The NWT Fishing Experience

If you are leaving from Yellowknife, Fort Smith or Norman Wells, you board a bush plane on floats, and take off with a roar from the water. After a short flight, your pilot circles the camp, and you pull up to the dock on a big lake where your lodge is the only building you can see.

Before breakfast, throw a line in the lake from the dock and it's more than likely an eager little northern pike will grab your hook, and give you a bit of a fight. After a hearty breakfast, head out on the lake with your guide. He, or she, will take you where the trout hang out, and show you how to catch them for a Northwest Territories feast called a shore lunch.

Relax on a sun-warmed rock, while your guide cooks a delicious meal of fresh caught trout, with potatoes, onions, beans and corn.

Then spend a lazy afternoon fishing for whitefish at the base of a waterfall. You need a light touch to tempt fat, healthy whitefish to grab your hook. They circle, fins flashing in the air, just out of reach, till you learn where to put your lure.

As the sun drops behind the trees, head for the lodge and a hearty dinner with good company. Share your stories of the pike that watched you and the monster trout you landed. Then, early to bed, with just the sound of the breeze in the trees to lull you to sleep.