Typical Brook Trout
Brook Trout
Brook Trout
This guy appeared to be an old fish, judging from the battle scars...
Brook Trout
Northern Pike
Northern Pike
John Sinder with a nice Northern Pike. This was day 1!
You can bring your conventional gear if you want to, but it's not necessary.
OK, we had to catch shore lunch... Chad Miller sneaks around with a nice catch of walleyes bound for the dinner table.
The food back at the lodge was exceptional, but oh boy, the shore lunches were something to look forward to!
Shore lunch was something to look forward to.
We got weathered out one day and came back to the lodge for lunch. If it wasn't for the great shore lunches, you might be tempted to come back every day.
...and no Chad, contrary to what the guide told you, chicks don't dig guys with scars.
If you choose, evening fishing can be arranged; it's often a magical time as Jon Sinder can attest to.
Wow…
We just returned from Manitoba and if there ever was a trip I couldn’t be more surprised about it was this one. We went to Bolton Lake Lodge with expectations of hooking a walleye or two and spending a lot of time blind casting large flies hoping to catch a few big Northern Pike. However what really peaked our interest were the reports of huge Brook Trout that the lodge was said to have access to. Needless to say, back home our expectations were of a typical Canadian lodge where we were fed meat and potatoes and given lots of it. We expected the staff to be skeptical and maybe encourage us to take a spinning rod along. We expected good fishing but not the level of fishing many of us experienced in Chile or Argentina or maybe the Seychelles. Well to put it bluntly we had no clue about the fishing and our expectations of anything else were, to put it mildly, way off.
What we witnessed in the last few days was without question one of the top few trips of my life! This is not embellishment in anyway…it is the truth. The fishing was extraordinary, more on that later. The food was exquisite. The staff was enthusiastic and fascinated by what we were trying to accomplish. I have done this before, gone into a conventional fisherman’s lodge and gotten the look of someone looking at an alien for the first time. We got none of that and felt as if we were truly helping accomplish something for both us and the lodge. We discovered Walleye love flies and big Brook Trout exist outside of Labrador on a scale not easily imagined.
Fly fishing for the Brook Trout was a given. Even fly fishing for Pike has a certain level of fame. What was not known to us is the ease and regularity of catching big Walleye on streamers. To be honest, we have caught Walleye before on flies and a little has been written about it. In no way shape or form though could we have imagined witnessing what happened. What I am about to tell you is true and not embellished in the least so pay attention and try to keep yourself from committing to go to Bolton Lake Lodge.
As I sat in the lodge the first evening talking to Bolton Lake Lodge owner Trevor Dick, guide Chris Tholl bursts through the door and was panting as if he had just run a great distance. Chris bursts in and tells me “Chad get your fly rods, let’s go now!” Well that sounds good but I was relaxing and not really in the mood to get up, besides I had already caught 20 or so Walleye that day on sink tips and streamers. On top of all of that, I had also watched Jon Sinder land a 41 inch Pike earlier in the day.
So I got up somewhat reluctantly and got my gear and moved to the boat. After a short run to an island Chris told me to hurry and get up front. As I got my fly off the rod’s guide and set it in the water a foot outside the boat, Chris says “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you will hook a fish”. Two seconds later a Walleye came up and sucked my fly down! Fish on! For the next hour and a half I caught 40 Walleye between 18 and 24 inches. I even managed to get a Walleye to hit a diver! Insane, there were fish rising everywhere on this reef in a couple of feet of water, we think, eating very tiny minnows. We thought even eating mayflies but we saw no mayflies. This was a first day I would not forget and it would be repeated by Jon Sinder a couple of days later. Oh yea, just for good measure that day Eric Berger caught a nice fat 43 inch Pike.
Day 2 we got in the lodge’s floatplane and flew up to Island Lake River to try our luck on what we really came for, i.e., to see if those stories of big Brook Trout were true. Well they were! To make a long story short, in two days of exploring we landed 25 Brook Trout 20 inches or bigger and lost many more. We even got a couple to come up and eat mice patterns on the surface. Now that was a real thrill. In a nutshell, the Brook Trout fishing was world-class and could not have met my expectations any better. Our biggest fish were Eric Berger’s 23.5 inch brookie and my 23 inch fish. Eric got some fantastic photos and I got some great video footage that we’ll certainly share with you on this site.
The chef at Bolton Lake Lodge also surprised us. First we were surprised that they even had an executive chef and even more surprised how good the food was. Robin the chef, trained in Winnipeg in Italian, French but mainly in Mediterranean food. The food was as good as some of the best fly fishing lodges well-known for their fine cuisine. In fact, it was better than the food at Alphonse in the Seychelles and on par with Cinco Rios in Chile. The deserts, of which I could not help my self, were fabulous. Great food, great staff, wonderful fishing and most important the lodge was run by a staff that had their stuff together. I would rate this as one of our best lodges we offer and we know when we send you there you will be well taken care of.
There are still a few openings for this season and we are planning more trips for 2010 that I know many of you are already asking about. We are recommending a few weeks’ trips for next season and a few time period packages. We have even talked with them about a fly fishing school. I just can’t say enough good things about the lodge and hope that you get a chance either this year or next to experience it. If you still want to go this year let me know and we will set it up. If you want to go next year, get with us and we will get you on the list.
Written by Chad Miller, Photography by Eric Berger
June 2009
