a business you get into unless you're willing to work hard and spend a lot of money to make the magic possible. With only about two months of prime fishing between freeze-ups, this is a big and risky investment unless you have world-class fishing. Igloo has just that.

Walking around the trout camp, it became obvious that the first obstacle to building a world-class lodge here was the sub-structure of ancient, pre-cambrian bedrock and permafrost. Tough digging. The Newfoundlanders who work here are notorious for their toughness, honesty, and willingness to work hard and long. I'm honored to have a few of them for my friends.

In early June, the suckers spawn in the streams. The giant brook trout follow them, eating their eggs, much the same way that rainbows follow spawning salmon in the streams of Alaska. The bears come to the streams to gorge themselves on the roe, too. The trout, though, are followed upstream by the pike, which grow to prodigious proportions feasting on the brookies. It's amazing to cut open a pike and find a two or three-pound trout in its viscera.

The flyfishing sesason neatly ends cyclically with the giant brookies returning to the streams to spawn. In between, many giants move to the deep, cold depths of the lake, where only the prolific hatches of caddis and mayflies entice them to the surface, providing the world's finest dry fly fishing for them.

Each morning after a breakfast to sustain a bear, including eggs, sausage, home fries, pancakes, French toast, fruit, coffee, juice, and just-out-of-the-oven home-made breads and pastries, we packed our gear and waders, to load up the hand-crafted Gander River boats. (Now that I'm out of Chef Todd's reach, I can confess to filling my pockets, too, with his home-made cookies.) In this age of synthetics, the wooden Gander River boat seems an anachronism or traditional affectation. But its practicality is indisputable. Tough, dependable, and maneuverable, they're the Mack Trucks of the bush. Metal boats are noisy and can't absorb the punishment of smashing into hidden, unavoidable stream boulders lurking just under the surface.

We motored to Addison Lake, one of my favorite waters here, where there is a veritable smorgasbord of fishing possibilities. Here, the east winds are often tamed by coincidence of a deflective hillside.

There are so many waters to choose from. I regret I couldn't fish them all. Tough choices. River fishing in Beaver Brook, Lloyd's Delight, and Igloo Brook, where Helen and I released forty-eight fish in two hours. Dorothy Lake where only a handful of fly fishermen have ever taken the 45 minute walk through tough, boot-sucking bogs and blood-sucking hordes of black flies and mosquitoes. Where fifty fish a day is par. Almost all between two and five pounds, with much larger giants possible.

As we both stood to cast from the big, stable Gander River boat, a huge mayfly, very likely a hexagenia, the size of a giant moth, struggled on the water surface to fly off. It never made it. A Dorothy Lake giant slurped it in. The mayfly was part of the vanguard of a green drake hatch that peaks from late July into August. These mayflies are so big, so nutritious, and consequently irresistibly tantalizing to every big trout at Igloo. Helen cast her size#10 Royal Wulff to the cruising fish, anticipating its forward movement perfectly. The fly landed softly, like a fluff of dandelion in the giant's path. The trout arched its back, sucking in the imitation, much the way a humpback works the surface at Stellwagon Bank. At times like these, you're glad you bought one of those expensive Hardy or Abel reels that sing when a big fish makes a long, fast run, threatening to enter your backing. Helen's heavy fish went deep, as the giants often do, and for nearly five minutes avoided the surface, testing her twelve-foot, 4X tippet. When the trout finally came thrashing to the surface, there was no doubt this was an incredible fish. After one quick photo, Helen's main concern was to release this future breeder back into the water as quickly as possible. That was only the beginning of a magical morning that would build up the lactic acid in our muscles. The ospreys fishing overhead would have loved us to share the trout we released with them.

Picking a time to fish Igloo, indeed anywhere in Labrador, is always a gamble. I love July because the weather is usually good and hatches are reliable. There have been early season hatches of mayflies, though, of unbelievable magnitude, snow storms of mayflies that bring about a feeding orgy of rising fish everywhere you look. But one fact is certain, the giants feed voraciously whenever they can. As a result, they attain their greatest weights and girths later in the season. After so much constant, heavy feeding, in August and September they can look like enormous footballs.

But these much heavier fish can sometimes be more challenging to catch in the late season. Some of them will have learned what a fly looks like and what a hook feels like. Good flyfishermen will always do well, but the surface-flogger may have to work harder for his fish and refine his presentation, more carefully matching his fly to the hatch.

Igloo Lake wisely values catch-and-release fishing. Helen and I both have some enormous brook trout on the walls of our home. We treasure their beauty and the memories that they evoke. But in recent years, we've been releasing all of our giant fish. Years back Dennis Alakoski, who taught me how to flyfish, sternly advised me, "If you want to eat a fish, go to a fish market or a restaurant." We've taken his advice and don't kill a giant brookie; we don't want to waste its potential to breed. Releasing a giant gives another angler the chance of a lifetime to catch him again, too. What price do you put on that kind of experience? Certainly a lot more than the fishmarket price of five dollars a pound.

It's a tough decision; the lodge allows an angler to keep one trophy fish if he so chooses, but few accomplished anglers I know are killing any giants anymore, at least not after they've already put one on their wall. The giants are finally being recognized to be the genetic treasures they are. Each giant brookie that struck my fly was subsequently unhooked with a hemostat and surgical delicacy, the kind of respect a giant trout deserves.

Igloo Lake Lodge is built next to the outflow of Igloo Lake. Igloo Brook runs all the way to the Eagle River, which flows to the sea and offers some of the finest salmon fishing in the world. This is the common denominator of all world-class brook trout waters. Access to the sea permits an infusion of migratory sea run trout and genetic exchanges and augmentations that end in fish of phenomenal size and numbers.

Watching my mate and best friend catching many giant brook trout until her arms were sore, laughing excitedly with the utmost appreciation of this world-class phenomenon is a memory I'll treasure. I was proud she had no trouble keeping within the 50-pound bush plane packing limit. I was proud she caught the biggest trophy of the trip. I only regret that I took the net from our guide to help her myself. Wayne was used to using a small net that a trophy fish could barely fit in. I lost the enormous trout. The fish was half again the size of the net, which would have filled with a four-pounder. The trout's girth was enormous and its body was scarred with pike bites. Its head stretched out over one side of the frame, and half-a-foot of its tail stretched out over the other side of the net. Helen had earned bragging rights for the largest giant of the trip and would have released the trout anyway. But I sure wish we could have gotten a photo of that giant and captured the smile on her face.

We never got to fish Archie's or Nippard's, two legendary waters at Igloo. They beckon, and I know we'll be back one day to fish them. If all goes according to history, I expect Helen will catch the biggest brookie there, too.

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