Imagine a pristine lake nestled in the wilderness, untouched by the hands of man and possibly teeming with some of the biggest fish you could ever find. You may be thinking back to a time when Lee Wulff flew his Piper Cub over the rivers of Minipi and discovered the richness of it’s waters and the plentiful fish that lived there.
But what if Lee wasn’t the first person do to this? Our guest Tom Rodgers tells us of a time in 1958 when he was a boy of 15 watching home-videos in his prep school classroom from his teacher, Robert Bryan’s previous flights to an unknown lake in Labrador – one he noted looked much like the places he fishes today.
“We had a rod and gun club in prep school, fly fishing and hunting, with a game dinner in the spring. We’d watch his (Robert Bryan) movies from flying into Labrador. He never mentioned where but I would bet on the Minipi Watershed,” says Rodgers.
Rodgers says Robert and wife Faith would take trips in their float plane to Labrador where Robert worked as an episcopal chaplain in the native parishes of Labrador.
“They would fly-fish off the floats! 5-6-7 pound trout. I knew big brookies were up there then. Lee may have known of the area then, but didn’t go until the 60s. This was the 50s when Bob Bryan was there.”
Through research we’ve found that Robert Bryan did indeed visit Labrador and Northern Quebec to serve as a clergyman in small settlements, and as also noted by Tom, was somewhat famous in New England for recording the popular humorist album, “Bert and I.”
A curious tale of Labrador’s brook trout. Though it matters not who fished first, it is interesting to know that Minipi’s waters have been producing record breaking trout for many, many years.