When I first saw the outflow of the Wheeler River, where trophy Arctic grayling were rumored to stage and wait for Russell Lake’s slow-moving current to deliver all sorts of buggy morsels right to them, I was pretty sure it was going to be some tough fishing.
It’s big water, and there’s lots of it. And the boreal north’s black spruce and birch forests hug the bank, making backcasts tough. If we were going to enjoy catching 20-inch grayling, we were going to work for it.