by Eric Rickstad

The brook trout jumps clear out of the river for the size 12 Stimulator skating across the surface. My line goes taut, and soon I bring the trout to hand—a 17-inch beauty that’s thick enough to go two pounds. Although it’s small for this otherworld called Labrador, it’s also the first trout of a weeklong trip, and since I hail from the Land of the 10-Inch Trophy Squaretail (aka Vermont) I’m not yet acclimated to the absurdity of the place. I consider the trout a moment longer, and then slip it back into the water.

You'd better bring a pretty big net when you head into the Labrador bush in search of native brook trout. (Photo: Jim Lepage)

I take in my surroundings: the stunted black spruce, dwarf birch, and lichen-laden granite and gabbro rubble along the shoreline; a forest that stretches toward the tundra hundreds of miles north from where I stand in waters that run cool and clear with that tannic tint brook trout love. In the distance, a loon calls.

No, really, it does.

On the next drift with the Stimulator I miss a brookie even bigger than the first, perhaps three pounds.  Another “small” one. I look upriver at Mike, one of my three fishing buddies (Jim and John round out the party), and shake my head as if I am guilty of a crime just for being here.

We’d trekked to Riverkeep Lodge—some 125 miles into the bush, on the Atikonak River—in search of a biblical caddisfly hatch rumored to cause brook trout up to 10 pounds to slurp size 16 dry flies with gusto. The shoreline is heaped with so many caddisfly shucks that it looks like soggy oatmeal, but on this first day, in the 80-degree heat and glaring sun, just a smattering of caddisflies perform their dance over the water.

It takes two hands to handle a whopper like this one. For native Vermonters—accustomed to palm-size fish—the sight of a brookie this size boggles the mind. (Photo: Eric Rickstad)

Jim has made the trip five times, and he hit the fabled caddisfly hatch once. It was so good—he claims he landed a 10-pound brookie on a size 16 Elk Hair Caddis—that he says it would be worth venturing here 10 more times just to catch it again. I’ve been on the Atikonak once before, just for three days, but long enough to know that Jim’s seemingly tall tales are true. John and Mike are new to this country, though, and until they get a taste of what this river holds, they’ll wonder if the reality of Labrador can possibly match the dream.

It won’t take them long to find out.
    
Expectations Met
Mike and I spend the rest of the morning with Steve Murray, owner of Riverkeep Lodge, while Jim and John fish with
Wilson, who has been the head guide for 15 years. His knowledge of the area is equally matched by his good humor and wit, and throughout the day, whenever Wilson is within earshot, we can hear laughing. Prospecting with drys, we catch an occasional trout, but no one lays into a really big fish. Still, with each colorful brookie, Steve shakes his head in wonder. Even for him, this place takes getting used to. A 39-year-old welder and lobsterman from Maine, Steve always believed he’d own a place like this in retirement, but when he came to look at Riverkeep in 2006, he couldn’t resist

Although the famed caddisfly hatch never occurred, the author’s group did run into hatches of large mayflies, such as this drake. When the fish were in the mood, they rose aggressively to dry flies. (Photo: Eric Rickstad)

“I knew in minutes I’d buy the place,” Steve says. “I knew I might get divorced, too. But I’d buy it.”

After lunch, Mike and I strip streamers in a boulder field where the river slides out of Atikonak Lake. This water will drive you mad, with its pockets and seams, foam lines, and eddies. You could easily fish one spot all afternoon. But this is Labrador, and big brookies—carnivorous opportunists that they are—usually eat your fly right away. So you tell yourself to keep moving.

As my Black Leech sweeps behind a boulder, I feel the tug that sends a jolt of adrenaline to the heart. Steve sees it. “Big fish!” The brookie splashes at the surface, a gaudy red slab. “Five pounds, at least!” Steve shouts. Suddenly, the fish is off. I shake my head, this time at the thrill of having such a fish on, at the fact that they are even here.

The only way in or out of the more remote sections of Labrador is via bushplane, and the scenery during the flight is breathtaking. (Photo: Eric Rickstad)

Later, Mike and I ask John and Jim how they did. John smiles, shakes his head. It’s going around, this head-shaking
syndrome. He caught a beautiful three-and-half-pound, pumpkin-bellied male on an Irresistible. A trout like that, in near-spawning colors, seriously affects men who consider the best of their boyhood days as those spent rock-hopping freestone brooks for the six-inch kin of these Labrador giants.

“I landed that trout and was shaking,” John says. “I had to sit down. Take it in—the fish, where we are. I’ve wanted to catch a brook trout like that all my life. I told Wilson, ‘I’m good. I’m done.’”

More Than Brookies
For the next several days, we catch more big brook trout than perhaps we have the right to. Then again, there are stretches of days and of river where we fish hard without moving a squaretail. But, at these times, when the sun blazes and the brookies grow sullen, we worry not. Besides, the Atikonak offers more treasures than its squaretails. There are landlocked salmon, lake trout, and pike, all of which run to preposterous sizes. Even the whitefish break five pounds.

This monster brook trout is the author’s best fish from the Atikonak, but he still dreams of catching the caddisfly hatch and laying into a double-digit monster. (Photo: Scott McEnany)

One day, John and I catch pike for our shore lunch. What a riot to know that in any slack water on the river you can catch pike, big pike, at will. Mike catches several lakers in the river, and one morning, casting a small CDC caddis in shin-deep shallows, he hooks a salmon that, before it breaks off, looks to be all of seven pounds. “I’d like to get that one back,” Mike says later, as he shakes his head. Then there are the 15-pound lakers in a cove on the lake. Having these behemoths bend your 5-weight’s tip to the butt is a kick, and a splendid way to while away a hot, glaring afternoon among friends.

Like many rivers in the region, the Atikonak is really a series of interconnected lakes, with rapids in between. Wherever there’s moving water, you can find trout and salmon, but the big rapids and pools are best. (Photo: Eric Rickstad)

Over the week we will shake our heads at caribou stags that amble the shoreline to browse; at osprey that scream from the sky to knife into the river for trout; at bald eagles that feed their young in their colossal nests; and at a staggering vein of pink quartz, three feet wide, that runs through granite clear across the river and into the forest for who knows how far. 

Of Mice and Men
By the time we realize the caddis hatch isn’t going to happen, we don’t care. One morning, we boat two hours to another river with a steeper gradient and faster water. After traveling a mile upriver, we get out to wade. Within minutes, each of us has landed a brook trout from four to seven pounds. For the rest of the afternoon, Jim and I leapfrog up one bank, while Mike and John work the other.
Later, as we’re about to head back, I tie on a mouse pattern. I’ve always dreamed of catching a big brookie on a mouse. What better time to try? I cast the mouse where Jim and I have fared well with streamers. We watch the mouse as I twitch it across the current. “I’d love to see it,” Jim says. Our eyes are glued to the deer-hair pattern. Nothing.

Jim goes back to fishing with a streamer, and I hop up to the next hole. I strip the mouse across a seam, and as
it goes under and “drowns”—WHAM! A fat, male brook trout of five pounds mauls it. Jim looks up.

“On the mouse?” he shouts.

“On the mouse!”

We work our way downstream. The sky is growing dark and the day windy. It’s a haul back to the lodge on a nice day, and in foul weather it’s a slog across the lake. The next hole down, I land another five-pound brookie. My entire walk back to the boat, trout continue to hammer the mouse. In the last spot, which earlier gave up some beautiful fish, Jim works his streamer. No takers.
I hand him my rod with the mouse.

The Atikonak is also home to big landlocked salmon, such as the author’s fine specimen here, as well as pike and lake trout. (Photo: Scott McEnany)

On the first cast, a big fish rises from the depths, and Jim misses it. But on the next cast he hooks a four-pounder. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge male brook trout of maybe seven pounds appears and starts ramming the hooked trout, trying to knock the mouse out of its mouth. Slam. Slam. Jim falls into a crouch. It’s too much. “I’ve seen it all now. I have seen it all,” he says, and shakes his head.
Just before we get in the boat, I cast the mouse downstream and catch my best trout of the trip, a fat hooked-jaw male of maybe six and a half-pounds.

Future Plans
For the rest of the trip, we fish mouse patterns on and off. It’s hard to resist. At times—such as the morning Mike had
a trout on every time I looked up, or the afternoon he hooked the trip’s biggest brookie, perhaps eight pounds—the mouse seems irresisistible and proves to be the most fun “dry fly” of the trip. But it’s no magic bullet. Sometimes the mouse simply has no takers, and one morning, Jim catches a gorgeous five-and-a-half-pound male brookie on a size 14 caddisfly, after we had fished the run with a mouse.

Standing on the dock the morning, before we board the DeHavilland Otter to head back to civilization, we talk about the fish we landed and those we missed. We talk about the caddis hatch that never was. Steve shows us a photo of the river during the caddisfly hatch, when the river is carpeted. Wilson says, “Guess you’ll have to come back then, eh?”

There is silence, save the lapping of water along the dock, as we ponder the possibility of all those big brook trout up and down the river, rising to thousands of caddis. We shake our heads slowly at the dream of it.
What else can we do?

A Vermont native, Eric Rickstad is the author of the novel Reap, a former president of the Southwestern Vermont chapter of Trout Unlimited, and a copywriter for the Orvis Company.

Map by Bill Tipton

Riverkeep Lodge is on the banks of Atikonak Lake, and there’s fishing right out the front door. Traveling a couple hours by boat opens up and incredible array of waters in the area. (Photo: Scott McEnany)

Top Labrador Flies

DRY FLIES (sizes 10 through 18)
•Elk-Hair Caddis
•CDC Caddis
•Goddard Caddis
•Orange Stimulator
•Parachute Adams
•Humpy (red and yellow)
•Irresistible (red, yellow, and orange)
•Green Drake
   
STREAMERS (all in sizes 4 through 10)
•Zonker (black, pearl, and yellow)
•Woolly Bugger (black, olive, yellow, and white)
•Leech (black, yellow, olive, and white)
•Orange Blossom
•Tequilly
•Mouse
   

There are few angling experiences more exciting than watching a huge trout slam a mouse fly. The author had a limited supply of mice, so he was forced to constantly repair his last one. In the photo above, the top fly is what the pattern looked like new, and the bottom fly is what it looks like after several days of abuse by the toothy mouths of brookies. (Photo: David Klausmeyer)