I got the full fly-in fishing experience in Canada’s backcountry—without actually flying. Here’s how

BONUS LAKES

One of the special things about many outpost camps is access to nearby portage lakes. At Northwind, there were four in total. If I’d had another week, I’d have fished them all. As it was, we sampled two: McNally Lake and Half Hour Lake (it’s officially called Hourglass Lake, but everyone calls it Half Hour since a beaver dam split it into two basins).

If I have one regret about the Northwind trip, it’s that we didn’t try the portage lakes sooner, starting with Half Hour, an easy 10-minute hike from camp down a well-worn trail. Oval-shaped and roughly a half-kilometre long, it’s more of a pond than a lake. I’m a well-travelled angler, but that water held pike in a way I’ve rarely seen. There was a small aluminum boat stashed at the shore, and for a giddy 90 minutes, crew member Wes Nelson and I caught splashing, writhing 18- to 24-inch pike on literally every or every-second cast, on just about every lure we tried.

After that, our focus quickly shifted to McNally Lake. About a kilometre north of the cabin as the crow flies, McNally is accessible only via a challenging 45-minute hike through dense, hilly and buggy forest. We’d been told it was a trophy lake, but I’ve been told many things over the years, and experience has taught me to manage expectations. Turns out, the lake may have been undersold instead.

It was another small body of water—about 1½ kilometres long and no more than 300 metres wide—yet it held a remarkable number of large pike. We fished McNally for two days, using a square-stern aluminum canoe and three-horse outboard stashed there. And we landed pike of astonishing quality, including many in the mid-30-inch range and three 40-inch-plus trophies. I know anglers who travelled to famous lodges in Saskatchewan or Manitoba at considerable expense and didn’t land fish like those. Yet it was only a 10-hour drive, two boat rides, a portage and a hike from southern Ontario. Many outposts have portage lakes, and it’s a reminder that travelling an extra kilometre or so—as tough as it can be—is often worth the effort.