Remote road less sections of the Taiga region in Northern Canada + Big Cold Water = Trophy Brook Trout. And lots of them.
The section of Northern Canada Tegg and I recently spent a week fishing Speckled trout was in a remote section of Canada called the Taiga region. The Taiga is where the Canadian Boreal forest meets the Hudson Bay lowlands.
Our trip started out from the Sioux Lookout, Ontario airport where we then flew on a small commercial airline another 400 miles North to a small Native village only accessible by air. We then set out with 3 Native guides another 5 hours by water and portages to reach our final destination. Our final destination was a remote camp used by the village for hunting on one of the best Speckled Trout rivers I have ever fished anywhere in Canada. It’s been my experience the more remote, harder to reach, and less pressured river systems produce the best Speckled Trout fishing in Canada. While systems like the Nipigon, with its paved road access produce trophy Speckled trout, it is to heavily fished to produced anywhere near the numbers of fish we caught on our trip. No paved road easy access fishing where we spent a week fishing.
We experienced six days of the best Trophy Speckled Trout fishing I have ever experienced in Canada. The river we fished was massive my any Midwest standards and we used 16′ Lunds and 20 HP motors to run it and many of its rapids along the way. No need for a $100k boat and fancy electronics on this trip. A plain old 16′ Lund with bench seats without electronics did the job. However, this trip would not be possible without the river knowledge our guides had navigating all the rapids throughout the river system.
Our challenge fishing this river was finding cooler areas of the river where springs and groundwater seepage cooled the river. Generally, these were located in areas below or right above major rapids. Once the trout were found we caught lots and lots of them. These weren’t your typical 5″ to 7″ fish stick brookies caught in MN or WI. These were thick, broad shouldered, and up to 5 pounds. Even our “Mr. Average” was in the 19″ to 20″ range. There were truly trophy fish. Our better days we were catching over 40 of these brutes a day. An amazing experience.
We caught these Speckled Trout on both spinning and fly rod gear. Many of the rapids had to be fished from a boat while the guide held us in the rapids. The rapids were extremely fast with varying current speeds that made fly fishing very difficult. We were able to do some walk and wade fishing where fly fishing could be done. Our best fly pattern was a deer hair mouse. An amazing experience to visually see these brutes violently attack a mouse pattern on a fly rod. In some cases they would need a few tries to actually hook up.
Our best spinning lures were Len Thompson 1/2 oz. spoons and number 15 Panther Martin inline spinners. Treble hooks were replaced with number 1 Gamakatsu Siwash hooks. Fluorocarbon leaders were a must because of the razor sharp rocks.
We also did some Walleye fishing. I’ve been to many fly in Canadian Walleye trips and have seen my share of easy, silly stupid, fish a cast Walleye fishing and this might have been a notch above that. How could it be better than a fish a cast? You didn’t catch two Walleyes a cast but all you had to do was drop you twister below the boat. Most of the time it didn’t even reach the bottom before a Walleye violently attacked it like it was his last meal. If you lost him another one was waiting to attack your twister without making another cast. These Walleyes have never seen another lure in their life. We named this place the “grocery store” where we caught supper every night after catching Speckled Trout all day.
I’ve been on many fishing trips and this might have been my best ever trip period. An experience I will never forget.
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