Remote Manitoba lakes serve up big trout

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/07/2019 (2505 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Over the course of my career, I have had opportunities to fish some of the best lake-trout waters in the world, and Manitoba ranks near the top when it comes to catching one of these great sport fish.

Nearby locations that won’t break the bank getting there include Clearwater Lake at The Pas and Lake Athapapuskow, both of which are awesome lakes with huge fish.

I have spent many days on both, but one lake a little less known to Manitobans lies on the border with Saskatchewan. Reindeer Lake is a huge body of water with several lodges on both sides of the border. It’s also a little-known fact that you can drive there, which believe you me, is an adventure in itself. A few years back, I headed up to visit this remote part of Manitoba.

Travelling 100 kilometres from Lynn Lake via Manitoba Provincial Road 391, we accessed the lake from Kinoosao (pronounced Kin-a-sao by locals), home of Grand Slam Lodge. Its rustic but majestic location is as nice as any camp I have been to, beautiful trees spaced out around the five log cabins. Built on a sand esker, the camp is right on the shores of the lake itself, in one of the hundreds of protected bays this lake has to offer.

This lake has more than 5,000 islands, offering shelter on even the windiest of days. For more information on Grand Slam Lodge, visit their website at grandslamlodge.com.

The first time I fished a fly for lake trout was at Frontier Lodge at Great Slave Lake up in the Northwest Territories. Along as my guest on this segment of The Complete Angler television show was noted fly-fisher Brian Chan. Brian had never caught a lake trout on a fly rod, or even a pike for that matter. The lodge is located at the mouth of the Stark River on the renowned East Arm of Great Slave Lake, about 200 km by air east of Yellowknife. Frontier Lodge has been in business for more than 60 years, running a quality operation. It was also some of the best fishing that I have ever had for lake trout, pike and arctic grayling.

The trip did get off to a bit of an eventful start, though, when upon landing our Twin Turbo Otter lost the reverse on one of its engines. This meant the lodge had to send out the guides in their boats to collect both the passengers and the luggage. Once that was accomplished, it was time to pull the plane to the dock. The next day a mechanic was flown out from Yellowknife to fix the problem. My first day was spent fishing with Brian on the Stark River in front of the lodge that connects the east arm of Great Slave with Stark Lake.

We had just anchored the boat in a likely looking spot, a narrowed-down section of the lake, fly rods primed and ready to go. With the wind blowing at a leisurely pace, the water ebbed nicely with a medium flow. Brian stripped some line from his fly reel, then laid out the line upstream about 25 metres on about a 45-degree angle from the front of the boat.

Leaving a slight belly in his fly line on the drift, he would allow it to swing downstream, stripping it back to the boat quickly as it straightened out downstream to imitate a wounded ciscoe. On the second cast, he hooked into a nice laker, his first ever. As he got the fish to the boat in the heavy current, his eight-weight fly rod buckled in half from the strain. All this, of course, was captured on camera to his chagrin. It was a memorable moment and set the tone for an awesome week of fishing at one of the great fishing destinations in Canada, if not the world.

On Day 2, Brian and I headed out to reef fish the main lake with sinking fly line and big streamers. We ended up catching some nice fish, anchored and casting deep to shallow. It was later in the day, though, while trolling flies that I hooked up with a true giant. Even with a 10-weight fly rod it took 20 minutes to land this brute.

Nowadays, the success ratio has increased dramatically with an informed angling public. We have better electronics and boat control that is scary. Find the fish on your Helix 10, drop your troll motor and put it on spot lock, vertical jig with a soft plastic and catch fish.

If you like big fish and a chance to explore beautiful country, lake trout fishing is for you.

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