Don Petican, another fishing buddy, had a cottage on Mosque Lake.
He was absolutely correct. Our first visit to Mosque Lake with old buddy, Art Walker, was indeed memorable, from the trials of negotiating the trail recently carved out of the bush and barely adequate to drive a car on, to a couple of magnificent seven-pound beauties that fell to our offerings. EGBs,4 those superb little spoons made in Switzerland, were, along with the aforementioned Halfwave, our lures of choice and still are these days, right up there with the Crocodile wabler.
A rather imposing figure, tall and lanky with what looked like a permanent scowl etched on his countenance, Russ Wells strode down the hill toward his dock where we were unloading our outboard motor and fishing gear.
“Don’t you boys think you should get permission before you unload that stuff?” he barked at us from halfway down the hill. “This place is private you know—for our guests.”
I mustered my best smile and scrambled up to meet him before he reached the bottom, trying to mollify his hostility by apologizing for not having gone to meet him first. Justifying our actions by attributing our excitement at the possibility of doing a little fishing after the long drive up, I commented on the desperate state of the road, “Boy, that last couple of miles is sure one hell of a drive—at least in my old jalopy anyhow.”
Seeing him grimace even more threateningly, I realized, too late, that he probably had built the bloody road himself. Then, attempting to extricate myself from the predicament, I put my foot in my mouth once again by commenting on the adventure the drive on the road had given us, acknowledging that it must have been pretty tough building the last couple miles.
“Built it myself. Built this whole damn place myself,” he replied curtly.
His entire demeanour, however, suddenly changed when he saw us both reaching for our wallets, “Yeah, I’m Wells. Guess you want to rent a boat, right. It’ll cost you a couple of bucks. That okay? You need minnows? Got some for sale in that box in the water by the dock. A buck, a dozen. Worms don’t work worth a damn here if you’re after big trout. They’ll just catch you a bunch of little ones.”
After we introduced ourselves and thanked him for the live bait instructions, Art explained that we just fished with artificial flies and lures except when ice-fishing where minnows definitely seemed superior.
Chuckling heartily, Russell pointed to the dock and indicated the boat we should take. “The less leaky one,” he said, explaining that the boats had only been in the water a couple of weeks because the ice was late going out.
As a parting shot, he added, “Gotta soak up a little before they tighten up, you know. You’ll be back for minnows in a little while. Just help yourselves. There’s a couple of pails on the dock you can use. We’ll settle up when you come in. Just come up to the lodge. Okay?”
Don Petican holding a 1980 Mosque Lake beauty
We carried on unloading our duff as he tromped back up the hill, pausing for a moment to look over his shoulder and yell, “I’ll have Eva whip up some scones for you to knock down with a pot of hot tea when you come in. The wife makes her own jam, too.”
We did not have to go back to the dock and help ourselves to Russell’s minnows. As a matter of fact the next few hours produced one of the most incredible memories of all time—all my time, anyhow. Because fly fishing is always our preferred attack when trout fishing, that tackle was quickly strung together with the resulting wand-waving providing a variety of thrills involving specks in the three to four-pound class. Most were released in the hope that even larger trout would fall to our charms.
With our arms tiring and still hoping to find and do battle with one of the huge brook trout that the game warden, Fred Day, had alluded to, we had eventually switched to our new spinning gear with EGBs replacing our feathered offerings. The results were truly phenomenal and when we returned to shore a little later and casually flopped a six pound and a couple of seven-pounders onto the dock, Russell, who was busying himself filling paint cans with cement to serve as anchors for his “fleet,” dropped everything and came running with a yelp, “Holy Jesus! Mother of God! Bloody good, boy! Were you using worms, or what? You didn’t get them on goddamn flies, did you?” The two big ones gotta be about eight pounds!”
Art spoke first, explaining the actual size showing the lures we had used.
“On what!” he exclaimed.
“E.G.B.,” I spelled out for him, “They’re little spinning lures, made in Switzerland.” I left it at that for the moment while I placed our tackle on the dock and Art carted the trout to what was obviously a fish-cleaning table on shore near the foot of the dock. Then pointing to the spinning rods, I said, to the apparently still befuddled chap, “Heh, Russ, have a look for yourself. They’re still on both the spinning rods.”
He examined the two tiny Swiss spinning lures and said, “Pretty bloody small! What the hell does ‘EBL’ mean anyhow, Deval?”
This time I spelled it out determinedly, “They’re EGBs and damned if I know what the letters stand for, probably the name of the outfit in Switzerland that makes them or something. All I can tell you is that they sure work great on trout. All trout!”
When I asked if he would like to try the lures for himself, it became evident that he did not have a spinning rod. Luckily I had another inexpensive spinning outfit in the car as a spare in case one of our regular outfits broke down or something. We gave Russell a quick lesson on how to use the tackle as we had done previously with Old Lessie at Brooks Lake. After he made a few casts to get the feel of the strange equipment, he seemed to believe that he could use it well enough and offered to pay for it. When we said the rod was on us, he refused to charge us the regular five bucks for the privilege of fishing on his territory and even said our boat would be free too, the next time we came back.
Of course his prognosis was dead on. We have fished Mosque Lake hundreds of times since that splendid initial visit to one of the most magical waters I have ever wet a line in. The lake has created dozens of special memories for me and my fishing buddies. The fruits of several of those delightful labours now hang resplendently on my walls at home.
Grants Lake is one of the tiniest speckled trout waters that I’ve fished and deserves a place here, but for an entirely different reason. Only a half a mile long and at its widest, a spit in width if one possessed good lungs, Grants produced excellent fly-fishing catches over a couple years for us until a devastating winterkill5 applied the coup de gras to its fishery. Deemed unsuitable for natural reproduction, the Ministry of Natural Resources (formerly the Department of Lands and Forests) subsequently refused to stock it again after learning about the destructive exposure.
The lake is four or five miles off the beaten path, about ten miles north of Buckshot Lake where we used to stay at Bev Woolnough’s Birch Lodge near Plevna. There had been successive years of fine spring and summer fishing on Grants when, along with a couple of buddies, we decided to try a little hard-water fishing there one winter weekend. Al Jones and Norm Wallachy were invited to join me for what was expected to be a pleasant jaunt, with two of us on the Skidoo and the third in the attached sled with all the fishing and shore lunch gear.
