Day 5: Poohbah, Maligne River, Sturgeon: With some wistfulness, we packed up camp on another clear morning, and headed north to see if we could find the mystery portages. We spend a good bit of time looking, both from on shore and from the boats, but admitted defeat when we could find nothing resembling a trail. On the first portage out onto Poohbah Creek, we met up with a man and his high-school aged son. They asked about available camps on Poohbah, and we showed them a few that we had seen. We were on our way soon, and made easy work of the portages and Poohbah Creek itself. As we paddled out to where the creek rejoins the river, we saw a group of three other boats heading upriver, and they were easing along the eastern shore. As we got closer, I saw that one of the boats was a Bell Northwind, and sure enough, it was BWJ Editor Stu Ostoff with a group he was guiding. They had come in that morning, and were stopping at a campsite on the eastern shore for lunch. Stu and I swapped some fishing and campsite info, and he said that there was no way he was taking his group all the way up the Maligne with the amount of current and water level. They were ducking into Wink (a first visit for him to that lake) and then heading to Poohbah. I told him what I knew about Wink (including the tough portage that connects it with Poohbah). He wished us well heading up the rapids. We took on Flat Rapids first, and it offered a stern test. We inched our way up the left shore, and got a sense of what we were in for: the bloated river was out of its banks, meaning we had to paddle basically in the shrubs and trees that line the bank. Making life more interesting was the sweepers that lay along the banks, which created their own riffles. You had to paddle out into the current, angle your boat just right, and paddle like hell to get up the narrow chutes.

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For the rest of the afternoon, the pattern continued: fight the current, take a break when you could, and work your way through the flooded portages. On one particularly nasty part, we had to grab bushes and trees and pull ourselves upriver hand over hand, because the water was so shallow that you could only dip your paddle in a few inches, not enough to get enough thrust to get you up the chute. The three boats stayed together, to offer advice and encouragement as we made our way up. Needless to say, we were all questioning our decision to leave our great fishing on Poohbah for this effort. We stopped for a late lunch at the end of the “Portage de Petite Islette” and got some much needed calories and fluid in our bodies. I took the chance to take a few pictures of the water running high.

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We knew we had one more set of chutes and one more portage before the ordeal was behind us, but didn’t like the looks of the clouds gathering off to the south. Sure enough, as we paddled finally into Sturgeon, some big drops started to fall, seemingly as punishment for us trying to go up the river. It had taken us 5 hours from the Poohbah Creek entrance to get to that point, at least 2 hours longer than we had taken on two trips before. At least the rain did not come with significant wind, which would not have been welcomed now that we were back on big water.

We paddled across the wide western basin, and started checking campsites along the north shore. We had stayed at the sand beach campsite before, but wanted to try a different area. The rain laid down a bit, and the mosquitos were out in full force. The wind had shifted to blow from the north (never a good sign), meaning that the south-facing sites were very buggy. As we checked, Brett rigged up his rod and on the first cast: BAM, another big northern was on! This one was a bit more skinny, but still measured 42”.

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We couldn’t get over how his first cast in each of our destination lakes resulted in a nice pike. Finally, we settled on an island site near the north shore. It would have been beautiful had a fire not hit it hard a couple of years before, but we were tired and it fit the bill. We strung up the tarp, pitched our tents during a break from the rain, and got out to throw a few casts before dark. I managed to fool one decent smallie on a jig and grub setup.

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It had been a long and trying day, and sleep came even easier than ever that night.