Labrador

“I’m not sure you should be reading that,” lamented my dad. He saw his old copy of Trout Bum by John Gierach at the top of my stack of text books as I was packing up to head back to Philadelphia after the holidays. “You’ll quit school and move out West.” Honestly, how did I not quit school and move out west?

In my days at Drexel, you were more likely to find me sucked into tales about one of Gierach’s fishing trips than one of my engineering text books. Shocker. The story that stuck with me most of all was the one about fishing dry flies for brook trout that were measured in pounds. In what kind of other galaxy was this even remotely possible? Labrador.

Labrador was always kind of a magic word to me. Where the hell was this place? A long way away, but I knew, someday, I had to go there. More recently my uncle was visiting us from Maine for a family get together and asked my dad and I, “Would you like to go to Labrador?” Um, YES.

My uncle personally knew a guide who hosted trips and one of his destinations was in the magical land of mega brook trout. Over the course of a year and a half of hoarding vacation time and extra cash, the excitement began to build. Fifteen or so years ago, I had read about this place and now somehow it was our next destination.

I’m not going to lie, expectations were very high, but having never been somewhere like this, I didn’t have any idea what was realistic. Well, expectations were met and exceeded. I have never seen better fishing in my entire life. It was an adventure from the minute we said we were in. Skeptical Canadian Border Crossing Guards, driving 120 km/hr on sketchy dirt roads through Quebec, not speaking a lick of French, missing ferries across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, float plane delay days, and learning about birds and edible plants in the boreal forest all paled in comparison to the brook trout fishery.

We were spoiled with finely prepared French cuisine, escorted to the best sections of river in wooden square stern canoes propelled by 20 horse short shaft outboards, greeted anxiously by ravenous mosquitoes and black flies wherever we went, and welcomed back to camp by Zula the wonder dog. Caddisflies, mayflies, and stoneflies hatched steadily every day. If fish weren’t willing to look up, they would usually react with a well presented streamer. Most often though, it was the dry flies they wanted. Who was I to argue!

It’s been a dream of mine to go to Labrador for years and it’s still sinking in that we got to experience such an incredible place. Sharing the journey with my dad and uncle made it even more unforgettable. Watching kyped beaks break the surface for emerging caddis in margins of rapid rivers, followed behind by a vermiculated dorsal and broad red tail waving like a flag will forever be burned into my brain.