Because Minipi is in Labrador, the ancestral home of the Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), and it is still the only place on planet earth where you can fly-fish for wild brookies up to 10 pounds. That’s right. At Minipi we don’t measure ‘em, we weigh ‘em.

Big Water. Big Fish.  Big dry flies.

You’ll be casting #8 Wulffs , deer-hair mice, gaudy Bombers as big as your pinkie finger to free-rising brookies averaging 5.5 pounds. These are the biggest brookies you’ve ever seen, wide slabs of pristine muscle as strong as the dudes at those arm-wrestling contests in Petaluma.

When is the last time you cast a dry fly on smooth, fresh water and caught a 7 pounder? At Minipi, you have a very good chance of doing precisely that.  (They don’t even count 3 pounders.)

MULTIPLE CHOICE: lakes, streams, riffles, coves, and brooks.

Although the term “lake” is applied to wider sections of the Minipi, it is really a species of river that limnologists call a river-lake — a wide, rather shallow, slow-moving, sandy-bottomed river fed by numerous tributaries with narrow outlets and inlets along its course – think of the St. John’s in Florida.

Because of the size of this vast watershed, the guides use flat-bottomed boats and canoes to ferry anglers from spot to spot throughout the day looking for hatches and rising fish at the mouths of tributaries, on the faster water in the narrows, up streams, below falls and, with portages, into such storied places as the Foam Pool and the canal-like serenity of the upper reaches of Rose’s Brook.

Hunting the hatches

Unlike stream-bred trout in the States that hole-up near favorite feeding stations, Minipi trout are nomads, constantly moving to avoid being ambushed by pike, cruising the river looking for hatches that occur at different times in different places – over weed beds,  close to shore, in the narrows and the riffles and at the mouth of tribs.  The Minipi angler is a hunter who follows in the footsteps of his prey.