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| Landlocked silvers most about a foot long |
He’s checking lines and hooks and lures and bait. We have frozen baby shrimp and salmon eggs. He’s fussing about a swivel he can’t find so he drags out the other fishing gear box, the one for trout and grayling and Dolly Varden, and there’s the swivels. He takes two. He digs out a skimmer made from an old camp stove pot lid with holes punched in it to skim the fishing holes free from the slush that builds up on it quickly.
We pack some caribou sausage and cheese for lunch with a thermos of hot chocolate and decide we’re good to go.
The day is clear and cold, ten below but no wind, and the trail is groomed. We should reach the lake, two miles away, by mid day. I go first so that if I run into trouble Dan will know it and not have to turn around and come back to look for me when it dawns on him that I’m no where in sight. Out of the yard, down the hill, across the bridge, up the other side and I come to my first switch back at the top of the hill. I get around it a little wide but stay on the trail and soon we’re on top of a long, relatively flat ridge. It’s easy to zoom along and get going too fast on a straight away but you can pay for it when you come to a curve. You can steer into the curve but in certain trail conditions momentum keeps the machine sliding straight ahead. To avoid that you have to shift your weight on the machine to the inside of the curve. Problem is I don’t shift my weight as fast as I use to and I end up off the trail in deep snow.
With a few good tugs Dan has me back on the trail and off we go again. We’re starting down about a mile long hill to the lake. The trail has about three winding descents which only pose a problem trying to get back up hill which is why Dan groomed the trail. In between the slopes are level benches which help you get your speed up to get up the hills. The challenge is always in getting uphill. We never have a problem going down hill so I'm shocked to find myself thrown off my machine into a hole, the machine practically leaning on its side. Dan comes along and gets the machine upright but its not as easy to get me upright as well. The hole I’m in is over a stream and it keeps collapsing under me. Dan is not about to get stuck too so he stays on the trail and keeps giving me helpful hints on how I can get myself out. What finally works is for me to pull myself up onto the trail using the snow machine ski for leverage. Off we go again and at the bottom of the hill I suddenly realize Dan isn’t following. I’m wondering if the hole caught him too. I stop my machine and sit and wait looking back up the trail. When there’s no sign of him after ten minutes I start walking back up the hill. Easier than trying to turn the machine around and ride.
Half way up I hear his machine start up and then along he comes. “I was shoveling in the hole” he says to the where-were-you look on my face. “Don’t want you to go into it again.”
Finally I can see the lake up ahead. To get to it there is a sharp right turn at the bottom of the trail not easily negotiated by snow machine so when Dan was breaking the trail yesterday he put in a wide loop. You snow machine passed the turn then loop around and come at it straight. Easy.
We come out on the snow covered lake drenched in sunlight. Beautiful. A little bump goes up in the feel-good meter.Dan goes ahead and packs a large wide circle around the area he’s chosen to fish. We park our machines where we plan to drill holes and they’ll serve as comfortable fishing chairs. He shovels the snow off a foot square section of ice and as he starts to auger the first hole we chalk up mistake number one. He didn’t sharpen the auger blades and we didn’t bring a sharpener. It’s taking a very long time and when I try to spell him I can’t even turn it. A half an hour and three feet down Dan breaks through. Time to fish. Dan baits my hook and I drop my line as he goes off to start the second hole. I’m settling down on my snow machine seat prepared to wait when almost immediately I get a sharp tug and then the line goes limp. I pull it in thinking the fish got my bait and am flabbergasted to find no hook. “Dan, there’s a tank down there, It broke my line.” Not believing it he comes to check, gets excited that there are big fish to catch, then deftly ties on another hook and baits it. Even before Dan gets back to his auger, just like that, boom, another tug and this one I pull in wriggling on my line. Mistake number two. How am I going to get it off the hook. I have my Athabascan mitts on and didn’t bring mitt covers or fishing gloves. I don’t want to touch it and get my gloves all fishy. Dan unhooks it, baits my line and right away I have another bite.
Dan is back at his auger and I need to get the fish off the line and the hook back in the water with fresh bait. If they are biting this fast there is a school of them down there and we need to get them before the school moves on. So without even thinking, off come the gloves and off come the fleece liners I wear under the mitts. I grab the fish, work it off the hook and drop it to flop around in the snow. My hands are now freezing but I can’t put my gloves back on because my hands are all fishy. What to do. I wash them off in the snow and shake them in the air to dry and now they’re colder still. Just as I get set to get my gloves back on I remember the bait. Can’t do that with my gloves on so I bait the hook, drop the line, prop the pole on its little holder and realize my hands are now messy again. Rewash them in the snow, shake the cold wet hands in the cold air to dry and as I frantically work my hands back into my gloves, jumping up and down, I remember my hand warmers, those marvels of modern day science that look like little tea bags and fit inside your gloves where they produce lovely warmth. None in my pockets, none in the pack, something else we forgot, mistake number three. Dan’s yelling there’s a fish on the line again but my hands are screaming with the cold. I’m not about to take my gloves off. Dan will have to handle the fish. There’s only one thing left for me to do. I take off jogging around the loop Dan put in with the snow machine. Nothing like good old fashion aerobic exercise to warm you up particularly if you're overdressed. Once around and the tingling and burning has stopped. Once more around for good measure and when I arrive back at the hole Dan has removed the first fish and has another one on the line. We abandon the business of 4 holes. This one is working faster than we can handle since my hands are not available to help. I can hold the pole but that’s it. After a while we stop getting keepers. And when we throw back a good half dozen or more that are too small we call it quits. We have more than enough. By now the sun is no longer on the lake and its a good time to head for home.
Fried fresh fish for dinner. Yum.
