When it comes to tackling giant lakers, the NWT’s remote Great Bear Lake Lodge offers the full-meal deal

For sure, the unreal fishing is the main course for anglers venturing to Bear—it’s virtually impossible not to catch trout, even without really trying. The same goes for the lake’s super-aggressive northern pike, averaging five to 10 pounds, but sometimes hitting the 30-pound mark. Fishing for them really is a numbers game—expect to catch upwards of 100 in a day. The trick is to avoid wasting time on the sneaky hammer-handles when it’s the big gators you’ve got your sights on. As for Michael and me, we preferred to exclusively chase lakers during our four and a half days on the water (punctuated by a two-day fly-out to fish for Arctic char on the Tree River in neighbouring Nunavut). In particular, I was focused on the hunt for that new personal-best lake trout of my own.

Arctic grayling also feature on the fishing menu, and they’re equally abundant and aggressive. One day during a shorelunch break at a spot called Limestone Point, Michael and I obligingly grabbed some light spinning gear to catch a few of these giant-finned beauties to supplement the small trout we’d kept earlier. Fishing from the shoreline, I caught-and-released three dink trout in less than half an hour, as well as 10 or so grayling, keeping a couple for the pan. At one point, what looked to be a 15-pound laker stormed in and T-boned a struggling grayling I’d just released in the shallows. Nature at work.

Guests shouldn’t be surprised to see any number of creatures inhabiting this region of the northern boreal forest

Nature was also at work above the gin-clear water’s calm surface, with squawking herring gulls aggressively competing for the discarded fish remains. All around me throughout my time on Bear, in fact, nature abounded, and to me, just having the opportunity to get a taste of this unique Far North ecosystem was a treat all on its own. Along with the gulls and terns, I also saw long-tailed jaegers, Arctic terns, Bonaparte’s gulls, white-winged scoters and Arctic loons. That was just scratching the surface, though.

Fellow guest Greg Seegert, a recently retired ichthyologist from Wisconsin, has been coming to Bear since 2014 to fish, as well as to birdwatch. Lodge manager Chuk Coulter, who has penchant for assigning everyone a nickname, calls him “Birdman,” and for good reason. Always at the ready with his binos, Seegert has spotted 80 different bird species on Bear over the years, his most prized sightings including three-toed woodpeckers, king eiders, golden eagles, snowy owls and five species of loon. “It has a unique fauna, and includes birds most birders have never seen, or maybe only a time or two,” he tells me.

On the ground, meanwhile, guests shouldn’t be surprised to see any number of creatures inhabiting this region of the northern boreal forest, known as the Sahtu. Amid the stunted stands of black spruce and tamarack, barren-ground grizzlies, muskox, wolves, moose and more traverse the Precambrian granite, navigating the dwarf birch, willow and peat bogs dotting the stark landscape.

If you’re nerdy about all this kind of flora and fauna stuff, like I am, it’s a nerdy paradise, right down to the vibrant pinky-purple fireweed just outside my cabin door back at camp. And if you’re at Bear in mid-July like I was, the sun never sinks below the horizon, giving you ample time to get your fill. At a certain point, the line blurs between whether the unreal fishing or simply experiencing this part of the world is the entrée or the starter.