Obviously I spend a lot of time studying fishing. At some point in every angler’s life he dreams about places he can’t afford to go to. I have my list burned into my memory banks, hoping someday to begin checking them off. Life is short, and today I came to the realization that I spend over 700 hours each year of my life in Atlanta traffic. So making time to day dream is easy. Finding the time and money to visit these dream places is not quite as easy. I’m without a doubt a dreamer and a visionary. In my head, and with my current budget, I always picture myself driving my truck to these faraway places, sleeping in the bed of my worn out Ford or camping in the backcountry. Roughing it as much as I need to in order to see the places I dream of. I’d eat peanut butter and jelly for weeks straight and only drink Old Milwaukee just to afford the gas. Although the reality of it is that with only 3 weeks of vacation a year, a truck with a quarter of a million miles on it and a little girl to take care of, some long drawn our trout bum road trip just isn’t reasonable.
But the great thing about dreams is that they are free. And that brings me to Volume 1 in this series of posts. The first on my “wet dreams list” has been there since I was young. Growing up in the northeast fishing small brooks and beaver ponds for brook trout was how I spent my summers. Although I caught plenty I considered a prize, I never caught a true trophy. When someone first showed me the old Lee Wulff and Curt Gowdy video from the Minipi River I was blown away. It didn’t even seem possible there were brook trout of that size. My favorite part of this old video is about 20 minutes in, where they tie a buck tail “skater” on a hook with thick black thread and no vice. The simplicity is astounding. It leaves me wondering if fishing was just that simple back then or whether fish in land that unexplored are just that barbaric. When’s the last time you tied a fly streamside…..without a vice? In Labrador it seems a 3-5lb brook trout isn’t that uncommon to this day. Coopers Minipi Lodge offers trips, although they run between $4 and $5k, per person for a week (and that’s far from all inclusive). So unless I win the lottery or sell vital organs, this is an expensive trip I most likely won’t be taking anytime soon.
Every so often I watch this video and dream of what fishing was like back then. I can only imagine the resources it took to get a film crew and film equipment of that era to that remote wilderness to film this clip. It’s certainly a classic and worth your time to watch.