Central Alberta Fly Tying Club: Fly Fishing at Plummers Arctic Lodge 2023- The Spectacular Tree River-Part 2

Monday, August 14, 2023

Fly Fishing at Plummers Arctic Lodge 2023- The Spectacular Tree River-Part 2

The Tree River is the place of dreams. The possibility is there to catch a trophy arctic char in the brawling Tree River. Karen, Leon and I had been to the Tree River before in 2017. That was a special trip but this was a new adventure and everything was different. The arctic was dry and the Tree River was low. There were not a lot of char in the river and we had the added challenge that the Inuit were there and harvesting char for food!

We loaded up the turbo otter and pilot Larry took off for the Tree River. It was smokey at Great Bear Lake due to forest fires but we flew out of the smoke zone quite quickly! The almost 2 hour flight is spectacular! We flew close enough to the ground to see the wildlife all along our route. We saw caribou, wolves, moose and muskox! The rugged terrain kept all of us glued to our windows, cameras in hand.

Pilot Larry spotted a large heard of muskox that he circled so we could get a good look. We also did a fly by of the section of the Tree River we would be fishing. The Tree River has about 7 or 8 miles of fishable water. The third set of falls are impassable by the char. The Tree has many grade 3/4 sections with gigantic haystack waves and ledges.

Doug realized a dream of catching a large char on the Tree River. He caught it on a streamer close to the estuary. That was awesome! Karen managed several char. We had an incredible moment when she hooked a large char while swinging an intruder at the second falls. The char took off downstream and Reid had to negotiate the extremely rough shore line for almost 3/4 of a mile with the fly rod in his hand. Karen was able to keep up. I was running with the net. Fortunately just above the famous Presidential Pool (named after the late President, George W Bush, of the USA-who fished the pool), I got the net to Reid who was able to net the sizeable char. We all were exhausted from that experience.

We harvested one char for supper. It was delicious!

We tried many techniques to catch the arctic char. This time, intruders and white streamers fished with heavy sink tips got us into the char!

We fly fished for 2 half days and one full day! The experience was amazing.

We headed back to Great Bear Lake by way of Kugluktuk! We had to stop and fuel up the plane. Sadly smoke moved in on our return flight! We were lucky enough to have 3 awesome days at the Tree River. We fly fished right until the plane landed on the Tree River!

As soon as we landed back at Plummers on Great Bear Lake, we changed gears and got ready to fly fish for lake trout and arctic grayling!