The drive down to the Saguenay region is always beautiful, as it's quite mountainous and the snow-covered trees make for a lovely setting. As always, snow was piled up quite high along the shoulders of the highway, often covering road signs!
Autobahn? |
The next spot was in a bit deeper water, around the 500' mark. We spent the rest of the day there and didn't have much luck, but Alex managed to pull up her lifer Deepwater Redfish! Confirmed by the presence of 8 or more soft anal fin rays.
As the sun went down, we brought up our rigs (all 500' with intermittent lures clipped on), and headed into town to have dinner at a cantine. Of course, poutine was in order! We then drove down to another section of the fjord where I had reserved the cabin to spend the night. This area is called Anse St-Jean, I often reserve our cabin there because its village is much smaller than other ones in the region.
Anse St-Jean |
After many more Sébaste, I had something hit hard as my lure was dropping down through the column. I knew it had to be something different; the bite was more aggressive and the fish was fighting more erratically than any of the Redfish. Pulling it up through the hole, I saw that I finally had my lifer Greenland Cod!
Most of the night essentially consisted of Redfish, and pulling up the rigs and clipping/unclipping all the lures was getting exhausting. I had pretty much given up on catching anything new and left one fish biting while I helped Alex unhook a decent Sébaste. Little did I know, the fish biting was a very special one indeed... perhaps the fish I wanted to catch most from Saguenay :o Anyway, I finished up photographing her catch, and proceeded to bring up the biting fish. To my surprise and joy, it was a Sea Tadpole!! A gelatinous fish known locally as "Jello Fish" with little to no endearing qualities, but one I had wanted to catch for a long time.
Elsa plate because we thought it was funny and because they are rumoured to be poisonous, any truth to that?
We pretty much ended the night at 3AM and passed out straight away. The next morning, we rose at 7AM, cleaned up the cabin, and packed our gear. One of the common fish we had yet to catch was the Greenland Halibut, or Turbot. Thus, we headed to a nearby spot my friend had recommended and set up my pop-up shelter. Unfortunately, the Turbot was not to be and we had very little action at that spot.
Before calling the weekend and heading home, we walked out to a deeper spot in 700' of water and decided to make one last effort. I didn't get many bites at all, but finally, as I was jigging, the rig suddenly felt heavier. I then proceeded to complete the process of reeling up all the line and unclipping all of the lures, of course the fish had to be on the bottom jig :p After all of that work, the lure seemed to get caught on the edge on the ice and the fish disappeared. But, upon closer investigation, it was actually some sort of ray that could not fit through the hole! And so ensued a lengthy process of attempting to drill a second hole with my hand auger, nearly breaking my girlfriend's arm in the process (I fell on her). Finally, the fish pulled through and I was holding a crazy-looking and very spiky fish, aptly named the Thorny Skate :)
That fish pretty much ended the trip as Alex's arm was in pain and my hands were getting dangerously close to the frostbite zone after having brought up the rig and held the fish for photos. All in all, we were super stoked with our successes and felt accomplished to have finally pulled up something worthwhile from the Saguenay Fjord!
Man it blows me away reading about fishing at those depths. Love the blog keep tje posts comming.
ReplyDeleteThanks man! It's pretty crazy to be fishing that deep, once you get the line down you really don't feel like bringing it back up. Even catching fish gets tiring if the bite is on.
DeleteEverything about that trip looks strange from my perspective. So, so strange. It's awesome!
ReplyDeleteTrust me, it's a very strange type of fishing for me too... the environment, the rigs, the fish, etc. You might have trouble fishing there with a 1:1 gear ratio fly reel haha.
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