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Newfie June

Newfie June - The Newfie Bullet "Trouter's Special"

As the calendar turns to May, I always think of the 24th of May fishing trips planned by my father and brothers.

Almost every year, Dad would take the three oldest boys and head out for "ponds unknown" to do some troutin'. Off they would trek while the skies were still dark. They would often head out over the Trans Canada Highway and pull off near Soldier's Pond. They'd don their long rubbers and walk about 5 miles, over muskeg and shrub brush, to get to a pond "that was not over-fished, you know". I hear my brothers reminiscing now and the tales are all of rooting each other in the behind with the tips of their fishing rods as they trudged along over the barrens and skylarking until Dad would get mad at them. The oldest boy would complain as he would have to lag at the back to make sure the younger ones didn't get too far back and get left behind.

The night before the trip Mom would make a stack of potted meat sandwiches (with a bit of mustard pickles diced up in it for flavour), wrap them up in waxed paper and thrust them into an old canvas back pack Dad had. Of course there was a small kettle and box of Seadog matches tucked in along side for the boil up along the way. A tin of beans set over the open fire to heat and the little kettle on to boil having been filled with water from the nearest brook… I don't know if there is a cup of tea in the world that tastes as good as one made over an open fire with blasty boughs and juniper twigs firing a kettle full of brook water!

Another popular 24th of May trek for our family was out to a place near the Witless Bay Line. There was a family, named Kane, who used to be our neighbours in the early days. Old Mr. Kane had a summer shack out Witless Bay area that had a renowned spring giving them drinking water. The spring must have come from deep in the Earth as the water was as cold and pure as any our can find anywhere. The Kane family was devout Catholic and their legend was that a priest, who was a relative, had blessed the well when it was first dug and it flowed pure water due to this. Dad knew of a good fishing gully in the general direction of the Kane property so they would stop at the spring for a "mug-up" and then trek another 3-5 miles to the place he wanted to fish.

Once they got where they were going (Dad always seemed to have a place in mind back then, but now the boys think it was all a ruse) Dad would get them set up and he would go to another side of the pond to wet his line. Of course, as soon as the afternoon sun got at them; after the early rise and long walk over the barrens, they would often as not lie down on the moss for a snooze. Mr. Kane joined them for some fishing one year and Bill recalls how much fun it was to watch him. The old fellow was convinced that the fish could see you up through the water so to get the big ones to bite, you had to sneak up on them to cast out your line…so as not to scare them out into deeper water. He said the old guy would get into a queer crouch about 4 or 5 feet from the side of the pond. He would then scuttle forward, still in his crouched position and fling his line out. He would stay crouched until the line got slowly reeled back in and then repeat the procedure. Bill and the other boys laughed and thought the man quite mad until he started reeling in the fish. He got the best catches of the day. That gave them something to think about as they trudged back across the barrens!

One year, my Father took the Newfie Bullet "Trouter's Special" with my oldest brother, Bill and his best friend, Eric. Dad reckoned there was no where else on Earth that a man could take a free train ride to some of the best wilderness fishing and back, but that's what you could do on the Trouter's Special on May 24th weekend.

For those of you that don't know, the Newfie Bullet was the name of the trans-provincial train that used a narrow gauge rail and would plod its way slowly back and forth across the Island from the late 1800's until the 1980's when it was deemed to be useless and the tracks torn up…to be replaced by a trans-provincial bus service run by C.N.

The Newfie Bullet moved at such a slow pace that the standing joke was about a woman who went to the conductor when the train neared Corner Brook and told him he had to stop the train as she was about to deliver her baby. When he chided her for attempting such a trip in her condition, she informed him that she was not pregnant when she left St. John's! Anyway, being a British colony until 1949, Newfoundlanders took their 24th of May holiday (celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday) seriously. The Bullet made a special run that weekend from St. John's out across the Avalon Peninsula as far as Argentia, to take folks to good fishing spots. You could pretty well tell the conductor to stop anywhere along the line by pulling the rope bell. The Trouter's Special left St. John's on Friday afternoon, with a lot the men weighed down by their fishing baskets full of Screech and beer, and it returned Sunday afternoon. The trip out was apparently quite a lot of fun with the men singing and telling tales of May long weekends past (the fish were HUGE, don't you know!) For passage back to St. John's you had to be sure you were by the side of the tracks to flag the train down as it went past on Sunday. You had better not miss the return trip, though, or you'd have a long walk ahead of you!

I have been known to wet a line occasionally over the years but I didn't get the "fishin' bug" like some of my siblings did. One of my daughters is an avid angler, though. She often spends at least one afternoon fishing on the "May long".

However you spend your May 24th weekend, do something you really enjoy doing with people you like spending time with! Make it a celebration of spring, be safe and most of all….be happy!

Cheers,

Newfie June
© Newfie June




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