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The next day one of the guides did not show up and I had to fill in as a guide for the day. I stayed fairly close to some of the other boats that day since I had not had a chance to get to know the lake, which is almost 70 miles long and twenty miles wide. The real experience of the day was preparing shore lunch over an open fire in the rain. I quickly learned how to find dry wood off the bottom of trees even when it is raining, and also that only a very small fire is required for cooking. Every day was a new experience for me, and much was learned from our native Chipewyan guides who had a lifetime of experience living off the land.
I learned from the guests also. One day in August I took a couple from Colorado walleye fishing. We had good success in the morning and after lunch they decided to try for some northern pike. We pulled into a shallow weedy bay and could see lots of pike swimming lazily about in the water. My guests started casting, and in the next hour the fish ignored everything that was offered to them. The lady was going through her tackle box for the twenty-first time and dug out a top water bass spinner. "What about this?" she asked.
"Go ahead and try it," I told her, "pike will bite on anything." Well, to make a long story short, she caught so many fish that afternoon, her arms got sore and she quit fishing. I had never seen pike hammer lures like they did those top water spinners. I have used them many times since, and they have provided me with action on those hot summer afternoons when without them we would have got skunked.
About the middle of August I was informed that I had to go up to Henik Lake in the Northwest Territories to guide for Arctic char on the fly out camp at the Wilson River. We flew from Black Lake in a Beaver float plane, a distance of 235 miles. By the time we reached Henik Lake all of the trees, except for a few stunted spruce willows, had disappeared. We were in the tundra.
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