The Story of North Cape Cod

Sometimes you only catch a fish when you aren't expecting to. Or while you're trying to catch a seal.

"Bye, honey, I'm going kayaking!" I said to my husband while he lay on the couch, playing computer games on his laptop.

"Are you going to fish from your kayak?" my husband asked, looking at the fishing rod I held in my hand.

"Nah," I said, "I figure we'll pull our kayaks up on some beach for a rest and I'll cast a few lines there."

"Are you going to bring your tackle?" he asked me.

"I won't need anything," I said, "We won't catch anything. I never do."

"Well, there's a first time for everything," my husband said, as it turned out, ominously.

I met up with my friends on the shore and we set out on the Arctic ocean in our kayaks and canoe. There was no wind that night, so the water was still; you could see all the way to the bottom in some parts, and our kayaks held the illusion of sliding over glass. I marvelled at how smooth the waters were, at how they came alive and pulsed in response to the motor boats that passed occasionally again, and then became still once more.

Now that the ocean ice had all melted away in the bay, we were able to bring our kayaks out farther towards West Arm. We stopped at one of my favourite beach spots. I used to call it Lonely Beach, but have been thinking lately that I should start giving these beaches better names. But what? Garbage Beach? Shale Beach? I waited for an idea to come.

I cast my reel into the water and waited for something to bite. I was testing out a new theory. I had heard that someone in town had caught some char in West Arm, although I didn't know why the fish would be hanging around a dead end.  I thought maybe this new beach might be a good fishing spot, because while the immediate shoreline allowed for you to wade in the water knee deep, there was a sudden drop off in the ocean floor where it suddenly fell away some two hundred metres.  The idea of accidentally slipping off that ocean ledge terrified me, but I thought maybe that would be a good place for fish to hang out, on their way to going to West Arm, for whatever reason they'd be going there.

I cast my line a couple of times but had no luck.  One time I dislodged a rock with my hook. Another time I pulled out some seaweed. I guess that was food - Koreans love mi yuk gook - but not exactly the dinner catch I had been hoping for these past days.  I put down my rod and gave up.

Instead, I started paying attention to some action that was happening some hundred feet away in the water.  There was something moving around in the water and breaching the surface occasionally, but I couldn't see what it was.

"Is it a whale/" I said.

"Maybe a seal?" B suggested.

"I want to catch it!" my friend Christine said, and grabbed my fishing rod.

I was starting to explain to her that we probably can't catch a seal with a fishing rod - that it would probably pull her into the water over the dreaded ledge - and that on the other hand, there was plenty of driftwood lying around that we could possibly use as a club...but then the line started to tug and Christine started to shriek.

"I CAUGHT A FISH!"

In her excitement, Christine threw the rod down on the shore and started dancing. "I caught a fish! I caught a fish!"

B was pretty quick thinking and swooped down to grab the fish and detach it from the hook before it could swim back into the ocean, while Christine danced.  He offered the cod to Christine but she declined, as it was still squirming around.

"I don't want to touch it," she protested. "I caught a fish! I caught a fish!"

still too grossed out to actually hold it

Then we were faced with the fact that we weren't actually equipped to bring a fish home.   I had assumed that we weren't going to catch anything, remember?   I had....a life jacket.  I had...a wet bag. I had....the inside of my kayak, but there was no way we were going to be kayaking home with a flopping around under my skirt between my legs.

Eventually we remembered the storage compartment in our kayak and kept it there.  But in Christine's kayak, because, as I pointed out, "She caught it! It's her problem."

We had a relaxing paddling trip back to the main shore, where I quietly reflected on the darkening clouds in the sky and hoped that the fish that lay inside the kayak was, indeed, dead.  Off in the distance, some kids fishing off the dock by the Martin Bergmann also caught a cod fish, but it was much smaller than Christine's.

Once we returned to our base on the shore, we were faced with the dilemma of how we were going to bring the fish home.

"I have a plastic bag in the sea can," I suggested helpfully, not mentioning the part that it currently held my underwear.

But when I checked the sea can, I realized that I had not brought the plastic bag, which means I also had not brought any spare underwear. Man, was I ever unprepared for this trip.

We tried putting it in a box that used to hold cans of soda pop, but it got soggy quickly.

Eventually we "borrowed" a plastic box that belonged to one of the teachers that were away for the summer.  It worked well and Christine was able to bring her cod fish home, the very first fish she had ever caught. Also, I finally came up with a good name for the beach we had found: North Cape Cod.

trying to add it to Google Maps...

an expert teaches us how to filet a char using a traditional ulu knife

midnight fishing

One of the things I love about Arctic summers is that everyone has so much energy with the permanent daylight. So when you've finished eating a nice roast beef dinner and passed the evening playing board games with your friends, and it's nearing midnight and one of your friends says, "Hey, wanna go fishing now?", you say yes.  You don't say, No, it's almost midnight, and we have to work tomorrow, and we should go to bed. You say, Yes, let's go fishing.  We have all winter to sleep.

midnight "sunset" (the sun does not actually set) at the river

And then all your friends pile into someone's old truck and sing along to the oldies playing on truck's cassette tape player, pretending to do a duet with Patti Smith, waving at the folks on their ATVs as you pass them on the road out of town.  Because the night was belongs to lovers. Because the night belongs to us.

near Long Point, by the gravel pit

You decide on a fishing spot based on wild speculation, based on rumours that you heard around town.  I heard somone caught a bunch of char over in West Arm. In West Arm? Why would the fish go there, a dead end? I heard the fish like bad weather. I heard the fish like colder water, near the snow banks. How about that spot by the river where that kid almost drowned? There's a dead fish on the shore here, half fileted; this must be a good omen. You test these theories that are based on nothing but fantasies and you choose your spot and you cast your line.

You reel it in, find nothing, then you try again. And again.  Sometimes you move, having learned that your latest theory was bunk. You don't care.  You cast your line.

You develop the perfect soundtrack to listen to on your headphones while you fish. Oddly enough, I have found that songs about fishing do not necessarily make the perfect fishing music.  I like Jonsi and the xx.

West Arm

One of the problems with fishing off a shale beach is that every time your line snags on a rock (and, of course, the ocean floor is all rock), you have a brief moment of hope, false hope, that you've got something. You've got something! Everyone come here, you've got something! Oh wait, no. It's a rock.

Sometimes, it won't be a rock but a clump of mucus-y mud, or for me, my own tackle box.  I've still got to practice my aim. Being new to the hobby, I have been learning through all sorts of painful mistakes. What a broken reel looks likes, and, consequently, how expensive it is to buy new reels in Cambridge Bay. What happens if you don't keep a proper eye on your line...and how easy it is to get it tangled up like a kitten playing with yarn.  How to yank your hook free from a rock without breaking everything. How gross mucus-y mud is.

sexy bug net

But for me, it's not even about catching the fish. It's about casting the line and then reeling it back in. Over and over again. It's the same reason why I spent twenty years at the driving range before ever setting foot on a golf course. I don't care about the game or the goal. There's therapy in the repetitive action in itself.  It's an activity that allows you to be alone with your thoughts in a non-anxiety-inducing manner. It's an activity you can do with your friends, but with your friends faraway in their own fishing spots, left with their thoughts, being quiet together.  It doesn't matter to me when I don't catch a fish.

At least that's what you tell yourself. Of course, when the guy on the other side of the shore catches a fish, a real fish and not a rack or mucus-y mud, there's a little envy mixed in with that admiration. One day I'll catch my fish.  And then...I'm going to have to figure out how to filet it.

Hard to believe that it's July here, sometimes

ice fishing in July

We went ice fishing on Nunavut Day. It was a beautiful day, and it seemed like an appropriate thing to do on a holiday meant to celebrate the territory's coming into existence. A bunch of us piled into the van and drove out past the gravel pit towards Long Point.

View towards Long Point

Even though it's July, the Arctic Ocean has still stayed mostly frozen, which is why it is possible to go ice fishing in the middle of the summer.  The cracks in the ice means that we don't need a drill to cut a whole in the ice either.  The main challenge is just getting to the ice floes.

Sometimes getting to the ice means taking a giant leap over the crevices and hoping you don't miss or lose your footing.  I didn't do very well in the long jump event in high school, which is too bad because long jumping skills would have been really useful, but luckily I made it over.

Then it was time to start fishing.

my tackle, and ridiculously extensive lure collection, most of which I don't think I'll ever use

Ice fishing basically involves dropping your line and jigging - moving your lure up and down in the hopes of catching a fish's attention.  I am pretty sure this is what Will Smith was referring to in his song, "Getting Jiggy With It".

The fish were biting that day...but only sculpin.  They were biting like crazy, and pretty much everyone caught at least one sculpin.

Unfortunately, they are reeeaaally ugly and nobody wants to eat them, so we threw them back.  But they kept coming back and biting!

Rob says, "Another sculpin?"

The ice had all these neat little pockets of water that held marine life.

These pockets also made excellent beer coolers.

Off in the distance, we saw something dark moving on the ice. It was a seal! Tired of hooking ugly scupin fish, we decided to try to sneak up on the seal.

But he was fast. Also, we were loud and also very visible, and he was very far away, so he had plenty of time to jump back into his seal hole and swim away.

exploring the seal hole

But we knew that the seal would have to come back to the surface somewhere to take a breath.  Scanning the horizon, we could see him re-surface at another spot in the distance.  And then another seal popped his head up above the ice several metres away, and we watched them slowly bob up and down, greeting each other. It was a cool moment.

This is not a seal. This is a person.

On the way back to the truck, we saw that the ice had shifted and the gaps between the ice floes were even wider than before.  To add to the drama of the moment, a family of Inuit folks had gathered by their cabin on the shore, pulling up lawn chairs to watch us in amusement as we silly kablunaat attempted to clumsily cross the ice.

Well, we didn't fail to entertain. A few of us got one; one of us (I won't mention who) didn't quite make it across and fell in the water. Luckily, the water wasn't very deep there, and the truck was nearby so she was able to get warm quickly.

It was a good day, even though we didn't bring home any fish.  Next time, we will. Either that or we'll develop a taste for sculpin.

my first time fishing

The first time I went fishing, I didn't catch any fish. That's because it turned out my reel was broken.  I didn't know that when I bought (secondhand). I wish I did. I'm very new at this whole fishing thing.

So my friends tried their luck with fishing at the float base while I decided to turn it into an impromptu fishing-themed photo shoot, because that's the kind of thing I do while my friends fish.

bug jacket

(Unbeknownst to me, our friends at Iqaluit's Finding True North were doing a similar fashion photo shoot , but with a lot more flair.)

The float base is where the little Cessna float planes land.  I found that out last year when I was kayaking in the bay and suddenly found out that the bay is also a runway for the float planes and I had to paddle for my life to not get run over by a plane. I mean, who does that? Who gets hit by a plane while kayaking?

Christine let me practice casting a few times.  I got better at it, and on my third time I actually caught something! A piece of wood. On one hand, that's kind of disappointing because it wasn't a fish, but on the other hand, it's kind of impressive that I caught a piece of wood in a land with no trees.

Other than the piece of wood, we weren't getting any bites at the float base so we decided to try a different spot, at the bridge by the river.  We took our respective vehicles there - Jeep, ATV, truck - and parked again, ready to resume our quiet night of peaceful fishing.

That's when we found the boy drowning in the water.

At first, I just heard a terrible cry, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It sounded like a choked wail. I figured it was coming from kids near the shoreline, and I thought to myself, "These kids shouldn't horseplay around like this. Someone's gonna think that they're in trouble."

Then I saw my friends suddenly break into a run and jump into the freezing cold water.  Then I knew something was wrong.

It turns out that three young boys had been playing in the water when they suddenly lost their footing in the steep drop off where the water suddenly becomes deep, right where the current gets strong.  Two of the boys eventually got back on their feet again but one boy was struggling.

I watched as my friends made their way to a barely distinguishable figure bobbing in the water.  I was frightened.  Just the other day I had waded into the Arctic ocean up to my hips and felt intense pain from the shock of the cold - and that was with a wetsuit on. My friends were not wearing wetsuits, just all of their clothes as well as their boots which I knew must have been only weighing them down.   I could see that the current was strong, because the boy was caught right where the river meets the ocean.

Just to give you an idea of how deadly the situation was, the sea water around Cambridge Bay is currently -0.6°C.  If you are in the water unprotected for more than a few minutes, you are at serious risk of hypothermia.  I have swam in the Arctic ocean when it was warmer; even then, after being in the water for more than 30 seconds, you stop feeling the pain and instead you feel total numbness as your body starts to shut down.  My friends - and the boy - didn't have much time.

The boy continued to cry out, although every once in a while the cry would be cut off when the water overwhelmed him. It was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard in my life and I don't think I will ever forget it.

Meanwhile, I was standing uselessly on shore, trying to figure out how I could be useful.  I wasn't going to jump into the water. There was no way I was going to make it to them in time and besides, I'm not a very strong swimmer. I was certainly not going to make a very good lifeguard. I have nearly drowned twice in my life before, and both times, it was because I was trying to save someone and that person was holding me down.

So I ran in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, clutching my cell phone, trying in vain to remember how to dial 911 in Nunavut.  The number is not 911 here.  I couldn't remember the RCMP emergency line after hours (which...as it turns out, was 1111, which just goes to show how much I wasn't thinking).  So I dialed the regular RCMP line. But I only dialed the last four digits.  And then I tried again, with seven digits this time. And then finally I remembered the area code, because I was dialing from an Ottawa phone number.

By the time I got through to the operator, my friends had reached the drowning boy and were just trying not to drown themselves, being weighed down by the water that was filling up their boots and their pants. I couldn't bear to watch.  I don't remember what I said to the police, but I guess it wasn't total gibberish because they did send police trucks and an ambulance right away.  By that point, my friends had finally brought the boy to the other side of the shore.

So by the time we left, we hadn't caught any fish, although clearly it wasn't a totally unproductive day.  I'm going to have to buy myself a new reel this weekend, but hopefully not all of my fishing excursions will be this eventful.

Read the newspaper article about it here