As we sat round what was left of the cooking hearth on a bluff overlooking the beautiful Aishihik Lake, fortunately sated by a strong New York strip that, minutes earlier, sizzled and snapped on the grill hung low over the coals, it was time to speak fish. Earlier that day, with our information Allan Hansen, we’d motored across the lake and caught variety of lake trout and northern pike. The lakers me probably the most. Some have been brief and large round. Others have been behemoths. Nonetheless others have been smaller and extra glossy, and their colours have been vibrant.
“They’re all totally different strains of lake trout,” Allan mentioned. “They swim in several elements of the lake. Some are ‘cold-water fish’ that keep deep all yr lengthy. Some transfer into the shallows within the spring and fall.” Some, he mentioned, even spawn within the rivers. There’s even lake trout “pressure,” Allan mentioned, that sports activities a large head and a really small physique — he and his fellow guides out of Dalton Path Lodge have solely caught a number of of those specimens through the years.
It wasn’t a brand new idea for me, the concept that fish of the identical normal species would possibly break into totally different behavioral strains. Nevertheless it was the primary time I’d seen this up shut and private.
After years of armchair fisheries biology, I’ve realized a number of issues from the salmonid world. What we have been doubtless witnessing within the lake is what fisheries biologists name the “portfolio impact” — nature’s method of combating pure calamities that may take out a complete fish inhabitants if all of its members behaved the identical method on a regular basis.
It’s doubtless greatest described in salmon, the place biologists have lengthy understood that some salmon go away the ocean in late summer time, some within the winter and a few even in late spring — all with the intent of reproducing. Ought to one inhabitants fall sufferer to some devastating occasion — a landslide that blocks the migration, a poisonous chemical spill or superheated water, as an example — one other run will arrive later, making certain the survival of the species as a complete.
I outlined that logic to Allan, and he nodded alongside, and famous that it makes excellent sense. Genetically, it’s doubtless that every one the fish in Aishihik Lake are mainly the identical. For no matter purpose, although, some fish merely behave otherwise than others. The identical logic may very well be utilized to rainbow trout and steelhead. Some strike out for the ocean. Others select to say dwelling. Genetically, they’re just about equivalent.
Wild? Native? Each?
“Our native rainbows don’t appear to try this,” Allan mentioned. “They’re just about all the identical. They’re brilliant and glossy on a regular basis.”
I shook my head from throughout the fireplace. It’s a entice that a whole lot of anglers fall into, and never simply within the wilds of the Canadian north. I can’t depend the instances I’ve needed to right anglers right here in my dwelling water after they inform me they spent a fantastic day catching “native brook trout” excessive within the mountains of jap Idaho. There are, after all, no native brook trout in Idaho. Wild? Definitely. However not native.
“Ahem,” I coughed. “Effectively, that is perhaps as a result of there aren’t any native rainbow trout within the Yukon. They have been all launched within the Fifties.”
Allan perked up, and his physique language modified. A confused look crossed his face.
“I may argue?” he half questioned, and half challenged.
“Go proper forward,” I mentioned confidently. And I defined that the rainbows discovered within the Yukon have been introduced in about 75 years in the past and planted in southern Yukon streams for sporting functions. The native salmonids of the area are lake trout, some relict populations of Dolly Varden, maybe some bull trout alongside the southern border with British Columba, lake whitefish and, after all, Arctic grayling.
“Huh,” he mentioned, clearly in head-scratching mode. “They’ve been within the Kathleen River for so long as I can keep in mind.”
Fortunately dropping an argument
Every week later, dwelling in Idaho and busy catching up after a fantastic journey to the Yukon, my telephone rang. The caller was Robert Perry, a “species officer” with the Yukon Division of Surroundings. He’d learn a pattern itinerary on the web site of a journey firm I’m affiliated with, and wished to assist me right some dangerous info.
“I used to be advised you have been the particular person I want to speak to about correcting some info on an online web page,” Perry mentioned. I agreed, and if there was certainly some dangerous intel, I’d be more than pleased to right the error, I defined.
“Effectively, I simply have to clarify that there are native rainbow trout within the Yukon,” Perry mentioned.
Picture: Earl Harper.
Because it seems, the Tatshenshini and Alsek rivers each move from the mountains of the Yukon south into British Columbia. Each rivers slice by the glacial ice fields alongside the B.C. and Alaska border after which drain into Dry Bay on the north finish of Glacier Bay Nationwide Park. And each rivers are dwelling to rainbow trout. Or, for the sticklers on the market, steelhead that opted to remain dwelling.
(Aspect word: The Tatshenshini River remains to be dwelling to the southern Yukon’s solely salmon runs. Each sockeye and coho salmon make the run up the river from the Pacific — however not within the nice numbers from years previous.)
And the Kathleen River? It’s a tributary to the Alsek by way of the Dezadeash River. It’s one of many few rivers within the Yukon that has a connection to the Pacific, albeit a tenuous one, given Ice Age geology and all that. Right this moment, the Alsek runs from the Yukon, into British Columbia and skirts the perimeters of the biggest non-polar ice subject on the planet earlier than it dumps into the ocean. The Alsek contributes the fifth-largest discharge of water on the west coasts of the Americas. By any measure, it’s one of many world’s nice rivers.
There have been, certainly, rainbow trout launched to the Yukon — they have been planted in a number of streams close to Whitehorse for recreation and as a supply of meals for the locals. They persist in the present day, and are, in the present day, wild. However these fish should not native.
However the rainbows within the Kathleen River are native trout, Perry defined to me. They usually’ve been within the Kathleen for eons. And, what’s extra, I realized, the fish have been remoted so lengthy from the majority of the Alsek system that they’re genetically distinctive. They’re discovered nowhere else on this planet however within the Kathleen River.
Allan, I tip my hat to you. You have been proper.
Would that I’ve identified
Two days earlier, I stood hip-deep within the icy flows of the decrease Kathleen River the place it widens into slow-moving Rainbow Lake. A look on the wallpaper was beautiful. Mt. Martha and Mt. Kathleen loomed giant over the valley, and the verdant burst of spring inexperienced was at its peak. The water, crystal clear, flowed slowly round my legs as I solid a small streamer and let it swing.
It didn’t take lengthy for the road to stretch tight, and the rainbow on the opposite finish blasted out of the water and cartwheeled a few instances to placed on a present. It was a pleasant fish — certainly one of perhaps two rainbows we introduced at hand that hit the 16-inch mark.
On the time, I used to be happy with the catch, however I used to be additionally a realist. I’d traveled 1000’s of miles to the Yukon and right here I used to be catching middle-sized rainbows launched to the world 75 years in the past by an Anglo-run authorities company to “enhance” the native fishery. Blah, blah, blah.
Had I identified on the time that these rainbows have been native fish, and never the wild offspring of hatchery reared trout, I might have been rather more appreciative. Catching trout is one factor. Catching trout the place they belong? That’s one thing else altogether.
The Kathleen River system is likely one of the most beautiful waters I’ve ever fished. Beneath brilliant, blue late-spring skies, it was straightforward to see how Rainbow Lake bought its identify. Its waters vary from deep blue and Caribbean inexperienced to a singular shade of turquoise that completely glimmers below the sub-Arctic solar (to say nothing of the native trout that swim in its waters). Straight and tall spruce timber guard the banks and the craggy, excessive peaks to the west are only one mountain vary away from the ocean. Their snow-laden tops gave approach to alpine splendor. It’s a viewscape I’d put up towards the Tetons, the Sawtooths and even the vertical cliffs of the Alps and the Andes. It was beautiful.
Fishing was good, however not nice. The wind picked up, which made fishing the lake sections powerful, however we managed to tug in a handful of good rainbows, a number of Arctic grayling and one seemingly misplaced 18-inch lake trout. I realized later, although, that the lakers are additionally part of the Kathleen’s fishy tapestry, as are kokanee salmon within the system’s higher reaches and whitefish, which might present up nearly wherever.
Oddly, now that I do know the chrome-bright rainbows with wonderful rosé cheeks have been native, I feel extra fondly about that day on the river. Earlier than I knew, I used to be kind of agnostic about it.
Within the Yukon, the pure order of issues remains to be largely intact. And, I believed, the rainbows represented a scar that received’t ever totally heal — and we see these scars right here within the Decrease 48 day by day the place, over time, we’ve whimsically and willingly altered the environment.
Figuring out now that the Kathleen’s rainbows are precisely the place they belong? Effectively, that’s perfection, regardless of how good the fishing is.
