First Lodge Trip Report: Great Ontario Get-Away Give-Away

Well some people sure aren’t letting the pandemic get in the way of a good time, and justifiably so! We just received a report from Raven Ouelette, our 5th place April contest winner as she recently returned from her prize package, an all inclusive trip to Marmac Lodge on Esnagi Lake. In Raven’s email to us, she stated the following:

The lodge was unbelievable! We talked to a few employees at the lodge and they told us about the history of how the lodge was built. I couldn’t imagine doing all the work to dig out a foundation by hand or cut and groom logs for the cabins and main lodge. Lots of manual labour and it all paid off!

We thought it was pretty incredible how they have to fly or train all of the lumber for renovations, or even everyday items for that matter. We got to experience the organized chaos of lodges getting their orders off the train while we were boarding – it’s quite something!

I’ve attached some pictures of our stay below. I’m just in the midst of downloading my videos from my phone/go pro and I’ll send them over to you as soon as they’re ready to go!

I’ve included a few pictures from our flight, our cabin, walleyes we caught, shore lunches, as well as some scenic photos. We ended up hiking over to Rock Lake behind MarMac to fish for some brookies. Unfortunately, we heard from a few people that lakers have been introduced into the lake, and no one has seen a brookie in some time. We were lucky enough to get a small one – I included that photo too.

I think my favourite photo is the one with the whitefish. We happened to arrive when the big mayfly hatch was happening and the lake was covered in mayflies. I’ve attached a sunset photo and you can see my lens looks dirty. That’s how many flies were around. The whitefish were surfacing all around the boat and we managed to catch a few. There must have been around 100 around the boat – it was amazing to see.

Sounds like a fantastic trip and we here at Fish’n Canada are extremely happy to have been a part of it.

The following are some images that Raven sent:

*Starting point at White River Air base*

*A trip to a world class lodge on a world class plane!*

*Marmac Lodge, it gets no better than this!*

*Raven Ouelette with a perfect Esnagi Lake Walleye*

*Raven’s boyfriend Nick Watkins (also from Sudbury) with a great northern Ontario Walleye.*

*Be prepared for all weather conditions on a northern Ontario lodge trip.*

*This view can only mean one thing… breaktime at the shore lunch designated area.*

*Extra special guests for Raven and Nick’s shore lunch*

*To some, it’s the best part of an Ontario lodge trip*

*Raven is quite the photographer as well, great shot!*

*An amazing Whitefish that Raven caught while taking a break from the Walleye fishing.*

*A trip to Rock Lake only produced this little Brookie but that trip is all about the experience… such a bonus to a Walleye trip.*

*How’s this for a new personal best Walleye… a 30” beauty. Congrats and well done Raven!*

Congratulations to all of our winners so far, thanks to all who have participated, and a very big thanks to Destination Northern Ontario as well as NOTO, we couldn’t have done this without you!