There's a moment on every site visit I do up north. The float plane throttles back, the lake opens up underneath you, and whatever you came to measure stops mattering for a bit.
That moment is what people are usually buying when they call me about a lodge. Not the buildings, not the boats. That.
Two Kinds of Phone Call
Between appraisals and listings I take a lot of calls from people thinking seriously about a lodge. After enough of them you start to hear the difference in the first few minutes, and it usually comes down to one of two things.
The first is from someone who wants the business. They want to build the crew, run the season, meet guests at the float plane and put their name on the place. If that's you, you already know it, and my listings page is where you should be spending your Sunday nights. I'd love to help you find the right one.
The second call is a little different.
They fell for a place, or a week, or a fish. What they're chasing isn't a P&L. It's a specific stretch of water, a table full of the people they care about at the end of a long day, and the certainty that they'll be back next June and the June after that. When I ask them what the ideal outcome looks like, almost none of them describe running a lodge. They describe being at one.
For a long time, the only honest answer I had for that second call was to pick a lodge and book a week every year and hope for the best. Ownership is a wonderful thing, but it's a business, with everything that comes with a business. It suits some people beautifully and it isn't what everyone is looking for.
There's now a much better answer than there used to be, and this year it got considerably better again.
A Private Island in Northern Saskatchewan
Ena Lake Lodge Fishing Club sits on a private island in far northern Saskatchewan, up near the Northwest Territories border. Roughly 22,000 acres of water. No road, no highway, no way in but a float plane.
It's a private members club. A fixed and deliberately small number of memberships, guaranteed access every season, and an operation running at the very top end of what exists in this country. The hospitality, the guiding, the boats and equipment, the technology behind it all. I've walked a lot of lodges in this country, and I can tell you Ena has every one of those dialled in. You feel it from the moment you step off the plane.
And as of this year, the club's reach goes well beyond the island. Ena acquired Tazin Lake Lodge and runs it as a member outpost and daily flyout, which I'll come back to shortly, because the water there is worth slowing down for.
What that gives a member is the good part. The float plane banking over the island on the way in. Your own guide and boat. Your people around one table. The same dock, the same water, the same welcome, year after year, with none of the operating side to think about.
There are a few different ways to come into the club depending on what someone is after. That's a conversation worth having with Ena directly, and they're straightforward people to deal with.
I've Been There
I've been on site at Ena, and I'll say plainly that it's one of the properties that stayed with me. There's a real difference between a place that photographs beautifully and a place that holds up when you're standing on the dock looking at how it's actually been cared for. Ena holds up, and the fishing is everything people claim it is.
That's not something I say about every property that crosses my desk.
And Now There's Tazin
Here's why that addition matters more than a second set of cabins would suggest.
Tazin is the kind of water that almost never becomes available. It's been lightly fished by design rather than by accident, looked after across generations, with the history to back it up. Lake trout past forty-five inches. Northern pike over fifty. Those are measured fish, and in my line of work that distinction matters.
For a member, that means breakfast at Ena and a float plane lifting off for Tazin, fishing water most people will never see, and being back at the island for dinner. The club's licensed footprint reaches across more than a dozen lakes in northern Saskatchewan and into the Northwest Territories, all of it arranged as private expeditions rather than published trips.
I follow this sector from BC across to northwestern Ontario and up through the territories. I'm not aware of another membership anywhere in northern Canada that puts this much protected water, and this level of hospitality, behind a single door.
What Membership Looks Like
- Guaranteed dates. Members hold scheduled time each season. No calling in February hoping for a cancellation.
- Fully hosted. Guides, boats, fuel, meals, housekeeping, lodge service. You arrive and you fish.
- Flyouts to Tazin. Ena is home base, with Tazin and the wider licensed water reached by float plane as arranged private expeditions.
- Your people. Family, friends, clients, partners. From what members tell me, this is where the real value lands.
- Genuine scarcity. The number of memberships is capped against the beds and water available. Adding Tazin didn't change that number.
- None of the operating side. No staff, no freight, no leases, no insurance file, no phone calls at two in the morning.
The Takeaway
If you want to own and operate a lodge, do it. It's a good life and I'll help you find the right property.
But if what you've really been after this whole time is a place, on outstanding water, with your people around you, arriving the same way every year and knowing it'll be there for the next generation, then this is worth a look. Ena has built something unusual up there, and Tazin makes it more so.
If that sounds like you, Ena will happily walk you through how membership works. Request information here.
