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Sticks and Stones at Tyee Lake Resort
Northwest Palate March/April 2008

One minute, I’m rushing through an airport and the next, or so it seems, I’m in a drift boat on a lake. The trip to Tyee Lake Resort, 400 miles north of Vancouver in British Columbia’s Cariboo region, is so effortlessly quick—an hour-long flight to the city of Williams Lake and a 40-minute drive from Williams Lake to Tyee Lake—that I’m left with the feeling of having checked into the wilderness.

In fact, I’ve checked into a 15-room lodge on a 14-acre property where moose routinely pop out of the woods and loons wail on the water. Tyee Lake, just steps from the lodge, is known for kokanee salmon. It’s also within day-jaunt range of dozens of other lakes and four sizable river systems that contain some of the choicest fishing spots in the Pacific Northwest.

Tyee Lake Resort offers a handful of all-inclusive vacation packages, including “Sticks and Stones,” a girls’ getaway that combines fly-fishing (for total rookies like me, as well as seasoned pros) with spa treatments such as hot stone massage.

Resort owner Paul Burgoyne, who guides trips, gives casting and fly-tying lessons, and fishes on his down time, too, leads a tour of the property and points out its amenities: a fly-tying station, fishing gear, kayaks, row boats, and canoes. Although Tyee Lake attracts avid fishermen, other guests come here just to unwind. “Many people’s lives are so busy,” Burgoyne says, “they just want to sleep in and watch the osprey.”

My room at the lodge has a sweeping lake view. On the balcony, hummingbirds jockey for spots at a feeder. No TV, though. No telephone. And my cell doesn’t work. It’s easy to slip into Cariboo time.

I gear up for my day on the water with a casting lesson on the lawn: Grip the rod with a straight wrist. Let some line out. Arm back, pause, cast.

Burgoyne demonstrates the technique and I watch the line loop overhead, stream out, and deliver the fly to a spot on the grass. My turn. The line takes a nosedive and entangles itself in the rod. “Put some power in it,” I’m advised. I try again.

“Not that much.”

Left foot ahead. Straight wrist. Longer pause. By the time I head into the resort’s casual Osprey Restaurant for a pre-dinner glass of wine, I’m upbeat, convinced that I’m starting to get a feel for fly-fishing—well, at least for casting on the lawn.

In the restaurant I meet Chef Geoff Thomas, who doubles as all-round resort handyman, and Torey Lee, food and beverage manager. Lee, who lives nearby and works a gold claim in her free time, is a keen gardener, forager, and naturalist. The Osprey menu, which caters equally to meat lovers, fish fans, and vegetarians, capitalizes on the local bounty—beets from Lee’s garden, wild blueberries, and saskatoon berries from the fields behind the lodge. The wine list celebrates British Columbia and on warm evenings the prime tables are lakeside on the moonlit deck.

The next morning we guests pile into a van with Burgoyne and head for Quesnel Lake, about an hour’s drive away near Likely. This is historic gold rush country and curiously named communities such as Likely (John A. Likely was an early prospector) and Horsefly (site of the first gold find in the Cariboo) have drama in their pasts. Quesnel is the deepest lake in the region, at more than 1,700 feet. Glacier-carved, it’s famous for its wild beauty and its trophy rainbow trout.

On the lake, Burgoyne tells us where to test the water and how to choose flies that closely resemble dragonflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies. Then we row into the solitude of the lake where we cast and drift. I’m lost in thought when a drag on my line yanks me back to the present. A fish! I have a fish! Actually, it’s the fish that’s in charge and I half expect the rod to land in the lake. I pull back, letting some line out, then grab the reel and manage to hoist the now airborne fish into a helpfully extended net. After a photo, the second-year rainbow trout is released and in a flash, it’s gone. But the rush of the catch stays with me all day.

Around noon, we row back to a rocky stretch of shoreline where the Quesnel Lake empties into the Quesnel River. I had assumed that an angler, at lunch time, grabbed a sandwich out of a pack. Maybe some do. But not guests of Tyee Lake Resort. As we step out of the boat, Torey Lee waves from a spot on the shore where she’s tending a propane burner and a sizzling skillet. Food always tastes better in pristine fresh air, but I’d happily tuck into this meal anywhere.

We start with gunpowder prawns. David Bowes, executive chef at the Laughing Oyster restaurant on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, had a hand in developing the menu for Tyee Lake’s Osprey Restaurant and now supplies the lodge with the seasonings for some dishes, including these spicy prawns cooked in beer butter. The prawns are a top seller at the lodge, but today they taste as though they were destined to be eaten on a lakeshore in the sunshine.

Lee hands me a glass of chilled Jackson-Triggs Sauvignon Blanc and loads my plate with maple-glazed cedar planked salmon, hot-from-the-grill red peppers, baby zucchini, and salad greens in raspberry vinaigrette. Before we head back to the water, there’s dessert—grilled pound cake with strawberries in warm brandy sauce.

On my final full day at Tyee Lake Lodge, after a breakfast of waffles topped with local birch syrup, I spend a couple of leisurely hours learning the fundamentals of mountain biking with local pro Merle McAssey of Adrenalin Mountain Adventures. McAssey is a backcountry enthusiast with a taste for, well, adrenalin. (When we finish our session, he heads for the dock where he rigs up a jump ramp, hops on his bike, and launches himself into the lake.) His company’s trips and clinics, however, are geared to bikers at every speed.

Later, I’m off to the lodge spa, where I’ve booked a warm oil massage. Pampering services at Tyee Lake include relaxation, aromatherapy, and hot stone massage—treatments said to balance both body and mind. As a therapist works the kinks out of my casting arm, I think about fly-fishing, which I’m now convinced is all about therapy, too. You cast skillfully. Or you don’t. You land a fish. Or you don’t. The point is, you get yourself out to a lake in the wilderness, you take a deep breath, and you drift.