Although I avoided the issue; the time came to head back towards Yellowknife. Our fishing wasn't over however, as we had yet to tempt a pike with a fly. I was under the misconception that pike would be in every back bay waiting for us to call them forth. In fact the opposite was true, you had to go looking for them. And their ideal habitat was in short supply out in the East arm. So we headed back towards Yellowknife and found our Mecca halfway back along the north shore called Francois Bay.

Here's A Big Pike!. Copyright © 2001 Frank Wood

A river enters Great Slave Lake at this point; but gets temporarily backed up and somewhat swampy near the mouth. The pike stacked up in front of the reeds defining the edges and defended their territory with vigor. We caught so many pike, our arms hurt. The only negative aspect to this session, was that there were so many small (3.6 - 6.8 Kg) pike in the area, we had a hard time getting to the bigger ones. Aside from that minor inconvenience we had a wonderful day that will take a long time to fade from my memory.

All too soon our trip ended; and we pulled back into the dock at Yellowknife. The girls were there waiting for us, knowing that they would hear more than their quota of fishing stories starting immediately after the customary scratchy whisker kisses were dispensed.