When and wherever a man tells a fishing story, there is a deep-rooted
feeling among everyone listening that the man is far from being
truthful. That is a handicap for any one trying to describe how large
fish do run in Canada north of 53. Nevertheless the fact remains that in
Labrador as well as in the West, Pickerel, Muskellunge and Lake Trout
grow to enormous size.
Three years ago on Reindeer Lake, in a net placed under the ice, our men
caught a trout which tipped the beam at fifty-three pounds. In the same
lake, when trolling the following July, we caught one weighing
thirty-five pounds. We showed it to an Indian camped near by.
He told us that a few days before he had netted one much larger, which
he had given to his dogs to eat.
To prove the truth of his statement he hunted around the bush, found the
trout’s head and brought it to us. We measured it with the head of our
own fish. It was, more or less, twice as large.
Muskellunge up to forty pounds are common in the big lakes. Some are
bigger. These fish, when hungry, are vicious and often go for quarry
which they can hardly swallow.
A squirrel swimming across a river is snapped up like a minnow. So are
young ducklings, if they venture too far out from shore. In several
instances we have seen a much larger bird successfully pulled down by a
big pickerel.
Last summer when paddling near a small island on Bear Lake, we noticed
three young gulls take fright, leave their nest on the rocks, and swim
directly away from us. They were full grown, although they had not yet
learned how to fly.
One of those gulls was pulled down three times in front of us by a
muskellunge. Each time it remained under water almost a minute. The fish
finally gave it up as a bad job; but we marvelled at the endurance of
that young bird. It did not seem the worse for its submarine encounter.
[Illustration: Spear-fishing from a canoe]