Cree Lake (Broken Arrow) Super Size my Outpost!
Please! Supersize my outpost!
Overview
Cree Lake was a place in the back of my mind for at least ten years. The stories of a big lake, big fish, and outposts floated around in my conscience with my plan to visit Crystal Lodge someday. You see Cree Lake Lodge is pricey and by all accounts worth the 4500-5000 dollars they get for a 4.5-day trip, but when you just don’t have the resources, you look for a lesser priced option. Crystal was basically it. Then in 2017/2018 a young man named Brian Garrett bought a single cabin on Cree that had been shut down. This added another option for my quest to fish Cree.
Brian Garrett is the man! He took a single cabin and a license allowing up to 16 guests and went to work. He built a brand-new cabin in 2018, another in 2019, and another in 2020. Plus, a new fish cleaning shack and multiple other structures on the island. Then he added new 16-18ft boats and 25HP Evinrude’s, and GPS enabled fish finders. WOW! I’m tired just thinking about all the work he has done in a short period of time.
When I saw all that work at a very reasonable price ~2000 USD I was all-in for Cree Lake in 2020. HARD STOP. COVID! Resume fishing in 2022. Strike that I was all in for 2022. Brian moved our deposits and payments to June 2022. I’ve just returned from a great trip and here is the story.
Getting There
Cree Lake is located in Northwest Saskatchewan. To get there you need to fly to Calgary, Alberta and then connect to a commuter flight to Fort McMurray, Alberta and finally on the morning of departure you report to McMurray aviation for an amphibious flight into the lodge. Really not much different than flying into other larger Canadian cities before driving to a hopping off point. There are a few advantages to Fort McMurray. The main one being Fort Mac is the staging point for workers to the Alberta Oil Sands. This allows for a lot more services in Fort Mac and more flights. The extra flights in today’s world mean a slightly lower overall trip cost than somewhere like Thompson Manitoba or Lynn Lake.
Thankfully all six of us coming from Las Vegas, Northern NY, Toronto all made our connections and were on-time. We arrived on Sunday June 13 for our Monday am flight to the Lodge. We stayed in one of the many generic smaller hotels (Super 8) and ate at a small bar (Brewski’s) behind the motel. The food and drinks were decent, and we spent a good deal of time planning our attack for the next week.
Camp Life
As I mentioned already Brian has done an excellent job of refurbishing the one older cabin. He has added a new front deck with plenty of covered space to rig up rods and BBQ. The two new cabins are gorgeous. The newest one he built with a 3 pieces bath and the oldest cabin he added the same while we were there. The shower was always plenty hot and the sink / stove and frig worked well. The bedrooms had newer mattresses which worked well after the 12-hour days we put in on the lake. In general, we were up at 6. Eating breakfast/packing lunches by 7 and on the lake by 8. We’d fish until 5. Run back make dinner and head back out 7-9p each night.
One thing about camp life that wasn’t excellent related to the view. As you can see the cabins share very nice, elevated views of the lake. Guess what? That means you are walking up and down a large hill every morning and evening. In some cases, multiple times a day. I’d estimate the climb was equivalent to about 10 flights of stairs. I wish he could’ve left the golf cart every evening near the boats. The other thing that was minor was the docking system. Parking the boats at night involved winching the boats up on to two sets of boards so that were totally out of the water. The small dock would allow 3-4 boats to be left out nightly, but the camp preference is for you to winch your boat out of the water. Then you were responsible for refilling your fuel. There was a pressure fed gas delivery system right to the boat area but messing with fuel every day was sort of a pain. Remember we are doing an outpost so given his price point it makes sense there is no dock assistance.
FISHING!
Ok. Here is the fun part. FISHING! Cree is an amazing body of water. Although we weren’t targeting walleyes for anything more than diners, we found the walleye fishing super easy and super rewarding. The best 3 walleye spots are related to rivers flowing into the lake. Those spots are 30-60 minutes away, but super rewarding. We wound up getting the wet/cold/overcast end of a front which is pretty classic walleye weather, and man did they agree. In approximately 2x2hr sessions with 6 of us fishing we managed to get about 25 walleyes. Here’s the reason I even mentioned it here. We had 2 fish over 29 inches and the average of our ~25 walleyes were 23-24 inches. I don’t know if we had freakish luck, but for you walleye guys let that sink in. 12 people hours of fishing yielded 2 REALLY big nearly 10lb walleyes. I wish I had more time to fish them. If we could’ve kept that average up 2 guys could get 10+ 29s in a week of targeting walleyes. THAT IS AMAZING big fish numbers. Again, maybe we were freakishly lucky, but I will say another group found a 31in walleye while we were there. Those kinds of numbers that make me wonder if someday it might be fun to do a walleye trip to Cree and target them as primary. It would have to be early June as I hear they slowdown in mid-summer but WOW. My boat was there for Pike. We spent 90% of our remaining time on pike and 10% on trout. The 2 other boats focused on Trout.
One memorable session was after working our way up the NW side of the lake we found a bay that was on fire. It seems the bays we hit that were hard bottom (rock/sand) held smaller trout in the 2-3 lb. category and honestly not that many. They were fun on the Mepps Syclops but overall, not what we were looking for. The bays that had soft bottoms and water flowing in were pikey. After fishing fast through 4-5 good looking bays that turned out to be Trout bays, we found the holy grail of bays. This one was past a neck down, had a significant stream flowing in and averaged 3-6 ft deep over around 20 muddy acres. For the next 3 hours it was basically every cast. I’m sure we topped 100 fish in that period of time as we were constantly casting getting hit and catching pike and the best part was the average fish was around 32 inches. In that period of time, we topped 40 a couple of times but it was amazing how many fish were there and how big they were. The Cree Lake pike are built better than Great Slave Lake fish and NWO fish. The only place that compares in terms of weight to length is Alaska IMO. After working 4-5 hours to find that bay we were thrilled. We had taken a huge lake like Cree and broken it down based on maps and targeted certain bays that looked good and executed a plan that works. THAT’S WHY I LOVE OUTPOST FISHING!
Couple of quick notes.
The grayling are definitely all over Cree but the best easiest way to fill out your Cree slam of grayling/pike/lake trout/walleyes is to fish the first break in the bay where the camp is located. Bring an ultralight rod and some Mepps 0/00 spin flies and they will hit right at the first break in the bay. Some nights are faster than others, but they are super easy. In about 90 mins I picked up 3 and could’ve done better other evenings when they were surfacing more.
The lake trout were easy to find and catch. The problem is they were deep, shallow, and everywhere in between. Casting to them in shallow was fun but not exactly what most of the group wanted. They were hoping for some numbers of 20lb fish and that just wasn’t meant to be in Early June. I’d imagine just about any time other than June would be better for the lakers. July/Aug they are more likely to be stacked in deep holes. September up on the reefs. Winter again stacked up, which I mention because Brian offers ice fishing which might be fun to try sometime.
Overall
Great experience which is the most important thing for me. Excellent multiple species lake. Reasonable price point given the quality of Cree. I’d go back in a second and left a check for Sept 2023 to do just that. Also considering a return in June 2024.
Next up
A return to the mighty Innoko in a return battle with some Alaskan pike.
