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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Alex Debogorski has a deal with the fish.

"I drive on the ice road. The fish stay on one side of the road, I stay on the other. I don't bother them. They don't bother me."

Alex Debogorski holds trophies for best fishing story and best wildlife story, awarded to him by the Likely Archery Rod and Gun Club at its fish and game banquet in April. - Galit Rodan/NNSL photo

But that wasn't always the case.

Some four decades ago, Debogorski, then a sprightly young coal miner in Grande Cache, Alta., invested more than a thousand dollars into his new fishing hobby. He was determined and he had money to spare. But the fish had other plans.

Though you won't see any impressive gaping-mouthed fish amidst the clutter of photos and paraphernalia mounted on Debogorski's walls, he now has a golden fish-topped trophy to call his own.

Debogorski was actually awarded two trophies at the Likely Archery Rod and Gun Club's fish and game banquet in Likely, B.C. last week - one for the best fishing story (his own), the other for the best wildlife story (once told to him by a friend).

Debogorski would drive 45 minutes to his favourite fishing spot on the shore of Pierre Grey's Lakes Provincial Park after finishing a shift at the mine.

"I fished and I fished and I fished. And I never caught a thing. I don't know if I even got a bite," he said.

One day, he had a conversation with the "little hippie" downstairs that he hoped would change his luck.

He borrowed his neighbour's wetsuit, snorkel, fins, mask and spear gun. If the fish wouldn't come to him, he thought, he would go to the fish. Though he couldn't really swim, he was getting desperate.

"I mean if somebody had told me about dynamite I would have blown them out of the water because I wanted to catch a fish," he recounted. "I wanted me to get the fish. How I got it I didn't care anymore. And I didn't care how big it was, whether it was legal or illegal. I wanted a fish!"

Debogorski, who had never snorkeled before, was fascinated by the new world beneath the surface. Then a fish went by and "Ah there's a fish! POOF! And I fired the spear gun and of course I missed by a country mile," he said, laughing.

In all the excitement he forgot where he was. He took a deep breath, filling his mask up with lake water.

"Well I just come out of the water like one of those killer whales. I must have been two feet out of the water. I come shooting out of the water in a big arc. And of course once I broke the surface, well now on the surface I figure I'm up on top so I took another breath forgetting that my mask was full of water. I wasn't thinking," he said.

"So I mean by the time I ripped my mask off I was spitting water all over the place and managed to drag myself and not lose the spear gun, back into shore. So that was it. So of course I didn't get any fish that day."

After failing rather spectacularly, he heard of another, easier method: fly fishing.

But having no interest in learning to fly fish, he decided to cut corners.

"I got my 20-pound test line, I put a fly on the end and I tied it around my finger and I climbed up in a tree and I was just dabbing this fly ... in the water. Sure enough a little fish jumps out and grabs the fly!" he said, still incredulous.

Debogorski caught seven or eight fish this way. They were no bigger than six inches long but they were the fruit of a two-year struggle and Debogorski was thrilled.

Each time he caught one he'd climb down the tree and place it in a water-filled pail.

After several trips down he was struck by how few fish were in the pail. He was sure he'd caught more.

"And I was thinking - what the heck? I thought I had eight and like three or four fish later I've got five ... I'm getting all confused and I'm thinking somebody is playing a trick. And I just got right mean. I start looking around the bushes."

Debogorski had some scoundrels for best friends at the time, he said.

"I thought those dirty rotten buggers are sneaking around the bush and they're stealing my fish. So I found this great big root and I'm walking around with this root and if I find the son of a gun that's got my fish I'm going to wrap this root right around his neck. Oh I was just wild."

But after an hour-long search through the bush turned up nary a thing, Debogorski returned to his pail to find merely two fish remaining.

"There's only two fish left! I'm looking around, I'm looking around. I said, 'What?' I look up in a tree. Here's a whiskey jack," he said.

"He has this fish in his throat and he's choking. He's rocking back and forth with the branch like he needs the Heimlich maneuver. And dirty rotten thing. If I had a gun we would have been eating whiskey jacks next."

Debogorski managed to contain himself enough to catch three more fish from the tree leaning over the water. This time he covered the pail.

And apart from on a few occasions later in life with his children, that was the end of Alex Debogorski's pursuit of the elusive fish.

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