Land of Big Brownies

It was spring in Canada last week. There were male ruffed grouse drumming in the forests lining the lake. It is a beautiful place, another world entirely. And the fishing, barring a front of some kind that shuts everything down, is usually beyond describing. In the lake where our little cabin sits, there are more smallmouth above three pounds than any place I have ever seen, and in two or three days we caught more brownies between three and four pounds than I will catch in the Ozarks all year long.

The best thing is, they were hitting top-water lures that first week of June, with a vengeance. I fished a buzz-spin for two days, and though it is hard to believe this unless you see it, there were times when three of us would catch 10 or 12 bass in a fifteen-minute period, and all of them from 16 to 18 inches. Several times a day we would catch the real lunkers, 19-to 20-inch smallmouth weighing nearly 4 pounds or perhaps larger.

It is hard to be disappointed in a 4-pound smallmouth, which is fairly common in Canada lakes, but the 5-pound fish we were after never got to the boat. I am certain that I saw one hit my buzz spin a couple of times, but I didn't hook either fish. One of them showed me a tail that looked eight inches wide. I have never seen such a smallmouth as that one, but it never touched the hook. The bigger ones do that often... they are making beds in preparation for spawning, or actually in the act of spawning, and they seem to be just driving away an intruder when they boil the surface around a top-water lure. At such a time you always see the tail.

But an 18-inch smallmouth in Canada is a much different fish than an 18-inch Ozark river smallmouth because of the body mass, the heft that might make an 18-or 19-inch Canada brownie weigh what a 21-inch smallmouth would weigh in one of our rivers or lakes. When he is 18 inches long, a Canada smallmouth might be twice as old as an 18-inch fish from the Niangua or Gasconade or the Current or the Big Piney. If you want to experience a fight like nothing you have ever seen, catch one of them on a spinning reel with 6-pound line and a fairly light action rod.

Of course, you need casting gear to fish a big buzz-spin, or a full-sized Zara Spook, and you will land about one out of three bass which gets ahold of one. Even with a trailer hook, I had some huge bass throw my lure, again and again. They would sometimes come out of water two feet into the air or higher. It was something to experience, the best smallmouth fishing I have ever had in my entire life.

But as good as it was, there were disappointments last week. The crappie fishing that my fishing partner, Rich Abdoler had enjoyed three years ago was very poor. In the edge of the bays, where fat, hefty black crappie usually spawn amongst the reeds, there were none to be found. Rich caught two, and that was it. Maybe this week they will be there, but we aren't. Also, the great mushroom famine we experienced this spring in the Ozarks continued into Canada, as there were none there either, where there were plenty last year at this time. That was a disappointment for me, the morels we found last spring beneath pine tree stands along the lake were were big and delicious.

Still, the beauty, the solitude and peace found along a Canadian lake is worth more than words can express. You have to be there in the quiet of morning to listen to those drumming grouse, and see colors of a sky where the sun has not yet reached the horizon. You have to be there in the dimming light of day long after that same sun has set, watching a buzz-spin make bubbles along the glassy surface of a remote bay, and hearing the cries of loons around you, before you can truly understand what draws a man back again and again. God lingered here a little longer as he created it all, I suspect.

But it is a rugged place! If you stop on some huge granite point beneath a giant spruce for a shore lunch, and decide to take a hike up into the forest, you may not find a path. Penetrating that heavy growth beneath stands of high birch and great pines is a job. Inside it, there are moose and bear, and pine martens and fishers, little red squirrels not at all like ours and even a few timber wolves. We saw more deer than we ever have before; big red whitetails which I understand carry a brain worm that can spread to moose, and eventually kill them. In moose country, it is not so much a good thing to have lots of deer.

The loons are everywhere, and they have no little ones beside them yet. In time you will see two of them with most females, occasionally riding on their backs. There were however, baby mergansers. Dennis Whiteside, in another boat, found two American merganser hens with a dozen or more little ones, and he watched one group climb up on the mother's back as she carried them to safety, just as the loons do. I can't help but wonder why the mergansers have such large clutches and the loons only two
young. The answer of course is simple. The loons are hardier, live much longer, and survive well, while mergansers are short-lived, preyed upon more. An eagle will eat quite a few mergansers, and so will an occasional otter. Again, I am more certain of the greater mind which planned it all, making greater reproductive potential a balance for those creatures with lesser survivability.

Dennis Whiteside, an old friend and fishing partner of mind, caused me to think about something as we sat around in front of the cabin one day after a fish fry, watching three or four white pelicans and two dozen herring gulls make short work of the fish cleanings we threw out to them. He remarked that all large birds seem to be at peak of populations. He is right about that. The white pelicans, not to be confused with the brown pelicans now facing oil problems in the gulf, are like the cormorants, buzzards, blue herons, even eagles. All are at higher levels than ever before, and most of them over-populated. We watched those pelicans fly in and light, and they are one of the most graceful birds you have ever seen in flight. They ski on those big feet as they hit the water. And we noticed something not seen when they are so abundant in the Ozarks in late fall... the breeding birds develop a flap on top of the beak, like some kind of growth sticking up.

As we fished late one day, a beaver circled our boat, lifting his tail in a curl to slam it down on the water again and again, warning everything that we were intruders. He had a message to deliver... "Go home"! And we did. It is nice to be back in the Ozarks, where some good fishing is to be had, and we mean to have it. But it won't top what we just experienced, in that rugged, wild north country where the water looks like tea; boiling tea when a big smallmouth or northern pike decides to destroy a top-water lure.

See pictures from our trip on my website later this week, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com Write to me at Box 22,
Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net.