on the Ganny
If there is one river with its magical waters that has created more memories than any other during my sixty-five years of trout fishing it is the Ganny. Only the mighty Broadback River in northern Quebec, with its huge brook trout, takes up as much space in the part of my brain that stores these recollections.
Over my many years of working over the Ganny, we have learned that the numerous and varied sections of the watershed with their complexions switch abruptly from shallow and fast, clay and meadow waters, to heavily tangled bush-bordered pothole sections. Such variations have led to our creating a range of nicknames1 for specific locations, names such as the “Red River stretch,” “Picnic Grounds,” “Nudie stretch,” “Used Car Lot,” “Fly-fishing stretch” and the infamous “Allan Hepburn stretch.”
The “Allan Hepburn stretch”2 of the Ganny has been responsible for several situations that will be forever etched in my memory—there certainly are a couple of lessons to be absorbed from recounting our adventures on this section of the river. The almost three-mile Hepburn portion is a veritable minefield of awkward and potentially dangerous stream, bush and swamp conditions that one must negotiate in order to fish its relatively untouched, therefore magical waters. Between the masses of jungle-like vines and enormous multi-trunk trees are tangles of six-feet-tall grass, ferns and goldenrod, much of which extends right over the stream bank. Beneath them are unseen, underfoot rotten logs and branches, interspersed with holes, just waiting to trip you up or break your ankle. If one survives those niceties there are always others with which to contend, such as the poison ivy, stinging nettles and needle-laced hawthorn trees and raspberry canes designed by Mother Nature to rip at, or pierce your skin. I haven t even touched on the seasonal mosquito, blackfly and deer fly infestations. My fishing buddies and I are seldom concerned about overfishing or finding other folks plying these difficult to negotiate waters.
Nevertheless, some anglers such as my fishing buddies and I covet the challenge in being able conquer the diversities and complexities in waters such as these in order to capture a few trout for the pan. Some would say we are foolish, and they may be right, but merely sitting in a boat or on a dock while drowning a worm or minnow beneath a red and white plastic float, is and always has been, far too mundane a pursuit, fishing-wise, for us to even contemplate. The reality is that we consider ourselves to be anglers—not simply fishermen
Several years ago, at a pre-arranged location—a truck stop on the highway, near Bowmanville on Highway 401. I met good buddy Roger Cannon at five o’clock in the morning and after grabbing a couple of coffees we continued on in my car towards the Ganny. Previously we had fished a number of lakes, rivers and streams together and worked over several sections of the Ganny, usually with moderate success. Roger is an excellent angler, competent with both spinning and fly-fishing gear.
As we drove towards the river, I recall asking if he would like to try the Hepburn stretch? I didn’t think he had fished it before.
Pausing to contemplate the questions, he answered hesitatingly, “No. Don’t think I have. Isn’t that the spot where you’ve been trying to get that six-pound brown that you’ve been after for a while now? Yeah, I don’t mind trying something different. I think you once told me that it’s too difficult to fly fish so I guess we’d be throwing tin.3 Maybe you’ll get another shot at your big brownie.”
I warned him that it was not only a tough stretch of water to fish but just getting through the bush alongside the stream was extremely difficult. He was not deterred and although it was still early with very little daylight to assist us we were soon parked and getting ready to do battle. As is our custom when fishing most streams, we booted up, grabbed our fishing gear and headed downstream. Although with our adrenaline flowing we were eager and fresh, our tackle would remain unassembled until we reached the spot where we had decided we would begin, depending on the amount of time we had at our disposal. This would serve two purposes. One, we would be fishing in the much preferred upstream direction and two, when we finish and are obviously tired, we would emerge from the bush right at the car. This is a much better system than fishing for several hours then having to struggle back through the bush to the car with little strength left in your legs.
Find Gord making his way through the dense growth of ferns on the Hepburn stretch of the Ganaraska.
Roger, younger and stronger than I, however, took the lead in picking our way through the dense tangle of bush and underbrush. It was still rather dark and we hadn’t penetrated the bush more than a hundred yards when an unseen log beneath the profusion of ferns and grasses seemed to reach up and grab my foot, effectively poleaxing me. In an attempt to avoid the fall, I tried to throw my left leg up and over the log, but failed. With my hands protecting my face, I crashed to the ground on the other side, legs askew on top and my right foot snagged on something or another. Fortunately the dense grass cushioned the fall somewhat. But I was even more shaken up when Roger, racing back to assist me after hearing me yell and swear, pointed out that my face had just missed striking a three-inch tree stump obscured by the ferns and grasses. It had been sharpened to a point by the teeth of a beaver gnawing a tree to knock it down for its dam. After Roger had helped me to my feet, and I had partially regained my composure, I refused his suggestion that perhaps we should wait a while longer so more daylight would make it easier to see where we were going. Actually, we usually feel our way through dense cover such as this, with careful and rather slow leg movements that allow you to locate the pitfalls before they locate you. However, on that day Roger was out in front, eager to get going, and I had to move much faster than my normal pace to keep up with him.
“Let’s just keep going,” I said, “but maybe a little more slowly, okay?”
I stretched, took a step forward then discovered I had pulled the hamstring muscle in my right thigh. Lifting the leg, which suddenly seemed to weigh about two hundred pounds, became quite painful. Nevertheless, completely forgetting that the Hepburn stretch of the Ganny was fraught with many other impediments to progress through the bush, I mistakenly theorized that struggling through to our destination would provide enough exercise to work out the strain. Moving more slowly might allow my leg to loosen up, so I thought, but as a precaution I suggested that perhaps my taking the lead would allow me to set the pace.
With little strength in the sore leg I went down once more when I couldn’t force my way through a stand of willow. By the time, a good half-hour later, we reached the end of the Hepburn section where we had planned to begin fishing our way back upstream, I had stepped into a hole, slid off a grass-covered embankment dropping a couple of feet into the water, and tripped several more times over unseen logs. If my memory of that day is correct, Roger managed to remain in a vertical stance throughout the entire exercise, only having to stoop occasionally to assist me to my feet while commiserating almost continuously. Being a very busy chap, Roger was not able to get out and go fishing with us as often as he wished so I stubbornly refused to cut short the outing. We soldiered on.
What makes the recollection of that particular day exceptional was not simply my getting hurt, or catching a big trout, but the total picture
