Sight fishing 40+” Northern pike, great weather, top of the line food/accommodations, and an outstanding fishing group.  Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Four of us from various parts of the world (Toronto, Salt Lake City, Broomfield Col, Pearland Tx) made the trip to Cree River Lodge.  The trip started with us all meeting in Edmonton for an overnight stopover.  The adventure began the next day with a 4am wake up to meet the 530am, 2hr charter flight to Stony Rapids.  There we boarded a turbo prop otter on floats for a 30min flight to the lodge.  Arriving at the lodge at 8am, we were greeted with breakfast, a quick unpack, and off to fishing.  Typical days consisted of 630am coffee, 7am breakfast, 8am boat departure, shore lunch at noon, and back to the lodge by 5pm.  Full days.

Can’t say enough good things about the lodge, accommodation, food, staff….all top tier.  We had two people per cabin….the cabins consisting of two rooms and a bathroom….quite comfortable.  The lodge was “Starlink” connected for those needing to “stay in touch”.  Dinner was pike, walleye, pork, steak and all the trimmings;  shore lunches were freshly caught fish…..Needless to say no one left losing weight.  Owners Pat and Lori were perfect hosts….outgoing, friendly, and “on top” of all the things necessary to run a remote lodge. 

Oh yeah, the fishing……

Sum it up as OUTSTANDING.  Our target species was northern pike, but there were also walleye, grayling, and whitefish to be caught.  A combo of appx 50% blind casting / 50% sight casting.  8-10wt fly rods were the ticket with fairly bulky flies.  Hard to beat a 40” pike lurking behind your fly as you slowly strip to the boat….and then that huge mouth opens and in a flash the fly is gone and the fight is on….. We caught numbers the first day and targeted big fish on days 2-4.  Fish ranged from “axe handle 20” to the biggest at 44.5”.  All four anglers caught multiple pike over 40” and quite a few in the 30+” range.   My guess is we landed easily over 100 pike across the four days (along with a scattered few walleye, grayling and whitefish)

Guides were very knowledgeable and great to fish with…..one having been at the lodge for 20+ yrs. Both put us on fish, made sure we had the right gear, and took great care of us.  Could not have asked for better leadership.

This trip has a permanent place in my memory banks.  Great fishing group, remote, well-run lodge, world class fishing, I could go on and on.  I would recommend this trip to any fly fishing enthusiast.

Special thanks to Scott Gardner for organizing the trip, making sure we had the right gear, leaders, flies, etc etc.  (by the way….he is an outstanding pike fly tyer and very generous with his flies). An outstanding trip leader.

FYI: Below is the link to the previous TFF post regarding Cree River Lodge providing much more detail about the lodge, location, etc. etc.
Fly-fishing trip: Giant pike in Saskatchewan (plus Arctic grayling & walleye), June 12-16, 2025, from Phil Shook – Texas Flyfishers of Housto