Day 78 – June 20 Summer Solstice

It was an early rise at 6:30, I was going fishing on Lake Labarge. I had tracked down a guide a couple of days earlier but his first open spot was today, and thus our protracted stay in Whitehorse. Diane, undoubtedly bored with my whining about my dry spell in fishing success in this, the land of fish, was more than happy to postpone moving on if this would shut me up.

There were two other guests on the trip, a couple from the states who were on a cruise and had no transportation so I offered our guide that we would pick them up at the Westmark Hotel in town as it was on our way. We had arranged for an 8:00 pick up and had to make one stop en route for them to pick up fishing licences at a gas station along the Dawson Highway.

Our guide Rob had given me clear directions to his home/base which got me to his dirt road. From there my written instructions said 4th driveway on left, by the big motor home. Slavishly keeping to those directions I drove past a big motor home on the right until the road started to narrow. Taking advantage of a turnaround spot in the road I pulled over and walked down the road a bit further to see if there were any more driveways. I soon passed a sign advertising organic unpasteurized honey and out of the corner of my eye saw some motion. Thinking that I could get directions I headed down the driveway. I saw a woman walking out of an outbuilding carrying a flat of plants, no doubt having been put inside for the night to protect them from the still coolish overnight temperatures. What struck me as strange was not the plants but what she was wearing – nothing, starkers, buck naked, birthday suit – was all our little gardener was wearing.

I did an abrupt turn around and headed back towards the BRT, double time. I had read all about what to do when you encountered a bear or a wolf up north but not a word about confronting a buck naked gardener. Retreat seemed to be the best option. As I returned to the rig a couple of things passed through my dazed mind. Firstly I hoped this was not a dress code for the whole road, I didn’t relish the notion of a naked guide, regardless of how much I wanted to fish. Secondly I wondered what plants were in her flat, although in this case, based on what I had just seen, ‘flat’ seemed an inappropriate word. Suddenly it came to me. I bet she is raising melons, that was it for sure. Some people talk to their plants to encourage them, she was obviously a more visual person and was just trying to set a worthy example for them. Large healthy melons, it all made sense now.

Fearful of what might lie further down the road I decided the the motor home on the right looked a lot more promising than it had earlier and since it was now on my left it felt better. We met our guide, Rob, coming up the road on his quad, having seen us drive past he was no doubt trying to spare us from an encounter with this last outpost of the Doukhobors.

Mercifully Rob was fully clad. We made our introductions and headed down towards the provincial park, a short distance back up the road where clothing did not seem to be an option. I helped Rob launch the boat and after a good bye wave to Diane, who was spending the day in the area, we were off. Lake Labarge, as made famous by Robert Service, is a very large lake, effectively a widening in the Yukon River, and this morning found it unbelievably calm, mill pond flat in fact.

We’re off

We motored north full throttle to where Rob had some confidence we would find fish. For the first part of the trip we were going to troll for lake trout, not my preferred style of fishing, or Rob’s for that matter, but one enjoyed by the two other guests, Ed and Karen. Trolling for lake trout is a fairly straight forward process, after letting out the prerequisite 40 pulls of line from the reel, the lead weighted line sinks a brilliant green lure down to where the fish live. The rod is placed in a rod holder and as the boat motors at a slow speed, you wait. As I had witnessed on the river fishing on the Skeena, this is fishing you could do while sleeping.

Lake Trout fishing

Once the rod starts to twitch, you wait a couple of seconds, set the hook and start reeling. The reeling generally goes fairly easily until the fish sees the boat and then heads south, with a vengeance. Ed was standing next to the first rod that had a strike and he reeled in a nice sized lake trout, running about 6 pounds. Not long after was my turn, resulting in a slightly larger fish, a confidence building trend. Not long after Karen boarded an even larger specimen. I landed one more small trout and after a long dry spell, with no sighting of fish on the depth sounder we headed north on the lake towards the outlet of the lake where it resumes being the Yukon River.

Now that’s a fish

On the way we passed below where, the day before, a forest fire had been burning on the hillside. Helicopter water bombers were still working some of the smoking hot spots. Rob also drew our attention to his depth sounder as we passed over the submerged wreckage of the A. J. Goddard, a stern wheel paddle boat that had sunk in Lake Labarge 110 years ago. Having only been discovered in July 2008, by a local archaeologist, there have been several explorations of the wreck by National Geographic and the Nautical Archaeology Institute of Texas. Unlike most wrecks of this type the Goddard had not been destroyed by ice, and as it settled in an upright position it created a perfect site for exploration, the ice cold waters of the Labarge preserving many of the artifacts on board, a long lost reminder of ‘those men who moil for gold’.

Considering the size of the Yukon River, its exit from Lake Labarge is well disguised. Rob took advantage of navigation markers, originally installed for stern wheelers like the A. J. Goddard at the end of the 1800’s, to find the channel as his depth sounder showed ever decreasing water depths. In places Lake Labarge is over 500 feet deep but at the mouth of the river we were recording depths of 4 feet. In conjunction with the powerful boat motor the fast flowing river moved us quickly past the surrounding landscape of trees and rocks. Rob had a place in mind where he and I could fly fish for Grayling while Ed and Karen could use light spinning gear.

When we turned and headed up stream to beach the boat the power of the river became very obvious as our pace slowed dramatically battling the downstream current. Once we were landed Rob and I put on our waders and I strapped on my bear spray. Ed’s first cast from the stern of the boat resulted in a nice sized Grayling. A large Graying runs 16 inches, small by comparison to lake trout, but they are an aggressive fighter and great fun on light tackle.

Rob and I headed downstream a bit, both wearing inflatable life vests as we waded knee high into the fast flowing Yukon. I was fishing a dry fly, optimistic that my success of the previous afternoon would be repeated. Rob was fishing a sinking tip with a wet fly and was quickly out fishing me so switching tactics and armed with a fly matching his I was soon into fish. For a while I was catching 12 and 14 inch grayling on every cast – the dry spell was finally over. Grayling have a beautiful long dorsal fin that flowed like an iridescent pennant in the clear water of the Yukon as I reeled in fish after fish.

Reluctantly I had to abandon fishing and return to the boat for lunch, on my own I would have gone hungry but I didn’t want to appear anti social. Rob had filleted the smallest of the lake trout and kept a large grayling which he split. He had fried up both on his Coleman stove. Served on a split croissant with fresh tomatoes and lettuce the ‘sandwiches’ were delicious. Fish doesn’t get any fresher than this.

After lunch Rob and I returned to our spot to fish but the action had quieted (note to self, next time be anti social and hungry) . It started to rain and I had left my raincoat back in the boat but I wasn’t going to give up 10 minutes of fishing to stay dry so fish on.

We had agreed that at 4:00 we would head back out, clean our fish and troll again. Our target was to be back on shore by 6:00. Rob found a beach in the lee of the now increasing wind where he filleted the fish, drawing an attentive audience from the local gulls and one bald eagle. It was amazing to watch how big a piece of scrap one seagull can swallow. My gag reflex kicked in just watching. By the time we had finished cleaning the fish it was time to head in.

Here comes supper

Diane met us at the boat launch. She had spent the day reading, sorting some of our vast collection of tourist info and spent some time in the bakery down the road talking to the 75 year old proprietress who pretty much ran a one woman show of baking and running the store. In winter she travels to Mexico. The Yukon is full of characters.

Lunch at the Bakery

We returned to Whitehorse and dropped our passengers off at their hotel, happy with their Yukon experience. We returned to our site where I barbecued up one of the lake trout fillets along with some asparagus. Frankly We were both disappointed. The meat was not as tender as I would have hoped and certainly not as tasty as the smaller fish we had fried that afternoon. Fish chowder may be in our future.