The bishop had not been at Great Bear lake, but from reports of Fathers Petitot, O.M.I., and Ducot, O.M.I., he knew that the lake was immense and abounding in fish. There was an abundance of small fish, which he believed to be herring.
To the eastward of Mackenzie river, separated from it by a chain of mountains, running in the same direction as the great river, a succession of beautiful and magnificent great lakes, full of fish, was found. They had named them “Pius IX”, “Demazenod” and “Tache”. These were the three largest lakes. The bishop had crossed them in winter from Fort Good Hope to Fort Norman.
Lakes were innumerable in the basin of the Great Mackenzie, and nearly all of them abounded in fish of different kinds. The regions east, northeast, and north, above all, abounded in lakes of all sizes, and were very rich in fish. Lake Athabaska furnished a very great quantity of whitefish, of small and large salmon trout, of pike, of pickerel, of carp, of large loches, etc. The whitefish weighed at least three pounds; the small trout from four to ten; the large trout from ten to thirty-five; the pike from four to twenty pounds; the carp the same. In Clear lake pike were caught weighing from twenty-five to thirty-five pounds. Whitefish, pike, pickerel, carp and trout were caught in nets in which the meshes were four and a half inches in size.
Great Slave lake produced the same species of fish that Great Athabaska lake did, and also in much greater quantity. They find there also the inconnu, a species of salmon which came from Arctic ocean. It was undeniable that it comes from the sea. It was found all the way up the Mackenzie as far north as the river at Fort Smith. There the rapids and the cascades prevented it ascending higher. It was a beautiful and fine fish—the shape of the whitefish, but much larger. It weighed from eight to thirty pounds.
Herring and the Inconnu in the Mackenzie.
W. F. Bredin, M.L.A., in his evidence before the Senate committee of 1907, stated that herring from Arctic ocean ascend the Mackenzie to about Fort Wrigley. They are good fish. He said he had been told that Great Bear lake just teems with that same herring.
In his report, William Ogilvie, D.L.S., gives the following information about the chief fishes of Mackenzie river:—“Fish are numerous in the Mackenzie, the principal species being that known as the ‘Inconnu.’ Those caught in the lower river are very good eating, much resembling salmon in taste, being also firm and juicy. The flesh is a light pink in color, but as they ascend the river and become poor, this turns white and the flesh gets soft and unpalatable. They average ten or twelve pounds in weight, but have often been caught weighing thirty or forty. They ascend as far as the rapids, on Great Slave river, where they are taken in the fall in great numbers for dog-feed, being then so thin that they are considered unfit for human food, if anything else is obtainable. This fish is not fed to working dogs, unless scarcity of other fish compels it. There is a small fish known locally as ‘herring’ somewhat resembling the inconnu in appearance, and which does not grow larger than a pound or two in weight. The staple fish of the district, and for that matter, of the whole northwest, is the whitefish. They abound in many parts of the river, but especially in all the lakes discharging into it, and form the principal article of diet during the greater part of the time, as very little food is brought into the country. This fish is caught in large numbers everywhere.”
Fish in Great Bear Lake.
Mr. Hanbury mentions that one August night his party’s nets in Great Bear lake caught sixteen whitefish, “some of them very large, seven or eight pounds; none of them under four pounds. This was the largest average of whitefish of which I had heard. In Great Slave lake their average weight is three pounds.”
Mr. E. A. Preble describes the lake trout so often referred to (Cristivomer naymacush) as a beautiful fish inhabiting nearly every body of water in the north, but abounding in the larger sheets of water, including Great Bear lake, and as the water is there beautifully clear the traveller frequently sees them pursuing their prey in the depths, or lying motionless near the bottom.