Trip to northern Manitoba serves up scenery, fishing, food.

Publication: Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Grand Forks Herald

Byline: Brad Dokken

BIG SAND LAKE, Manitoba _ The calendar says early June, but the ice has been off the lake only four days _ early, compared with the last couple of years. Occasional chunks of frozen water still linger along the sandy shorelines. Permafrost lies just 2 feet below the surface.

We're a long ways north, much closer to Hudson Bay than Winnipeg.

It's the start of another summer here at Big Sand Lake Lodge, and Cree fishing guide Allan Dumas is revisiting the haunts that have earned this northern Manitoba getaway a reputation for trophy northern pike and lake trout and numbers of walleyes.

We're hoping to add some new stories to that tradition.

Joining me on this trip to Big Sand Lake are Kevin Grinde of East Grand Forks, Allan Monsrud of Badger, Minn., and Bernie Brazier of Greenbush, Minn. While Monsrud and Brazier pair up with guide Lloyd Moose to chase lake trout, Grinde and I decide to mix it up and spend our 4 { days with Dumas fishing pike and walleyes. If we stumble across a lake trout or two, well, that will be OK, as well.

Dumas, an admitted pike fanatic, isn't complaining either.

Head guide at Big Sand Lake Lodge, Dumas, 36, has been probing the nooks and crannies, the rivers, back bays and holes of this 70-mile-long lake for 13 years. From early June until late July, there are no days off for Dumas and the 15 other Cree guides he helps oversee. Or for the cooks, waiters and other staff who make this five-star lodge in the Canadian subarctic...

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