Well, turns out there were tons of fish there. Cast after cast we were pulling in fish. I think between the four of us, and within an hour and a half, we caught around 20 fish. We ended up throwing a few back because they were too small (small, but still larger than most things you'd catch in Ontario), while others we had to keep because they'd been hooked in unfortunate places.
Patti and I are both getting better with our tolerance for fish- she can now knock them out when she catches them, and I only scream a little bit, and don't drop my pole and run the other way anymore.
The fourteen fish we caught will go to Barry and Patti's dogs, who need the meat to get ready for winter. Here they are, lined up ever so nicely.
The picture above doesn't really give a good idea of how big the fish are though, so here is a picture of Deon holding the largest one in the lineup- not too small at all!
And here I am, just smiling for the camera, since the last thing I'd like to do is hold a fish. Note the mittens- it is starting to cool off for sure, but the sun was nice considering the last few days of rain we've had.
After deciding we had enough fish for one night, we decided to try to navigate the waters to the pingos. We travelled on the ocean for a few minutes before entering the channels that lead to the pingos. The water of course, with our luck, was very shallow. This led to Deon having to undertake his favourite job of the north:
When we finally got close to the pingos, the view was absolutely stunning. The waters were like mirrors, no waves or ripples other than fish jumping. When I used to picture the arctic, I pictured rough, ice filled waters, so this site was unbelievable to me, even still. As we travelled in the boat, we saw and heard sandhill cranes, a young bald eagle and plenty of geese and ducks.
Southerners, meet the pingos, which are visible for miles around because they are the only hills on the landscape:
Ibyuk (means pingo in Inuvialuktun)
Split
Deon and I took a quick trip up the pingo (they are steep and not very fun to climb in the winter or summer), where the view was spectacular.
Somehow Barry managed to navigate out of the channel without Deon having to push the boat- I think he just drove in the shallow parts to get Deon to hop into the water and get his pants drenched, haha.
On another note, while we were waiting for Barry and Patti to show up to the boat, we watched one of the locals pull in his fish net down by his smokehouse. We talked to him, and the net had been out for only two hours, and there were at least 30 fish in it when he pulled it in. He uses the fish for his trapline for martens in the winter. First he guts them and smokes them, and then keeps them for trapping season. The people in Tuk work diligently all summer long to stockpile food from the land for the winter months. Each day many of them will empty their nets, and then prepare their fish for drying. It is incredible to see the hard work and patience that catching food from the land must take.
Here are the fish drying for the trapline in the smokehouse down by the water on the harbour:
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