The Northern Pike Posse: Expert Know-How Results in Giant Catches

I could tell you about these Cree River Lodge guides, their knowledge of fishing miles of unspoiled northern Saskatchewan water and how they find and catch fierce northern pike of giant size, walleye after walleye after walleye, as well as arctic grayling. But telling this might make you envious of their know-how, skills and summer lifestyle. It sure turned me green.

They know the perennial hot spots, the weedy “cabbage” flats and pencil-reed patches for northerns, the deeper holes and trenches for walleyes (guide Terrell Steels during a particularly productive pass through the well-known spot called The Narrows: “We’re catching two walleyes every 20 feet.”). They are also well-acquainted with moving water for high-leaping grayling a quick boat ride from the lodge. Let them know your heart’s desire, and they will take you to spots that produce.

Take the bluebird day we went upriver to the Dunes—where the Athabasca Basin bares its sandy soul with an impressive sugar-sand bank rising from shore, up which you toil to a must-see weirdly out-of-place stretch of barren sand—catching seven 40-inch-plus pike in a stretch of a few hours. The memorable day was capped with a 45-inch hen Brad Fenson caught after Pat Babcock wheeled our 18-foot boat to a stop in a river bend on our way back to the lodge. Pat yelled to get a lure in the water while looking into a gin-clear eddy as the boat slowed to a momentary standstill. A holy-crap-that’s-huge fish looked like an underwater log finning slowly against the current. Fenson plopped in his five-of-diamonds lure, and she savagely attacked in a furious splash, reversed direction and struck the port side of our boat like a revenge-seeking torpedo, careening off the aluminum with a violent, hollow clunk. We instinctively lurched backward in a we’re-going-to-need-a-bigger-boat moment.

Big Canadian Pike

At many Canadian fishing lodges, a 40-inch pike is the aspirational goal; at Cree River, 40-inchers are somewhat common I’d say but I don’t want to jinx it, and 50 inches is the grail. There’s always a chance of multiple 40-inchers in a day, like the time the pike attacked our boat. Before Fenson boated that ill-tempered pike on our way home, we caught—according to my hastily scribbled notes—seven fish from 40 to 47 inches, and that doesn’t count the sub-40s we hooked throughout the day.

But back to the guides who unerringly point their boats across Wapata Lake, where spruce and birch trees along the distant shore hang like a dark curtain between cloudy sky and wind-chopped water. On approach a passageway appears and with a deft turn of the tiller they motor on, confident of success at their chosen destination. There’s the “race course,” a shallow, narrow, winding shortcut, with northerns finning in the clear water, to the hallowed, special-treat Dunes and upriver haunts of giant pike. Across the lake and up and down Cree River they motor, usually but not always avoiding barely submerged rocks that threaten the lower units of the 40-horse Yamaha engines. Chipped, dented props carried as spares bear witness to the very real threat.

I don’t know what the generation of these early-20-year-olds is called—perhaps it should be Generation F for fish—but they are knowledgeable, patient and polite. Despite (probably) wanting to be shed of clients after a long day in the boat, they’ll sit at the supper table or out on the deck at sunset to answer questions, talk fishing or just visit. In the boat, they diplomatically pass along fishing tips about casting, retrieve speed—reel faster; these aggressive walleye and pike will outswim it and smash it—and other suggestions from which even veteran anglers benefit. They’ll politely check your drag setting, for instance, attending to the little insurance details that can make or break a hit from a 40-inch-plus pike.

They have their own hierarchy based on seniority. Dante Tabacu, 23, has been at it five years. Terrell Steels and Cliff Salisbury, both 22, have been guiding three, but Steels is quick to point out that they have actually worked more months because Tabacu bails out, reluctantly, mid-summer to attend football practice at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. He’s quarterback for the Axemen and will graduate this fall with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Tabacu flew out with us in mid-July, the look in his eyes saying he’d be back. Since then, he concreted those plans by becoming a partner with Babcock at another outfitting operation, Pilots Lodge, on the Fond du Lac River about 40 miles northeast of Cree River Lodge.

“My plan after I graduate this fall is to outfit fulltime and make a living in the outdoors,” Tabacu said, ratcheting up the envy factor a few notches.

With a graying beard and spectacles, Chip Cromarty, 62, is the dean of the Cree River guides. He’s been guiding here eight years with 33 years before that at another lodge. The go-to guy for fly fishing for pike, he’ll whip out specialties like his Poor Man’s Whistler at his fly-tying desk in the lodge. “Making Cree River Lodge more ‘fly-fisherman friendly’ has been a big part of my work here,” he said.

As Lowell Straus and I casted from the boat toward shoreline, Steels filleting walleye behind us, Tabacu motored up and asked if Steels would fillet a walleye they had just caught, the perfect size for the shore lunch we would all share soon. He’d just cleaned his cutting board, Tabacu explained.

“I’m not your b*tch anymore,” Steels replied, then laughing, hooked the fish by a gill from Tabacu’s hand. Steels is proud of his fillets, and he said he can easily pick them out of a pile.

GUIDE LIFE

Later at the lodge, relaxing with a Caesar, a bloody Mary with a Canadian twist prepared by Lori Babcock, anglers and guides awaited the call to dinner. They watched out the large glass windows as the dock hand, Jack Casement, stiff-leggedly manhandled refilled fuel tanks to each boat.

“Most guys start on the dock with the idea of moving up to guiding,” Cromarty said.

Babcock’s son, Cameron, 21, who gave up lodge life to farm, and daughter, MacKenzie, 19, visit every summer. Cam serves as a mechanic and sometime guide; MacKenzie works in the lodge. Both have the Babcock flair for the hospitality business. Lori keeps the whole thing running down to the finest detail, from housekeeping to acquiring a fishing license online for those who show up without one.

A love of fishing is one trait guides share. They often spend spare moments away from their job of fishing for a living, fishing—casting for one more, whether in the evening at the lodge or during lunch breaks out on the lake. They talk of growing up fishing, and of where they’ve fished and where they want to fish. They save money to take fishing vacations far from this fishing paradise.

“Sometimes when we’re lucky we also get the chance to go fishing ourselves for a bit if we are short of guests,” Steels said.

Casement, an unfailingly cheerful, helpful and polite 14-year-old who’ll talk fishing and hunting with you, spent each evening on the dock fly-casting, horsing in rod-bending 40-plus-inchers two evenings in a row. Standing at the rail in front of our cabins with chilled beverages, we called to him if he needed help, as his rod announced the come-and-go bend of a heavy fish.

“If you would come down here, it would be quite nice,” came his plaintive, hopeful reply.

The guides are heavily tanned in the face except for the untanned outline of omnipresent sunglasses; the “racoon eyes” they wear as a badge of honor earned from hours on the water. Their daily uniform of rain bibs and parka, or hoodie or shirt-jacket, provides an impenetrable SPF factor.

They work seven days a week and are essentially on the clock 24 hours a day. Each guide has his own room in one of the cabins out back that form a compound of sorts, with a gazebo and not-official-size homemade ping-pong table in the sandy courtyard. The comfortable wilderness refuge is all the more impressive knowing it was brought in as raw materials on the ice road. There are washing machines, the guides showing up each morning in laundered clothes, though sun-faded rain gear might show wear and fish-slime stains.

Guides have the option of taking a break during the summer, hitching a ride on the charter flight that carries clients back and forth from Edmonton to Stony Rapids. (Float planes ferry anglers from Stony Rapids to the lodge, a 20-some minute flight.) Though most guides head home, Steels prefers to work through the summer, building up his savings. Room and board are provided, so essentially there are no out-of-pocket expenses.

A student at the University of Calgary in Edmonton, Steels plans to teach high-school science, a career he is fully aware will allow him summers off for fishing and possibly guiding. After the umpteenth time detailing tips, tactics and expected fish behavior for a spot we’d pulled into, we told him he should write how-to fishing articles. Guides are typically up by 6:30 and in the main lodge for breakfast by 7; then they prepare gear and make sure their boat is ready to pull out at 8. At the onset of each day, pushing off their clean, orderly boats from the sandy beach, they take full responsibility for the day, their clients’ safety, comfort and expectations.

If you want to fish through lunch, grab a sandwich and cookies from the kitchen. If shore lunch is planned, they load a tote of food and supplies. All fishing parties meet for shore lunch, which usually consists of lard-fried, fresh-from-the-lake walleye and northern pike, French fries, corn and beans heated in the can, and perhaps a surprise or two. The guides share cooking, cleaning and repacking duties for shore lunch, and they cook once every four nights back at the lodge.

The guides’ work ethic and good-natured demeanor are instilled and exemplified by lodge owner Pat Babcock, an ebullient, contagiously cheerful fellow who treats clients like good friends, which many of whom have become. Case in point, Kallom and Morgan Hadland booked the week so they’d be there for Babcock’s 49th birthday celebration. Babcock passes his enthusiasm and fishing knowledge to his guides, and he’ll pass it to you, too.

TREASURED RESOURCE

About 465 miles north of Edmonton, about the same from Saskatoon, and only 80 miles south of the Northwest Territories border, Cree River Lodge (creeriverlodge.ca) is in the far reaches of unspoiled northern Saskatchewan. Three flights—Denver to Edmonton, Edmonton to Stony Rapids, Stony Rapids to Cree River Lodge—in descending distance and plane size the farther north I flew, covered 1,600 miles and culminated when pilot Dan Snell cut the engine of the float-equipped, four-seat, early-1960s De Havilland Beaver and we coasted to the dock where eager hands lashed the plane to the pilings and helped us unload.

Surrounded by miles of untouched moose and bear habitat, Cree River Lodge is located on Wapata Lake, through which the 125-mile-long Cree River (joined by the Pipestone River about 25 miles above Wapata) flows. The river dumps a steady supply of whitefish, cisco, perch, burbot and walleye into a giant 16,000-acre smorgasbord for predator fish. Genetics and a plentiful food supply are the keys to producing giant pike, said Babcock, the only outfitter allowed in the area. The healthy fish-eat-fish ecosystem is illustrated by violent attacks on fish being reeled in—the classic “T-boning” of a hooked fish by an aggressive pike—and 30-inch-plus pike showing tooth scars from huge predators that considered them lunch size. Babcock attributes a lot to genetics, saying these pike pack on weight and are big and thick through the back.

“They have big shoulders on them,” he said. “Our 35-, 36- and 37-inch pike will outweigh many 41-, 42-, 43-inch pike in other places. That’s just a fact.”

The curse is that it sounds too good to be true. At off-season sports shows, Babcock’s stories, though backed with photographic proof, are sometimes met with skepticism. I get it; I was one of those gotta-see-it-to-believe-it types. Now, I’ve seen it, and I believe it.

As Babcock said, “I’ve told the truth my whole life.”

A catch-and-release policy has also helped. Raised in the old-school outfitting tradition that puts people and memorable experiences first, Babcock grew up frequenting his grandparent’s lodge at Deception Lake. He bought Cree River Lodge in 2008 and set out to improve its already impressive attributes, starting with instituting catch-and-release and barbless-hook policies. Back when the operation started in the 1970s, clients “were taking 40- and 50-inch pike home as trophies, which they were allowed to do,” Babcock said. “Back then practices were a lot different.”

It takes years for pike to grow to the huge trophy size found here, so Babcock and the guides treat them as the treasured resource they are. They handle them swiftly and surely, measuring and posing with the client for quick photos, before tenderly releasing them, pumping them back and forth in the water to assure recovery.

At Cree River, the pike fishery can be divided into three “seasons,” loosely corresponding to the summer months, something all guides monitor and respond to as summer progresses, Cromarty said. By the time ice comes off in June, pike have completed their spawn. The main lake is cold, so as the sun warms shallows, especially sheltered waters with dark bottoms, it produces the classic Canadian ice-out pike fishery.

“When it’s right, it’s spectacular,” Cromarty described.

Almost every fish moves into these bays in the afternoon, he said, and anglers can expect good fishing action and size of the pike. Mornings tend to be slow for pike so most fish for walleyes in the morning and hit bays as the day warms. The risk in June is the weather. If the sun shines, fishing is good. If it’s cloudy, rainy or cold, fishing will be tough.

By mid-season in July, weeds have had time for significant growth, creating pike habitat, Cromarty said. Fish still move into shallow bays during the day but they also frequent current breaks, shelves, reefs and drop-offs. Fishing is very consistent, he said, and usually a good balance between sight fishing and structure fishing. Weather is much less a factor to fishing success.

The late season of August brings mature weed beds, well-defined and easily located structure that consistently holds fish, Cromarty said. Much of the river close to the lodge becomes prime big-fish water, with numerous pike caught off the dock. Big fish have been growing all summer and are beefy.

“Winter is coming and the big girls want to eat,” he said.

There are benefits to each month of the pike season, Cromarty said. June can be great but weather is most risky. July is usually the most pleasant weather-wise and provides a bit of everything. August fishing consistently produces lots of really big fish.

TIME ON THE WATER

So, what does it take to be a good guide at Cree River Lodge?

“With the mapping we have and the information shared between guides, you could have a good grasp of the basics in a relatively short time, easily in your first season,” Cromarty said. “Years of experience help a guide recognize patterns from previous seasons, as well as have better familiarity with where the fish tend to hold.”

“All the guides here study at the university of time on the water,” Salisbury said.

Salisbury, who bypassed college after high school, worked this past off-season at a sawmill but guiding is his dream.

“I’d love to make as much of a career out of it as I can between both hunting and fishing,” he said. “Getting paid to be out on the water any way I could has been the dream since I was probably 10.”

Cree River Lodge guides come from all over, from various backgrounds, but share common traits, Cromarty said. The outfit is always looking for potential guides and other camp staff. Sometimes someone recommends a friend or acquaintance, sometimes the lodge receives applications, sometimes people just show up.

Most good guides are “people people” and “super-keen anglers,” he said. They’re also independent, self-sufficient and “don’t like being put in a box.”

“There are many benefits to working in a close-knit organization like Cree River Lodge,” Cromarty added. “Camp life is very much like instant family.”

On our final morning at the lodge, fresh anglers with faces not yet reddened by wind and sun stepped from the floatplane onto the dock. Our luggage was set to the side for the morning flight home. As the floatplane turned into the wind and revved for take-off, I looked out the water-specked window while Babcock and the guides visited with anxious, expectant newcomers.

The boats were ready, the guides were ready. They’d be fishing again by 8:30. And I was envious.

PIKE POINTERS

• Cree River Lodge guides warn against these mistakes.

In three summers of guiding at Cree River Lodge, Terrell Steels and Cliff Salisbury have seen the good, bad and ugly from anglers who fish the remote northern Saskatchewan waters. They sat down on the last evening of our four-day trip to discuss common but easily avoided mistakes.

1. Not being ready to fish. “On this river system there are so many tight little spots where I pull in,” said Salisbury, “and if you’re not already casting as we’re coming in, you’ve blown the spot.”
2. Changing lures unnecessarily. When you’re changing lures, you’re not fishing. Change when moving from spot to spot, and ask your guide’s opinion. “Let me know when you’re changing and I’ll stay off the spot until you’re ready,” Steels said. A pet peeve: “People changing lures five minutes in before we even get to the hot spot,” Steels added. “We start farther out from the hot spot because we don’t want to drive over the fish. We might start 100 yards away and work in, and if you change your lure when we’re finally getting to the spot, you’ve stopped fishing when we are expecting things to happen.”
3. Fishing with old or inadequate equipment. Traveling that far for trophy fishing, it’s worth spending extra on quality equipment, or make sure your tried-and-true gear is up to the task. Steels and Salisbury have seen old rods and reels come and go, but it’s not about age. It’s about well-maintained rods and reels without defects, the latter with reliable drag systems.
4. Not packing proper clothing. Weather on Wapata is unpredictable. It can be warm in early June; cold in July and August, or vice versa. Pack layers. Quality rain gear is a must; you may be in it all day, and it protects against spray and fish slime as well as rain showers. Do not bring golf-course rain gear, the kind that will rip if you look at it. Heavy-duty rain gear is what you need, and don’t leave the lodge without it.
5. Guiding the guide. Have faith. If your guide tells you to cast on a certain side of the boat, cast on that side of the boat. “We’re doing everything for a reason,” Steels said. Some clients have their ideas about catching pike from fishing elsewhere and think it will work here, Salisbury said. But this is a different water system, and the guides know the lake well. “We didn’t read it in a book,” Salisbury said. “We know it because we’ve done it.”
6. Not honing basic fishing skills. Know your equipment and how to use it. Practice casting at home. Throw lures in your yard; practice distance and accuracy.
7. Coming with unrealistic expectations. Having realistic expectations helps how you view your experience. There are 50-inch pike here but not everyone is going to catch one, Salisbury said. “Most people won’t,” Steels added. “Most people never will in their life,” no matter how often they fish in trophy waters. The more you enjoy being on the water and catching fish, the better you’re going to look at your trip at the end, Salisbury said.

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• This article was featured in the June-July issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe

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