Ice fishing Friday: Chasing giant lake trout on northern Saskatchewan’s remote Cree Lake

Pulling into the staging area for the final leg of our journey to the lodge—essentially at the end of the road—Randy and I are momentarily shocked by the number of parked trucks and snowmobile trailers. After an eight-hour drive on asphalt, one overnight stay in a rustic cabin, then another three hours on rough gravel road, it had felt as though few humans ever made it this far north, but apparently not so.

After claiming a parking spot and backing in our trailer, we climb out of the truck and are promptly greeted with a blast of cold, crisp air. It’s frigid, biting and inhospitable. March it is, but balmy it isn’t, setting the stage for our remote ice-fishing adventure.

The final leg is a three-hour snowmobile ride through taiga forest and across the frozen surface of Cree, Saskatchewan’s fourth largest lake. Admittedly, I’m feeling some anxiety at this point. No stranger to backcountry travel, I know the risks, and given the conditions and some uncertainty about our travel route, I’m mildly nervous about the few remaining hours of daylight. A lot can happen when you depend on snowmobiles in the wilderness.

After scurrying to offload our sleds and pack the toboggans, we’re soon underway. Each time I hit the throttle, I’m reassured that the small fortune I spent on my high-end outerwear is possibly the best investment I’ve ever made. The initial 45-minutes go smoothly as we follow the flow of narrow trails through the sparsely treed forest. Then things go south.

As we break out onto the expanse of the frozen lake, we can see various snowmobile tracks heading in multiple directions. Following a more pronounced trail, we take a right around an island. Big mistake. After riding 30 kilometres, we realize we should have gone left around the island instead. Yes, we also should have checked our GPS, but foolishly didn’t. With no other option but to backtrack, we turn around, find the left fork in the trail and reset our course west across the frozen abyss.

The problem now, though, is that between Randy and I, we’d just burned an extra 120 kilometres worth of fuel. It’s a sobering reality that will no doubt limit our ability to cover more water over the next few days. Ninety minutes pass, and with the mercury now dropping quickly, a glistening sunset finally welcomes us to Garrett’s Broken Arrow Lodge.