Two legendary Yukon fishing lodges are long closed. The pike and lake trout don’t seem to mind

The next morning, Ted’s satcom device paired to his cellphone delivered a local forecast of scattered showers and a high of 18°C, with better weather in the coming days. The thermometer outside the cabin nudged 12°C amid a brisk breeze from the east—at least it was an improvement over our mid-July visit in 2013, when wet snow fell overnight.

We spent the first day setting up fishing tackle and organizing our gear in the small cabin and tiny adjoining “Chicken Shack,” where bunkbeds accommodated Ted and John. Then Al and I set up Peter’s 14-foot jon boat with an eight-horse motor and the four of us voyaged three kilometres up the lake to Gunter’s private cabin—“Little Paradise”—to get another boat.

With John skippering that boat, we toured the lake to get oriented, making note of fishing spots to explore the following day. We also motored up to Gunter’s former lodge. Originally named Thunderbird Fishing Camp, it was constructed by Watson Lake resident Gordon Toole in 1955, making it the Yukon’s first registered fly-in fishing establishment. Gord was a meteorologist by training who was stationed at Snag, Yukon, when he recorded North America’s lowest-ever temperature, -62.8°C on February 3, 1947.

Gunter sold the lodge in 2004 to an American couple who used it as a family retreat, but it has now remained vacant for more than a decade. The boreal forest is slowly reclaiming the property and guest cabins, although the main lodge is still in surprisingly good condition after 70 years.

On the second morning, Al and I once again shared a boat and followed Ted and John to a shoal near the lake’s other lodge, long-closed Taylor’s Place Wilderness Camp. I glanced up at the derelict operation, now owned by Watson Lake locals. I imagined the original owner, our old friend Don Taylor, sitting at the large kitchen table, regaling us with tales from his past lives as a prospector, game warden and politician.

Don was just 16 when he hitchhiked up the Alaska Highway in 1949, and he never looked back. The territory became his home, and Stewart Lake was his refuge following his retirement from politics in 1985, having served 21 years as Speaker of the Yukon Legislature.

John and I, sometimes accompanied by our wives, shared many good times around that kitchen table. Until two months before his death from lung cancer in 2012, Don had lived at the lake for 27 years, only flying out for short stints each spring and fall. He had built his lodge as “a damn fine place to relax,” according to early promotional flyers, with the main cabin serving as his full-time residence, augmented by two rustic guest cabins and a cook’s shack.

The business ran for a decade until economic hard times led to the withdrawal of jet service to Watson Lake, which in turn made it harder for outsiders to travel to Stewart Lake. As a result, the customer base soon dwindled for both Don’s camp and Gunter’s Yukon Pioneer Wilderness Camp. And while the two lodges are now long closed, the fishing remains as good as ever.