OC Outdoors: Fresh fish and fast friends in Manitoba

A fly-in trip to Manitoba’s beautiful, family-run Eagle Nest Lodge this summer provided a refresher course on fishing fellowship, and the bonding power of fresh-fried walleye. Here are some of the highlights, including an epic shorelunch.

Casting lessons

Put together by Travel Manitoba and Ford Canada, this lodge visit was unlike any other I’ve been on because the other guests in my group, a mix of travel and family journalists, were rookie anglers. How green were they? After driving from Winnipeg to our fly-out point in spiffy 2013 F-150s, we stopped at the Pinawa Dam Provincial Heritage Park for lunch, where my companions got much-needed casting lessons courtesy of Manitoba’s Klass Tackle.