The trip had been in the planning stages for a year. The plan was that my buddy Terry would load up his gear and make the 1700 kilometre drive from Prince George BC to my home in Yellowknife. Once there we would load up our sleds and snowmobiles with all we needed for an extended trip in the bush. The trip would see us drive our machines from my front door to Narrow Island (a complex of fishy looking structure 160 kilometres from home. This is remote country with the nearest settlement being LutzelKe’ a 90 kilometre snowmobile ride away.

We would spend the better part of the week camping, fishing and relaxing in the area. The target was to be the Lake Trout that Great Slave Lake is famous for. There are trout to 60 pounds cruising the depths of the cold clear water of the worlds ninth largest (28,930 square kilometres) and North Americas deepest lake at just over 600 metres.

Terry arrived at about 4:00 Friday afternoon and after the greetings were done we did some last minute planning, BSing and hit the sack. Saturday morning was spent loading all of our gear and just after lunch the long journey began. We arrived at our destination about 7:00 PM after a 5 and a half to 6 hour trip. Now we had to set up camp and once camp was set it was resting time again. Sunday was a beautiful sunny morning and we finished setting up the wood stove, kitchen, bathroom and laid in a supply of firewood.

Now it’s fishing time!!! Depth charts of the lakes up here are pretty much non-existent so we had to pick our spots by trial and error, not the ideal scenario but not much you can do. We focused our efforts around steep bluffs, points and islands and we caught fish in several of these areas. Our biggest fish of the trip was caught by one of the mid lake islands a short ride from camp. The fish were not everywhere and finding concentrations was the hardest job. We would find a likely looking spot drill a few holes and work them for a while. Often we would catch one or two fish and the nothing. We did find a couple of locations where we had consistent action with one just off a steep breaking point. We spent the better part of a day fishing this spot and at times you couldn’t get your jig to the bottom with out getting bit!! The flasher were lit up like Christmas trees as we caught dozens of trout ranging in size from a pound to about 15 pounds. It was paradise!!!!

 After a week of this torture it was time to head back to Yellowknife and spend a couple of days fishing closer to home. We spent a couple of days driving the ice roads North of town in search of adventure and trout. On the final day of Terry’s stay we drove up the diamond road made famous in the Ice Road Truckers TV show. We found what we figured was a good spot and drilled some holes. While we marked fish they were being tight lipped and we only managed one fish for our day’s efforts.

While we didn’t hammer the giants we were hoping to we did manage some nice fish and Terry’s biggest trout was a personal best so all was not lost. Those trout better be on their toes because I’ll be back!!!!