I settled on Northern Quebec as the place to go and found a small
fishing lodge in the Ungava Bay region. I really liked what the camp
operators had to say, and we set up the trip for September.
The brook trout fishing was everything the Turners hoped it would be.
David Turner caught a seven-pounder the first day. As far as he was
concerned, any additional fish would be a bonus. There were lots of
bonuses.”

Brook trout are common from Georgia’s Chatahoochee River north
throughout the Atlantic seaboard. A brook trout exceeding 12 inches is
a big fish in most places, and fish weighing two pounds and caught in
U.S. waters are considered uncommonly large.

The all-tackle record recognized by the International Game Fish
Association is 14.5 pounds, a fish caught in 1916. The IGFA fly fishing
record for brook trout weighed 10 pounds, seven ounces and was
caught in Quebec in 1982.

Quebec and Newfoundland are generally recognized as the hotspots for
big brook trout. The Turners vote for Quebec.
Jeff Turner believes the stars aligned perfectly for his family’s fishing
trip. The full moon occurred September 7. The next day was stormy and
very windy, yet Gregg Turner managed to catch 100 fish in spite of the
conditions. Several of those fish weighed three to six pounds.
Most of the fly fishing was done with 8-weight rods and wet flies, but
Jeff Tuner noticed fish swirling on the surface and traded his heavier rod
for a 4-weight rod and a dry fly, a # 14 Parachute Adams. It worked fine,
until Turner ran out of flies.

The next morning, he bought the camp’s remaining supply of Parachute
Adams (seven flies) and divided them among the family members. Turner
was fishing with his light rod and 3Xtippet, about six-pound test. He had
four of the effective dry flies when he set out for the last day of fishing.
“I got in one area and had three hard hits in a row.” Turner said. “I lost
three of my four flies. I only had one left, and it was pretty beaten up.
I wasn’t sure it would even work, but I tied it on and made sure the knot
was good. Then I made another cast. A fish came up and took the fly.”
Turner could tell it was a big trout, but the fish just went to the bottom
of the river and lay there. The light rod was bent double, and the fly line
was quivering from the strain. The brook trout finally decided something
was wrong and took off downstream, ripping line off the reel.
It was the first of nine strong runs that had Turner running downstream
in an effort to keep up. He finally landed the fish 45 minutes later and
450 yards downriver from where he hooked it. “We photographed it,
measured it, revived it and released it.”

The fish was 28.8 inches long. Its girth was estimated at 18 inches.
Using a formula created by IGFA, Turner’s brook trout weighed at least
11.7 pounds. It beat the existing fly-fishing mark by a pound, “When
I released the fish, I didn’t realize it would have been a world
record, but I wouldn’t have killed it even had I known,” Turner said. “It was truly a once-in-a-life time fish.

A Fish so gallant, it lives to fight another day.