Last Updated on December 24, 2025 by Jason Tome
In July I took a family fishing trip to Eagle River Trout Lodge. Although, the trip was not exactly what we were expecting, we still all caught trophy brook trout, and had a great time nonetheless. This article is a review of Eagle River Lodge and our overall trip experience, along with tips, tricks, and recommendations to make your trip more successful by learning from our experiences.
Table of Contents
Airline Travel
The first real wrinkle in the trip came before we ever reached camp. Air Canada Airline delays stacked up and pushed our arrival into Goose Bay later than planned. Goose Bay is the last stop before flying in by floatplane, and by the time we touched down, the final flight of the day was already gone. Instead of heading straight in, we found ourselves checking into a hotel for an unplanned night. Morning brought another wait. Floatplanes run on weather, not schedules, and low cloud ceilings kept us grounded for a few hours until conditions finally improved enough for a safe flight.
Once the plane was finally able to fly, it was about another hour from Goose Bay to the lodge. By then, most of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon were gone, leaving us with only a few hours to fish that evening. In total, air travel cost us roughly three-quarters of a day. If you’re planning this trip, it’s worth building in some buffer. Getting in a day early isn’t a bad idea if you want to make the most of your time on the water.
If you’ve never flown in on a floatplane before, it’s easily one of the highlights of the trip. We rode into camp in a de Havilland Beaver, the smaller of the two planes, with great views the entire way. The flight itself was right around an hour. The pilot was professional, clearly experienced and walked us through a thorough safety briefing before takeoff.
Lodge Lifestyle
The lodge accommodates ten guests, and our group filled six of those spots. The other four people sharing camp with us were great company, and most evenings ended with everyone sitting down together for dinner and swapping stories from the day. Guest rooms in the lodge slept two people each. There may have been larger rooms, but we didn’t look into every option. The guides and cooks stayed in separate small wooden cabins, keeping to themselves until it was time to head out fishing. The lodge also has Starlink Wi-Fi, which worked reliably throughout our stay.
Mosquitoes were intense on land—bad enough that being outside without a head net and full coverage was almost unbearable. A fair number made their way into the lodge and into the rooms as well. When we arrived, we found both live and dead mosquitoes in our room and spent some time dealing with them. Better mosquito control inside the lodge would have been appreciated. That said, it was more of an annoyance than a dealbreaker.
Food quantity was never an issue. There was always plenty to eat, and the meals were solid. No one was raving about them, but no one left the table hungry either.
The Day to Day
The lodge runs on a simple daily schedule. You’re up for breakfast, then it’s straight out to fish. Guides run canoes powered by small motors, with each boat carrying the guide and two anglers. When the lodge is full, that puts five boats on the water at a time.
From the lodge, it’s about an hour by boat to reach the fishing areas. At midday, everyone motors all the way back to camp for lunch, which felt a little inefficient. Between the round trip and the lunch break, it eats up roughly three hours. All us fishermen agreed that we would’ve preferred to stay out and fish than spend three hours running back to camp. The mosquitoes were so bad along the shore that none of us were especially interested in doing a shore lunch, under different conditions it would have been fun. However, a bag lunch on the boat would have been perfect. After lunch, it’s back out on the water again for the evening session.
On top of the lost time, boats had to leave the fishing areas relatively early for safety reasons. The water was shallow in places, and it wasn’t uncommon to bump rocks even in daylight, despite higher flows. Running back in the dark would have made that worse, so leaving a little early felt like the right call.
On the way upriver, we’d usually fish a handful of spots, but most of what we caught there was pike. The better fishing started once we reached the main area, where the wide, lake-like stretch of water narrows down into something that feels more like a true river. The guides called this spot the “Flower Pot,” named for a small tree growing out of a rock. That transition zone is known for producing big brook trout. We picked up a few fish there, but for us, the broader lake section above it ended up being the most productive water of the trip.
Our Fishing Experience
When we went, the water levels were unusually high, most of the guides, if not all of them agreed that they had never seen flows as high as the Spring we had when we went in 2025. This made fishing tricky because the water was murky. Our guide said that the murky waters were not good because the fish can’t see as well and the dirty water is not good for their gills so they can’t breathe as good. The fast and murky waters also made it so there was never much of a hatch. So unfortunately, the river was not a great place to catch brook trout, at least not the narrow portions of the river.
It took a day or so before one of the groups discovered that all of the fish were out in the almost lake looking portion of the river where it really widens out and the flows slow down. However, casting with a fly was not the best way to fish these fish, mostly because it was very windy at times. Everyone ended up trolling streamers for that reason. One group found deep hole off one of the points of land which was a hot spot and one of the 5 boats would hook up every time, often 2 different boats would be fighting fish at the same time.
As far as our dream fly fishing trip goes for monster brook trout, trolling was not what we pictured. We were hoping to catch them on dry flies or wet flies in the river. That said, it’s never a bad day when you’re catching 3-5+ lbs brookies every 30 minutes or so, but I think everyone would agree it would be more fun casting for them.
Some people in my party did end up catching fish by casting, so it wasn’t a total wash, and we did catch a fair number of northern pike. They can get close to 30 pounds but the biggest pike our group caught was probably 25 or so inches.
The average trout seemed to be 3-4 lbs with 5 pounders being somewhat common, 8 to 10 pounders are caught in the River as well. If I remember correctly, I think one group caught a fish close to 8 pounds in the week we were there.
Despite people having pretty good luck catching trout I only ended up having one trout bite, and I caught more non-target pickerel than others, and even one white sucker. The one trout bite I had ended up being the biggest trout I’d ever caught which was 23-inches long with about 14 inch girth, we estimate it at around to 5-6 lbs.
Catching these fish while trolling was wild. More often than not, they’d swim straight toward the boat after the hook-up, forcing you to reel as fast as you could just to keep tension and hope they didn’t throw the hook.
When I caught mine, I was half asleep, stretched out on the bottom of the canoe, when I felt a light tug on my fly rod. The guide saw it too. We looked at each other, then back at the rod, but nothing happened. We shrugged it off, assuming I’d picked up some grass and needed to check the fly. I started to wind in to check my line and what we didn’t realize was that the fish had been swimming along at the same speed as the boat!
Once I started winding in and the fish realized it was caught, it headed straight back toward the canoe again. When it got close, it never showed itself. Instead, it stayed deep, using its weight to its advantage. My line hung straight down, heavy enough that it felt like it was tied to an anchor. After a short but stubborn fight, the fish finally tired, and we were able to get it into the net.
Talking with the other boats later, we realized many others had a similar story where the big brook trout would swim straight at the boat.
Gear & Tackle We Used
We brought a little of everything recommended on Eagle Lake Outfitters’ gear list, but the trout didn’t seem especially picky—at least when it came to trolling streamers. One of my cousin’s biggest trout came on an oversized pike fly. I caught mine on a beat-up Mickey Finn I tied when I was ten years old, which probably tells you everything you need to know about selectivity.
Most of the fish were caught on Mickey Finns and Woolly Buggers—black, green, and white, with bead heads, and those were the flies I leaned on the most as well. I ran a Muddler Minnow for a while too, but that mostly turned up pike. Pike were everywhere, and their teeth are no joke. If you don’t hook them cleanly in the corner of the mouth, they’ll bite your leader off in a hurry. If you’re planning to target pike, a steel leader is worth running, and it’s smart to bring plenty of extra flies—you’re likely to lose more than a few for those pike that bite when you’re trout fishing.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the trip delivered exactly what it promised in some ways and surprised us in others. The brook trout were there, and when things lined up, the fishing could be great. At the same time, high water, mosquitoes, and the daily logistics shaped the experience more than we expected. It wasn’t the classic image of casting dry flies to rising fish in a narrow river, but it was still hard to complain when heavy brookies were bending rods on a regular basis. Like any remote trip, flexibility mattered. If you go in understanding that conditions, weather, and fish behavior will dictate how you fish—and not the other way around—you’ll have a much better experience. For those willing to roll with it, Eagle River still offers the chance at the kind of brook trout most anglers only ever see in photos.
