Speaking of Carp

This morning we went over to the south shore again, and took our bikes. While J. was taking photos of one of the grain elevators across the river, I rode further west, locked my bike on an old rack overgrown with rugusa roses laden with rose hips, and followed a narrow trail through the woods to Point du Marigot. This is a nature preserve that runs along the river for a ways, and it includes a waterfowl nesting  site in the trees at the back of this photo - I'm looking from the point that goes out into the river back toward the path that runs along it. The area downriver from this point is a secluded lagoon where the water is much calmer, and it's a haven for waterfowl and shorebirds of every kind.

We saw more great blue herons than we could count. The one in this picture, though, is a great  egret - at least I'm pretty sure it was a great egret rather than snowy egret. There were quite a few of them too. Lots of ducks, lots of geese, cormorants, gulls, and many sandpiper and plover-like things that I don't know well enough to identify. Next time, I'll take the field guide and larger binoculars along.

We were captivated by the terns. I don't know if they were arctic terns or common terns, but whichever they were, they were remarkable fliers and fishers, plunging into the water repeatedly and changing direction in the air - it seemed - in mid-wing-beat, at will. They were noisy, too, calling "keer-keer!" across the water as they harassed the gulls and swooped back and forth over the slowly-swimming ducks.

Two small flocks of geese came in directly over my head, completely unafraid and only twelve feet or so above me; I could see their muscles flexing and felt like I had just entered a clip of "Winged Migration."

This is how close we were to the city; you feel like you're a million miles away even though the container ships are being unloaded right across the water, and there's a big highway beyond the trees.

After we'd been there for a while, a fisherman came along, in hip boots and vest and carrying a fly rod. We watched him creeping along the shore of the lagoon, quite like the herons we'd seen stalking their prey. Suddenly - a huge splash - he had hooked a big fish and the rod was bent nearly double. We watched him play, land and release his catch without ever bringing it fully out of the water, and then went closer to talk to him. It had been a carp, a pretty big one, that he had seen and enticed with a large artificial fly. "They're eating worms and insects right now," he told us, "but they're very wary - I rubbed this fly, which was new, on the grass before using it to take away any human scent." He was a lifetime Montrealer who knows all the natural places close to the city, and especially likes this area near the Boucherville islands on the south shore. "North American fishermen tend to turn up their noses at carp, but in Europe sportsfishermen see them as a great game fish - it's all cultural," he said. "But I release everything anyway - I'm using hooks without barbs, and try hard not to take the fish out the water." What else does he catch in the river? Pike, small and large-mouth bass, and sometimes a sturgeon. I told him I'd seen a huge fish leap out of the water the last time I was there, and he said it was probably a sturgeon - which seems as mythical to me as a flock of Arctic terns.

Comments

[Marja-Leena]

Such a lovely spot so near the city! Interesting that the fisherman did not keep his catches. Why, is the fish tainted perhaps? I remember the sturgeons, and many other fish, my father used to catch on the Winnipeg River. My mother smoked the sturgeon, canning some of the extra for winter. I've not had a taste of that in many decades now, nor gone fishing in a long time.

[zuleme]

Don't miss the snow geese this fall. I forget the name of the town we saw them in but we camped near a museum on the river and watched the flocks come in like airplanes. It was bizarre that there were also places where people could shoot them from. I don't think any were shot while we were there so maybe the shooting spots were for something else.
There was a festival of the snow geese in the same town.

[Rachel Barenblat]

How glorious!