Sunday, July 14, 2024. We were up at 5:30 and checked out in minutes. For breakfast, we ate a couple of pastries we’d gotten yesterday at the grocery store, drank some Gatorade/water and packed up. Mark used the in-room Kuerig to make a cup of coffee.
We met Yvonne–another Plummer’s Lodge employee–in the lobby and she checked us off her list. I chatted long enough with her to learn she was a former pilot. (I will learn later that this was quite an understatement.) I asked her if she knew Angus C and she said no. Mark entertained her with several photos we’d taken of groundhogs and skunks. Yvonne was particularly intrigued by the white skunks we see in our backyard at home.
We loaded our luggage onto the shuttle at 7:15 and Daryl drove us to the Chateau Nova where we met Iva and Brent from Saskatchewan. Iva said she was really glad to see another female. I told her I was thrilled, too, because I’m usually the only woman on the fishing trips Mark and I go on.
We also chatted with Ted, who we met last year at Cree Lake Lodge and whose photo of a muskox convinced us to go on this particular trip. Ted was with a friend who’d driven all the way across Canada rather than flying.
Daryl drove the shuttle to the small airport. We loitered in the lobby and enjoyed the company of a black, fuzzy dog that came in with an airport worker. We chatted with other people heading to the lodge and used the restroom. Yvonne encouraged Mark to show Daryl our skunk photo. Daryl seemed to like mostly white skunks, too.
The photo below shows the path of our final leg of this journey, from the pin located between the two seats, to the point that Daryl is pointing to on the map. Plummer’s Arctic Trophy Lodge is located on Smith’s Arm of the Great Bear Lake, which is the fourth largest lake in North America.
We walked outside and saw the sign to the right, with Buffalo in the background. We learned that Ice Pilots NWT (known in the UK and the US as Ice Pilots) was a reality TV series broadcast on History TV that portrayed Buffalo Airways, an airline based in Yellowknife. It apparently ran for six seasons and the final episode was in December 2014.
Mark (in blue) with Ted, whom we befriended at Cree Lake Lodge last year and whose muskox photo (taken with his cell phone) inspired us to come on this trip.
We flew over a lot of land mixed with a lot of water.
Nearby was a De Havilland Canada DHC-7 Dash 7, which Brent noticed was not a float plane, which I also was expecting. I told him I hoped that–lacking floats–we’d be landing on a nice landing strip for us.
We were given a bottle of water by a woman onboard whose duty seemed pretty easy–welcoming people, showing people at the front where the exit was and making sure they could open the doors, as needed. Then she got to sit back and watch the tundra go by outside her window.
About two hours later we landed safely on a grass landing strip. A crew from the lodge was there to greet us and immediately began unloading our luggage onto a cart connected to an old tractor.
One of my favorite things about fish camps is meeting the people who were at the camp the week before. Waiting on the landing strip were a group of guys ready to take the plane back to Yellowknife. They assured us they left us some fish to catch, but offered no suggestions or hints about what worked or not. The guy at the left was amusing, because his suitcase tag had a message that made it clear whose luggage it was (it says “This is my f-ing suitcase.”) Not many people would steal that suitcase from an airport carousel.
We took a nice jaunt down a two-track which led to Great Bear Lake. A few mosquitoes greeted us, but as long as we kept walking, it was a rather pleasant jaunt. A guy named Lee and his friend were wearing head neats and bug jackets, which would have made the walk more pleasant.
At the shoreline were guides with boats. We jumped in with a guide whose name was Manny. On the short boat ride to the lodge, he realized he would be our guide for the week. We got a good vibe from Manny.
It was a short ride to a bay on Great Bear Lake. The lodge seemed to be in a great location.
The rooms were simple and consisted of two double beds, which was an interesting situation for two people who have a king-sized bed. But since we were there to fish and not sleep, it would not matter. The bathroom was fine, in fact so fine, a few carpenter ants would hang out in the bathroom before the week ended. (We had the same problem at our cabin in northern Michigan).
We used the second bed to spread out some of our stuff, put the fishing tackle under a shelf, hung up a few clothes, put other clothes in the drawers attached to the tiny desk, and assembled two rods and reels. We also removed the duct tape securing our box of metal spoons because it was so heavy it had been likely to bust open without the tape.
With that, we were ready for a light lunch of rice with peas, carrots and pieces of ribs, the latter of which I pass on. Also, a mostly veggie potatoe salad. Afterwards, we went to dock and reunited with Manny, who seemed genuinely happy to have us fishing with him…until he saw our rods, reels and super heavy, long leaders. He politely suggested we set our rods aside and fish with his gear. I hugged Mark for the planning he’d done for this trip, asked him not to cry, but that it was probably best to use the stuff our guide used daily. So we did.
Later, back at the lodge, we disassembled our rods.
We used a variety of lures, including the jointed lure shown above, and a couple of giant lures that Manny allowed me to use.
Manny has been a fishing guide for 26 years, and when not guiding, is an iron worker. In a matter of minutes, I knew he was very hard working and that he’d do his best to get us onto fish, starting in the afternoon with a place called the Airport, which was close to the lodge.
I had a hit from a massive fish that took line out, but got off. Mark did great, landing the beautiful lake trout, above. It was 41.5 inches and weighed 26 pounds.
After dinner I walked around the grounds with my camera. The first thing I saw were moose tracks, and I realized the length of the footprint was as big as my 6.5 size shoe. The distance between the moose’s prints was a giant stride for me. The moose must have been huge. Manny said the moose had hung around camp the last couple of days.
I also shot photos of a couple of birds, including this arctic tern. The thing I discovered about the arctic terns is that they had fledgling birds nearby and were very protective of them. I was “bombed” several times by these birds, as shown in this video.
Way at the top of a tree was this redpoll. There’s a tiny splotch of red on its head.
A photo of a fireweed (left) and a yellow-dumped warbler.
Afterward shooting photos, I learned that Mark and I had ordered only one case of Molson and a tiny bottle of Crown Royal, but we did not order any pop–we had assumed that we would have access to pop like we had at Cree Lake Lodge the year before. In fact, the large fridge in the tiny store with lures had only Buble. So, our first night at the lodge involved networking in the hopes of getting some pop from our new friend Doug and older friend, Ted. Both came through with a couple of pops, each. Had it not been for them, we’d have run out of Crown in a couple of days.
Mark and I slept well in our wee bed in spite of the fact that it never got dark in the land of the midnight sun. Manny had gotten us a fan, the first of which had a broken blade, but the second of which hummed us into a deep sleep.