Ray's Corner
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Ray's Corner
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A
Big Fish Story
Being in
the exploration business and often far from civilization certainly gives a body
a chance to tie into some big fish. Now, big fish had been part of my
up-bringing but they had generally been of the East Coast salt water variety.
But here I was in Northern Manitoba in the middle of nowhere (actually, in the The day
had started clear and cool with nary a wave on the water, perfect for doing
shoreline work on a big lake. My partner and I had worked all morning on a set
of islands on the middle of the lake and were having a quick lunch on an outcrop
which dropped off into about ten feet of water. My orange accidentally rolled
off the outcrop and into the lake but as I rose to reach for it, it appeared to
sink. Just as I was about to complain about my bad luck to my partner, there it
was bobbing back on the surface. Again I went to reach for it and this time it
disappeared for good......right down the gullet of the largest northern pike I
had ever seen. We speculated that he must have been the granddaddy of all pike
and that we had been fortunate to have had the opportunity of the encounter. Leaving
our lunch spot we were heading to look at a copper showing on the west end of
another small island. It was separated from our lunch island by about 30 meters
of remarkably clear water just deep enough to allow us to comfortably run the
canoe. As we approached the mouth of the passage we put up a mother duck and a
brood of 12 ducklings about a week old. The duck family proceeded to scatter
into the passage with some vigour, looking for an opportunity to hide from the
canoe and its noisy motor. As we watched the proceedings it appeared that the
ducklings were diving as part of their escape strategy. But their swirls in the
water were too large, and try as we might we could not see the ducklings reappear on the
surface. To get a
better vantage from which to try and locate some of the diving feather balls, I
stood up in the bow of the canoe. To my amazement I noted that we were herding
not only the ducklings ahead of us, but also a dozen or so monster pike which
had been basking in the sun in the shallows between the islands. And as we
watched, every time a skittering duckling got within range, a giant pike would
shoot up off the bottom and inhale its noontime meal. Even though we stopped
with the hope that mother duck could get the brood organized and out of danger,
she could do no better than lead two of the brood to safety through the passage. A few days
later downstream of the lake we hooked into two of the |