Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Story & Photography By Jeff Bright

Lords of the NorthIMPRESSIONS OF THE ARCTIC AND ITS REIGNING FISH

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

’ve always been prone to grand visions. As a young boy landlocked in southwest Ohio, tales of far-

flung waters and great silvery fish fired my imagination and haunted my daydreams.

Of one such tale I carry a disjointed but potent memory: several men are grouped beside a broad, rushing river…there is an expanse of land, outwardly barren…an infinite sky…a bending rod and a heavy fish held aloft, glistening in the sun. The fish is shaped like a salmon or trout, but decidedly neither. It’s a strong, noble creature reflecting the subtle and shifting colorations of a distant northern world. I imagine it possessing powers of magic and luck, a mysterious and handsome being, exotic in the way the pale-blue ice of a glacier is exotic. Did I read this in a magazine? See it on television? The scene recurs in fragments and flashes of Kodachrome brilliance, persistently begging definition and never failing to stir the same

I

Spring 2011

Lords of the North

deep feelings of awe and wanderlust. Perhaps it’s only the resi-due of those youthful daydreams. Or possibly, it’s the lingering echo of a long-ago premonition…

Nearly 50 years later, here I am on the tundra, standing on a high bluff overlooking a river flowing clean and clear in the sharp Arctic air. Scattered about are the skulls, bones, ant-lers and horns of musk oxen, caribou and assorted mammals large and small. Under my feet the shell fragments of crustacea eons-dead crackle and crunch with each step, deposits from a distant geologic age that, by the constant regimen of cold, snow and ice, are denied decomposition. Plainly, this is a cruel and unforgiving place for living things, warm- or cold-blooded, ani-mal or vegetable. Any creature making a living here has evolved into a master of survival, or has a plan to spend most of the year somewhere else. Flocks of sea birds whirl and dive overhead, terns cry out. On the horizon, four sandhill cranes betray their location with a series of odd, hollow calls. Coming down the river, a group of king eider ducks fly fast and low to the water in a blur of mo-tion. As they rush by, and before they quickly pass out of site, I discern the swift cadence of their wing beats above the river’s purl. What at first glance seems to be a lifeless wasteland is in-stead, upon patient inspection, remarkably alive and busy. And if it is above water, so it must be below.

Vol. 2 No. 2

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

A warm breeze whisks over my face and I realize how lucky I am to be here when I am. The Arctic is on holiday, relax-ing before it unleashes 10 months of chilled fury. The calendar is turning from August to September; it’s the end of summer and all creatures here are hustling to accomplish critical tasks, a sense of urgency in their movements. There will be no autumn or pastoral transition; winter and the “long white” could easily supervene with the next weather front. For now, however, in this brief period of climatic benevolence, I have a rare opportunity, one shared by only a relative few anglers each year.

At the foot of the bluff and beneath the crystalline water, the river bottom drops away to form a deep trench. The river races over the drop in a hurried riffle then swirls back on itself as it pushes against the bluff. Though it appears as if I could reach down and grab a stone from the floor of the trench, I know it’s likely well over ten feet deep. Through the windows of the shifting current I can make out every detail below. I stare intently for a few seconds, then I see them: dozens of long, streamlined shapes silhouetted against the light-colored substrate — sea-run Arctic char, Salvelinus al-pinus, the royalty of northern game fish — curling and circling in anxious movement, many of them over a yard long and exceed-ingly thick across the back, preparing to run the river from the mixing waters of this estuary off the Coronation Gulf in the fabled Northwest Passage to the outflow of a sizeable freshwater lake.

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

The river flows for only two and a half miles, but for the fly fisher what a glorious two and a half they are — eminently and enticingly fishable every step of the way and host to an an-nual parade of 85,000 char that are certainly among the biggest on the planet. The Arctic char is found in Arctic and sub-Arctic waters throughout the Northern Hemisphere, including the wa-ters of Greenland, Iceland and the Russian Kola peninsula, but nowhere does it occur in the numbers or specimen size of the populations found here. “Here” is considerably north of Manitoba, beyond Hud-son Bay, nearly 200 miles above the Arctic Circle in the Inuit-managed Canadian Territory of Nunavut. Formed in 1999 to include the eastern end of the Northwest Territories and then some, and containing the majority of Canada’s Arctic islands, Nunavut’s 808,000-plus square miles of post-glacial topog-raphy is home to less than 30,000 hardy souls, according to the 2006 census, over three-quarters of whom are indig-enous peoples. More precisely, I’m in the Kitikmeot Region of the territory on Victoria Island’s southeast corner nearest the hamlet of Cambridge Bay, population almost 1,500. All this is a lot of consonants, vowels and digits to say I’m just about at the end of the world, squarely in the poet Robert Service’s “Land of Beyond,” and at a destination Irish angler Gordon Sim described as “just about as satisfyingly remote as one could wish for.” Oh, by the way, the Inuit place name for Cambridge Bay is Ikaluktutiak. Translated, this means “good fishing place.” Indeed.

This is the kind of place whose integrity begs protection, but also one that, by virtue of its remote location, and the diffi-culty and expense required to get there, provides for itself a fair measure of security. If I thought it was critical, I would continue without identifying the river. But, my feeling is that would only be annoying and unnecessarily coy. To some degree, the fox has already slipped the trap; information about this destination is available at www.arcticflyfishing.com. Consequently…

The river is the Ekaluktuuk, known commonly as the Eka-luk. It is the short freshwater-to-saltwater connector between 46-mile long Lake Ferguson and Wellington Bay. These particu-lar geographical features — large, deep lake; short, shallow riv-er with moderate width and gradient; fertile bay and near shore marine environment — converge to create a fly-fishing sce-nario better than fiction. The lake provides the fish with spawn-ing habitat and winter shelter under the ice, the bay provides the gateway to an ample food supply for rapid summer growth and the river allows anglers access to the returning fish within a couple miles of saltwater — where the fish will be most ag-gressive toward a swinging fly. For the majority of their lives, which can be quite long — the age of mature adults can range from nine to 21 years — Cambridge Bay char are lake dwellers. More properly, we might call them Lake Ferguson char. Under the winter ice, they live what I can only imagine to be a life of suspended animation. With water temperatures just above freezing, their metabolism

Lords of the North

and physical activity must surely come to something resem-bling a halt, if not a kind of eyes-open hibernation. But as quiet as the long winter must be, summer is crammed with purpose-ful activity. Ice-off occurs around the first week of July and, en masse, the entire population of mature fish exits the lake, moving down the river to the ocean with one aim: to feed intensively on a va-riety of shrimp, scuds and small fish for the brief 5- to 8-week summer. Then, as temperatures drop and the season starts to fade, the return migration begins. Scout fish enter the river around the third week of August, followed closely by the bal-ance of the run. Anecdotal angling evidence suggests that the more precipitous the plunge from summer to winter, the more concentrated the run will be, and the better the fishing. All fish

must return to the lake to avoid freezing solid at sea — saltwater seas freeze at about 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Pleasant weather is fine for birding and general sightseeing, but a snarling cold front spitting snow and sleet can be the ticket for red-hot fishing. The returning fish are extraordinary, if not almost comical in their exaggerated proportions. They leave the river in very poor condition, emaciated, dark and bedraggled, having lost 30-40 percent of their body weight during the long winter. Once in the ocean, they feed like demons, their scales brighten and they come back with enough bulk to go through the grueling cycle again. A 34-inch char can amass so much muscle and fat that it may have a girth exceeding 20 inches. Most 35- or 36-inch “returners” will be pushing 20 pounds by the time they enter the estuary. And, to keep the imagination oiled, within this popu-

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

lation will occur a few leviathans weighing 30 pounds or better.Spawning takes place in September and October over gravel in the lake, under the forming ice, I assume, if necessary. Interest-ingly, and different from other salmonids, not all mature fish will reproduce, as it appears they do not spawn in consecutive years. Given the brutal environment, perhaps it takes a full two years to repair and prepare for second or third spawning events. So, the Cambridge Bay char is a sea-run fish, but for consider-ably different reasons and with a significantly different life his-tory than other anadromous forms of salmon, trout and char. They are adapted specifically to the world they inhabit. In terms of angling thrills, the sea-run char holds its own with the steelhead and the Atlantic salmon. Where the fresh steelhead will rattle your brain with chaos in its initial antics and scorching downstream dash, and an Atlantic will impress with its stately take of the fly and much-celebrated leaping show, the big char grabs with a puncher’s heavy thump and powers immediately upstream and away. The bigger the fish, the further up and out it goes before turning head-for-tail and bolting at a steady clip three or four times as far downstream! If you can follow without a failure of equipment, body or spirit, you stand a fair chance of landing your fish. In the closing rounds, I would rank the Arctic char right there with salar in resolute stubborn-ness. They simply hate to give in. If the char was a jumping fish, salar and mykiss might well be relegated to second-tier status. But, thankfully, all three have their unique charms and a clear winner will never be declared.

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

Lords of the North

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Prior to 2000, the Ekaluk, with its great run of super-sized char, was unknown to the world of sportfishing and destination travel. If it was known, it was only in dreamy concept as an idealized, remote fly-fishing venue where a supreme sea-run fish with the power and mystique to fuel the angler’s wildest visions could be found. In 2001, the veil was lifted and a great gift bestowed to all angler-hood when Swedish-Canadian adventurer Jan-Eric “Jack” Elofsson and Bill Lyall, a respected leader and states-man in the Cambridge Bay Inuit community, teamed to open the fishery on a limited and experimental basis. With Bill the propri-etor and Jack the master guide, and a group of intrepid anglers

carefully selected and invited, Camp Ekaluk was born. But, as these are no ordinary fish and this is no ordinary setting, this is no ordinary fish camp. That Jack and Bill partnered is not by chance, and the decision to open the Ekaluk to sportfishing was not made lightly. Both men carry a passion for wild, untrammeled places and a deep, abiding respect for the land that is Nunavut, which to the Inuit means liter-ally “our land.” By opening this fishery to angling tourism their aim was not to exploit the resource for their own profit, but to, in Bill’s words, “share this beautiful land…its people, culture, traditional heritage, scenery and natural splendor.” Of course, I have a strong hunch they also wanted a legitimate excuse to spend as much time as they possibly could on the river each summer!

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North

Accordingly, the Ekaluk angling season is kept short — only two weeks at the peak of the run — and the number of guests is limited to 12 per week. A few char are harvested for camp meals, but anglers religiously practice catch-and-release and access to the river is restricted to those in camp. B & J Fly-fishing Adventures, Bill and Jack’s enterprise entity, is the sole operator in the entire surrounding area. With these safeguards in place, the human footprint is managed to the fullest extent possible and impacts to the ecosystem’s delicate balance are minimized. By the end of my visit it was plainly apparent these two men and their humble but sturdy operation on the tundra — a collection of simple wooden huts, a Quonset-style cook shack and an outhouse — are capable and conscientious stew-ards of this remarkable resource and enthusiastic ambassadors not just for the land of Nunavut but for the Arctic way. It’s my strong feeling that any first-time guest of Camp Ekaluk with even the slightest appreciation for true wilderness

will come home with an expanded perspective — and a ram-bling stream of superlatives to try and explain the experience. With me this was certainly the case. If could distill my impres-sions, I would say just this:

The Ekaluk River sea-run char is a rugged and ethereally beautiful gamefish in the all-world class of the steelhead, the Atlantic salmon, the Pacific chinook salmon and the Patagonian sea trout; and its environment tenders the visitor an enchant-ment difficult to capture in words, photographs or even in thought. The richest value in both fish and place may be simply in knowing they exist, under the aurora borealis, beyond the northern horizon — almost beyond possibility — as a testament to the insistent nature of life on Earth.

Long live the Lords of the North.

Spring 2011 Vol. 2 No. 2

Lords of the North