I never sleep well in the lands of the midnight sun. Some would say because it never gets dark as you can see from this picture I took when I was done rigging my rods earlier this morning at 1 AM. No doubt 24 hours of light can be exhausting. But it’s rather because I’m so excited. The midnight sun for me means I’m on a very special fishing trip. This week its at Gangler’s North Seal River Lodge.
Gangler’s Lodge is located in Northern Manitoba on the beautiful Lake Egenolf. It’s almost 200 miles from the nearest road. The lodge is positioned in a unique area where 12 river systems merge to form over 100 lakes meeting up with one of Canada’s greatest rivers, the North Seal.
Shaun Lawson and I are here in this vast wilderness of hardly fished waters because Yellow Dog Flyfishing may be adding Gangler’s as their newest Canada northern pike, lake trout, walleye and Arctic grayling fly fishing destination. Yellow Dog never adds a destination until a pro from their staff visits and approves it. Based on the fantastic service and food Shaun and I experienced upon our arrival last night, its highly likely Gangler’s will soon be available.
As you know from reading the last few days of blogs, the weather in Manitoba has been horrendous. Unfortunately the slow moving front continued to deliver rain and cool weather in the 40°’s on us all day. One of the great things about Gangler’s is that they offer daily fly ins to over 20 nearby lakes. Owner Ken Gangler had Shaun and I scheduled to fly out today but the weather prohibited it. Instead we fished right out from the lodge on Lake Egenolf.
Our guide is a local named Ronnie. While the fish are so plentiful up here that finding them is easy, navigating these lakes is not. There are more hidden rock gardens in these lakes than I’ve seen anywhere in my life. Keep in mind, an accident up here can be life threatening with the frigid water temps. The ice left the lakes in this area only three weeks ago.
Due to this dang weather, Shaun and I missed out on two days of fishing. Originally we planned to experience three serious northern pike fishing days then play around with the lake trout, walleye and grayling. With only three days total now, we set out directly after the pike. Its ok with me, pike are one of my favorite fish.
Shaun and I tossed 9-weights with large brightly colored streamers when we rolled into the first spot. Shaun aims to take photos most of the time these three days but the flat light was so bad for photography he took some time to fish. We weren’t five minutes in when we moved the first pike.
I’ll talk more about fly fishing for pike in tomorrows blog but I can tell you that the lakes of northern Canada are full of them. Every shallow bay we pulled into on Lake Engenolf was jam packed with pike from 20-30 inches. As for getting a rip on the end of a fly rod, there’s nothing like it and we kept Ronnie busy unhooking fish all day. Sometimes we even got doubles!
There are so many fish in northern Canada that every trip I’ve been lucky enough to relish on provides a special event each day – shore lunch. Shore lunch is when you take a couple of fish – could be pike, walleye or lake trout and have your guide cook them for you at lunch. Today we chose pike because we caught so many. And man were they mouthwatering!
Shaun and I likely caught 50 pike today. Lake Egenolf is chock full of pike. While most were average size of around 28” there are some monsters out there. The problem however is that in late June, these big pike like shallow bays warmed up by the sun. There hasn’t been any sun in five days. Let’s hope things heat up for tomorrow.
We returned to the lodge at 6 PM. While the lodge can handle 24 people, most are off at one of the many Outpost Camps Gangler’s has to offer. There’s a small group of a dozen of us that enjoyed a fun cocktail hour and fantastic meal with desert. Time for bed. We will try for the fly in again first thing in the morning.
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