I am giving this place the benefit of the doubt by not giving them a worse rating. Their issues as I see them are all related to communication. We drove nearly 1000 miles to this lodge to find that their descriptions in the website did not match reality. This became evident very early in the stay. The cabins were adequate, but I would certainly not say they were nice. They were like saunas, even with multiple fans and relatively cool weather. The boats were certainly not as advertised. They no longer had live wells in ANY boats. The rod holders in ours were useless as they were worn and one even broken. They did have a bilge and the electric start motor was connected to a battery that was terribly rigged, and finally fixed after a couple days of asking while struggling to make sure the connection was good. They are doing some renovations around camp, although the if they don't do a better job with the day to day maintenance, I don't see it making a difference in the long run.
The place was getting run down in many parts, and staff are completely inattentive to those glaring needs for minor fixes that would make the camp so much better. Instead, they were inside watching tv and on the web unless there was a boat to tie up.
This brings me to the major reason for the low rating-and I thought hard about 1 star... The service for our group was worthless. We spent about $10k as a group at the lodge before any additional miscellaneous expenses (fuel, minnows, fish cleaning, ice-all of which are not included in the price online unless you go with an upgraded plan) so you would think that for $10k for a week, someone would act like they give a crap about your group, right? Well, we had a VERY brief meeting with the owner as we arrived and they arranged boats for us, but had NO communication with him after that until checkout. Every other lodge I have been to has taken the time to go through the lake rules, lodge rules, Canadian fishery rules, and then asked if we had any other questions. They have also welcomed us to camp!
The deck hands did only what was required of them, and truly acted as if they did not care whether you even caught a cold. Only after repeated prodding did they fix our battery connection.
In spite of all of this, we caught fish! But the lack of communication and personal touch was so evident with this place. Having been to Canada for about 24 years, and done drive-up resorts, portages, and fly-ins, this was easily our least hospitable experience, and the only decent, and somewhat misleading accommodations could not come close to making up for the lack of effort and care of the staff. read more