Kasba Lake offers the triple crown of northern fishing: giant lake trout, hefty pike and stunning Arctic grayling

#4  The Arctic grayling are enormous, and astonishingly numerous

The pike and trout fishing at Kasba is very good, but the Arctic grayling fishery just may be the best in the world. There are a few grayling in the lake, but the real action is in the Kazan River, which flows northward out of the lake’s northeast corner, winding its way toward Hudson Bay.

Although you can reach the mouth of the river by boat, the prime fishing is downstream of a series of rapids, best accessed by a 15-minute flight from the lodge. The Kazan is designated as a Canadian Heritage River in recognition of its natural, cultural and recreational values. In particular, that refers to the Kazan’s unique boreal landscape, the role it plays in the migration route of the Qamanirjuaq caribou herd (the largest movement of land mammals in the world), its historical importance to Inuit and Dene culture and, or course, its world-class fishing.

Arctic grayling are the kind of fish that send outdoor writers running to the thesaurus in search of more ways to say “gorgeous.” Cigar-shaped with an oversize dorsal fin, they range in colour from silver to pink to mauve, all with a shimmering, mesmerizing iridescence. Grayling are also tough fighters, thanks to the most muscular body I’ve ever felt on a freshwater fish. That’s because they live their entire lives in swift current, to avoid being eaten by pike or lake trout, which also inhabit the Kazan. In fact, at one rapids, almost every time we hooked a grayling we’d see the form of a very large trout slide up behind it, hoping to turn the struggling fish into a meal.

Prior to fishing the Kazan, the biggest grayling I’d ever caught—or even seen—was about a pound. A two-pound grayling is considered a trophy fish, and brag-worthy anywhere in the world. In one day on the Kazan River, Lynn and I caught, at a conservative estimate, 50 grayling, and only five of them were under two pounds. Astonishing.