Gangler's North Seal Lodge
Northern Manitoba
August 2025

​Species Featured: Pike, Lake Trout, Arctic Grayling, Walleye

I was looking for a place to take my daughter fishing one last time before she headed off to college, and had narrowed it down to somewhere up north because she does not do well in the heat despite growing up in Houston. There are a ton of lodges up in Canada, and after researching dozens of them I settled on Gangler's North Seal Lodge in northern Manitoba. Gangler's has a very comfortable main lodge on Egenolf Lake, and opportunities to fly out to dozens of other lakes for variety. In addition to fishing, Gangler's offers the opportunity to potentially see the northern lights and wildlife such as wolf and moose. The owner, Ken Gangler, spoke to me at length about the place by phone and that sealed it for me.
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Getting to Gangler's was pretty straightforward. We flew to Winnipeg, checked into a hotel across the street from the airport, and then met up in the lobby early the next day for the charter flight out to Gangler's. We made a refueling stop in Thompson, which was covered in a thick layer of smoke from nearby wildfires. Fortunately, when we flew up to the lodge the air was clear. We checked in, had some lunch, and then met our guide and headed out to fish on the home lake, Egenolf. We decided to just fish for pike to get warmed up, and my daughter outfished me 17-14 for the afternoon. We didn't land any giants, but we got some in the 32-34" range.
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The next day we decided to fly out to Booth Lake to the north. Two other guys flew out with us since Gangler's keeps two boats there. Booth is a big lake, so we never fished any of the same spots. We started out by jigging for Lake Trout, and I got a feisty 5lber on the first drop. We alternated jigging and trolling, and although the bite was never wide open, we had a good amount of action. We ended up landing 13 fish for the the morning, with the biggest measuring 33" and 32". We also lost quite a few, as Lake Trout are pretty good at unhooking themselves, especially from barbless hooks.

A Laker caught on a Triple Trout lure

While fishing for Lake Trout, we periodically encountered Pike. My daughter landed a fat 39 incher and I got a fat 36". 
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We then went to a little stream so that my daughter could try her hand at fly fishing for Arctic Grayling. She hooked two but they both broke off in the current, probably because I put on too light of a tippet and she had never used a fly rod before. It was a beautiful little area and we wished we had more time to explore it.
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River leading into Booth Lake. The water was quite low

That night we went out after dinner to try to see the wolves that had a den near the lodge. We saw the male for a minute but he disappeared in the woods. Fortunately, we would get much better views of the wolves later in the trip. When we went to bed we set our alarms for 2:15am to try to see the northern lights. It is only dark enough to see them for a short time each night during early August, and we figured that would be our best chance. We both happened to wake up a little early at 1:45am and looked outside and were treated to a spectacular light show. These photos were taken on my iPhone with no special setting and no editing afterwards. I just pointed and shot and this is what I got. By 2am the lights were gone, so we got very lucky to see them.
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The next day we stayed at the main lake and vowed to get even with the Grayling. We went far across the lake to an area where a small river came in. We could see Grayling rising to eat insects, so that was a very promising sign. We anchored and I stood next to my daughter to coach her through catching one before I started to fish. However, as I held my rod behind me while I watched my daughter cast, a Grayling grabbed the fly as it dangled in the water next to the boat and I managed to land it. This was clearly a very good sign. My daughter missed a couple and then managed to hook up and get one into the net. After much celebrating, I started to fish and really hammered them for about an hour or so until they wised up and stopped biting. My daughter landed 3 all on her own and I got 12 including one pretty large one.
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Smoke from the wildfires down south had started to blow up to our area thanks to a shift in wind direction, and it got worst throughout the day. We did a little Walleye trolling for shore lunch as visibility started to go down. We did get a few Walleye, including a big one my daughter landed that we threw back and a couple smaller ones for lunch. I lost an even bigger one right at the net, which was a bummer.

Shore lunch, as always, was a highlight. My daughter said she would pick that for her last meal if she could choose one before she died.
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Walleye up north have a beautiful gold color

Our excellent guide Tin Tin preparing shore lunch

In the afternoon we fished a bit for Pike and got around 15 or so. I lost a 40+ incher, which stung since it was the second trophy fish of the day that I had lost. By then the smoke had gotten really bad, so we stayed in our cabin that night.

We were told we would likely have to evacuate after the following day, which was a huge disappointment. However, we vowed to make the best of it. The next day the wind shifted and cleared out the smoke and it was actually pretty nice by the middle of the day. We fished the main lake again since it was too smokey for flyouts in the morning. We headed straight to the Grayling again, as my daughter had declared that was her favorite type of fishing. She had clearly gotten the hang of the fly rod in record time as she doubled her prior morning's total with 6. I just edged her out with 7, so her learning curve was really impressive.
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We then fished for Pike for a bit, got a couple of small Walleye for lunch, and called it an early day right after lunch. The wind was really howling and it was a bumpy ride back, but the wind pushed the fires away and we were overjoyed to find out we would not be evacuating the next day as originally planned. After dinner, we went back out to try to see the wolves and were treated to a spectacular show by the dominant female, who showed herself for almost 45 minutes.
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The next day we took advantage of the clear skies and flew out to Chatwin Lake. We picked that lake because it had a good number of Walleye, and we wanted to try to catch a big pile of those since we had only gotten a couple here and there. The first spot produced about 10 nice ones. All had a rich golden color.
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​We tried another spot and continued to bring in a steady stream of Walleye, with some Pike mixed in.

A Walleye-PIke doubleheader

At our third spot, the Walleye were really stacked in thick at a river mouth. As I was reeling one in, a huge Pike charged up to the surface and tried to eat it, so my daughter started casting her big Pike spoon and caught Pike after Pike while I hammered the Walleye. Unfortunately she never caught that monster we saw, but she got plenty of nice fish.
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I had the Walleye dialed in and landed 50 for the day along with 22 Pike. Combined, we landed 109 fish for the day, which is a great day anywhere. Unfortunately, on our flight back, we could see that two fires had spring up close to the lodge and we guessed correctly that we really would be getting evacuated the next day. We did get one more night of wolf viewing, and this time the male made a rare showing along with the female. We even got a distant view of some of the pups.

All too soon we were heading back to Winnipeg. We really would have liked to fish our last two days as we had some great flyouts planned, but we understood the need to play it safe. Our totals for the trip were 124 Pike, 57 Walleye, 29 Grayling, and 13 Lake Trout. If we had been focused on Pike we could have really increased those numbers, as they were biting everywhere, but we were trying to focus much of the time on the other species. The last two days probably would have padded our numbers quite a bit as well, as the flyout fishing was much better than the main lake. However, that's how it goes sometimes and we had a great time. My daughter and I agreed it was our best father-daughter trip ever, with the combo of natural beauty and excellent fishing providing an experience I am sure we will remember the rest of our lives.

​Trips like this can be booked at www.ganglers.com

A Pike with a spoon meant for Lake Trout

Goofing around at the lodge