What a fabulous trip. A week at Cree Lake Lodge was a great way to kick off the summer! Karen, Doug and I have been to Cree Lake and this was Mike's first time. We stayed in wall tents and did the DIY option. Once we arrived after flying in from Fort McMurray, Adam and Brandon got us all settled and by supper time, we were already catching lake trout right out front of the camp! Cree Lake is sandy and part of the Athabasca drainage. The lake is enormous and we only fly fish a very small portion of the lake. We focus on fly fishing for pike, lake trout and arctic grayling. There are walleye and whitefish in Cree Lake as well.
We always keep an eye on the weather and sadly wind started to blow quite hard for the last half of our trip. That meant we had to do some map work and try new spots based on the wind direction. Several of the new spots were excellent, others not so much. That is part of the challenge of Do It Yourself fly fishing. We did have two boats and lots of gas so we just had to get out of the wind. Thunderstorms rolled in many times during our stay. We had to dodge them and at times come back to camp to wait out the lightening and fierce winds.
Our Garmin Fish Finder, InReach and GPS were so useful on the lake for getting around. There is a maize of bays and islands.
Our first full day we went looking for pike. We did manage to connect on several bigger ones although it was more challenging to get the pike to eat. We casted with our tried and true Northern Magic flies. They seem to work great although we did get more refusals this time for whatever reason.
We had some favourite spots to look for lake trout and they were great producers. As time wore on we decided to try and find a giant laker. That did not happen although we did have excellent success at catching 5 to 15 pound lakers.
We cooked for ourselves. That included eating lake trout three times. Mike had some great ideas about how to successfully cook them. The result was delicious meals.
Most of our days we were out on the water at 8 am and back to our tent around 5pm or 6 pm. The day we went down to the Cree River to fly fish for grayling, we got back late and luckily food prep that night was quick. The wall tents have stoves, refrigeration and a BBQ. It is surprisingly comfortable and from my point of view, affordable.
We usually found a beautiful sand beach to eat our lunch on. There are so many of them and they are a great opportunity to stretch your legs, eat and pee!
The week went way too fast. The four of us laughed, enjoyed some adult beverages and fished! The only day we could not fish was our last morning before the plane came. The wind was blowing so hard that even the guides stayed in camp! When the float plane arrived for our flight out, the guides quickly unloaded, reloaded and we were off on our 1 hour 20 minute flight back to Fort McMurray!
(Everyone on the trip contributed photos for this blog post!)
Mike in the Co-pilot seat!
Fly Around Forest Fires on the Way In
Karen with a big pike!
Karen caught this monster in the Cree River!
Arctic grayling fly fishing on the Cree River with dry flies is superb!
We caught plenty of lake trout on flies!
Bait ball means lakers are around!
A sizeable pike, a surprise on the Cree River
Wall tents at Cree Lake Lodge-An affordable option!
Supper!
We used these articulated streamers with a lot of success catching lakers!
We loved to heckle each other during meal preperation!
Lakers under a rainbow!
Wind Bound Last Morning
Happy Canada Day from Cree Lake Lodge!
Take Off in Heavy Wind!
