It was a trip that ended with a huge Arctic char being caught that appears to be a new world’s record for fly fishing. But the excursion taken this summer by Jim Sollecito and Dennis Ouellette to the edge of the Labrador Sea in a desolate area of northeastern Canada was much more than that. “It was an expedition, an adventure. (Picture below) I’ve never done anything like that,” Sollecito said, adding it resulted in several scary, white-knuckle moments.
“I made my peace with the Lord – twice,” the Baldwinsville resident said.
2013-9-26-sollecitoplane.jpgThe trip was all about making sure there was enough fuel and good flying weather to get to the next destination. Pilot Keith Richardson, seen fueling up on one of the wings, said he didn’t want to be a great pilot, he wanted to be an old one. Dennis Ouellette is also pictured on the runway.Jim Sollecito photo
It all began with Ouellette, who owns Ontario Orchards in Oswego County, fishing last summer for salmon at Big River in Labrador. At that fish camp, he met French Canadians Keith Richardson and his son, Patrick. After finding out the two had a float plane and a small helicopter, Ouellette made plans with the pair to head up further north into Labrador the following year, with an agreement that the gas costs would be split among all those going.
“Dennis figured this was a place he wanted to explore. He was told he could bring one more guy but he had to be of an adventuresome spirit,” Sollecito said. “They also decided to bring a dog to keep the bears away.”
Ouellette, 67, who lives in Sterling, had been on outdoors outings before with Sollecito, who owns Sollecito Landscaping Nursery in Onondaga Hill. The two have fished together in Alaska to the Baha in Mexico.
This most recent trip stretched from July 28 to Aug. 10. Because of pending bad weather, the two local anglers left two days early with six hours notice. After driving to Montreal, they took off in Keith Richardson’s float plane, arriving at their destination on Tasiujak Lake 10 hours later.
“There was no cook. We made our beds – literally, using hammers and nails and available wood,” Sollecito, 59, said.
The weather didn’t cooperate. The first four days the group was fogged in. Sollecito and Ouellette took their fly rods and fished around the camp.
“It was tremendous fishing,” Sollecito said. “We were casting egg sucking leaches and muddler minnows. We were landing countless lake trout up to 12 pounds – and there were some we couldn’t land that were probably pushing 30 pounds. We were also a ton of brook trout up to five pounds and Arctic char up to 8 pounds.”
There was one major inconvenience, Sollecito said.
‘Both of our waders sprung leaks. We had wet legs the entire time we were there,” he said, adding that fortunately the weather during the day stayed in the 40- to low 50- degree range, dropping down to the low 30s at night.
The chopper would dropped the two off, usually on a piece of stone that was smaller than an average garage, for a day of fishing. Sollecito and Ouellette called the outings “bar hopping,” because once they landed they would travel from sandbar to sandbar in the river, fishing as they went. Ouellette is pictured here next to the chopper.Jim Sollecito photo
The fog lifted on the fifth day, and the two were helicoptered and dropped off alongside the first of severeal unnamed rivers, some 50 miles away.
“We were left to fend for ourselves and told the helicopter would return between 5 and 7:30 p.m. to pick us up,” Sollecito said. “We had bear spray and shared one rifle (in the case of a bear attack).”
That day, the anglers caught numerous brook trout in the 1- to 3-pound range, keeping some to cook over a fire for lunch. Both anglers said the water was “Windex water,” meaning it was unbelievably clear, blue — and drinkable. “You’d look at it and think it was only three feet deep and it’d be 30. It was unbelievable,” Ouellette said. Read on at http://blog.syracuse.com