Big char on Victoria Island in the Arctic

The Ekaluk River flows from Ferguson Lake on Victoria Island just a few miles to the Beaufort Sea in Canada's High Arctic, about 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. In late summer, for a period of about three weeks, sea-run Arctic char swim up the river to spawn.

This past August, Bob Magie of Duluth and his law partner, Forrest Hutchinson, made a trip there to fish for char.

"The river is ice cold and gin clear," Magie said. "The flow is incredibly fast. I was shocked at how much current there was."

The char, a member of the salmon family, are big.

"I would guess a good average would be 25 to 28 inches," Magie said. "You got the exceptional one 30 to 32, 33 inches. But the girth was what's so significant. The girth was 18 to 22 inches, which makes them a heavy fish."

The fish weighed up to about 20 pounds, he said.

According to the website of B & J Flyfishing Adventures, about 80,000 char make the upstream run each fall.

Two-handed spey fly rods were recommended, but Magie didn't have one. He used a 9-foot fiberglass Eagle Claw rod he had, with sinking tip line and 12- to 15-pound tippet. The anglers cast simple wet flies in pink or chartreuse, he said. The pink color imitated the shrimp that char feed on in the ocean, although insect life is scant in the river itself.

"It's a very simple cast," Magie said. "You're not going to get a bite while (the fly) is going down in the current. When it (the fly) gets to the end of the line, it'll come up a little. Ninety-five percent of the time, the char hit when it comes up."

When a char hits, things get exciting.

"All hell breaks loose when he heads for the middle of the river," Magie said. 'You'd want a minimum of 150 yards of backing on your line. The real big ones, the 25-pounders, want to go upstream."

The anglers would typically chase the fish as they ran downstream, trying to get them to shore.

The Ekaluk River char were silver in color, not the deeply red-hued color of some Arctic char, such as those from the Tree River. The difference in coloration can be a factor of genetics, diet or timing of maturation of the fish as they near their spawning time, said Chuck Krueger, science director for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The Ekaluk River was 100 to 300 yards wide, Magie said, and flanked by the vast tundra.

"I kind of have this fascination with the far north," he said. "I had never seen the far north in this way -- a different terrain totally. Not a tree. Not a willow. It's really totally unspoiled."

The anglers saw some musk oxen but no polar bears or tundra grizzly bears.

Magie and Hutchinson were among a group of five staying at the outpost cabins of B & J Fly Fishing Adventures along the river. Daytime highs were in the 60s, and bugs were not a factor.

Magie was surprised, in an area with little precipitation, to see small rivulets of water running off the land into the river. He asked camp owner Bill Lyall, an Inuit man, what caused the run-off.

"He says, 'It's the melting of the permafrost,'" Magie said. "The way he said it, he had sadness in his eyes, as if they were really losing something. ... These people are very attuned to their environment, much more than we are."

Climate scientists say the permafrost of the world's Arctic region is thawing, in the process releasing carbon dioxide and methane gas.

1/2: Guide Jack Elofsson (left) of B & J Fly Fishing Adventures and his nephew, David Slocombe, celebrate an Arctic char that Slocombe caught on Canada's Ekaluk River in August. Most of the char were from 25 to 28 inches long, with some longer than 30 inches, said Duluth's Bob Magie, who fished with Elofsson and Slocombe.

2/2: Arctic char fillets dry in the Arctic sun on a drying rack.