Brace Lake Outfitters
Brace Lake Outfitters is located in Northern Ontario on the Albany watershed. A quick 50-mile flight from Nakina, Ontario gets you to Brace Lake’s pristine beauty and endless adventures. This is where the road ends but is also home to some of the best hunting and fishing in Ontario.
We stepped off the plane and were met by Kyle and Teri. Their amazing service and hard work are an understatement. Both have a strong commitment to ensuring that their guest’s vacation is an experience to remember and work endlessly to make sure the camp is in top condition and no detail has been overlooked. Once you are a guest at Brace Lake Outfitters, you are family—a motto they take to heart and why guests come back year after year. They offer both American and Housekeeping plans as well as supply very unique but comfortable 18-foot center strip boats with 20-hp 4-stroke Mercury motors.
If black bear hunting is your passion and you’re looking for a trophy animal, then Brace Lake Outfitters is a must. Kyle is an amazingly knowledgeable guide that is sure to get you on a big ‘ole bear. Brace Lake Outfitters limits the number of bears harvested, ensuring a good population of trophy-class animals. A past guest actually harvested a bear of over 600 pounds!! Brace Lake Outfitters offers two types of bear hunting packages—fully guided and semi-guided. Kyle does all the baiting, drops you off, and picks you up from your stand. Most importantly they give their guests a hunt of a lifetime with an opportunity for an adrenaline-filled hunt.
My trip was exactly that and one I will never forget. Kyle made sure I was hunting active bear sites with shooter animals, keeping his baiting in check knowing the bears were hitting the sites. Like clockwork we had bears coming in and giving me opportunities. Once I connected on the bear I wanted, Kyle put his expert tracking to work to recover the bear and took care of the animal all the way through to the hide and meat processing.
Typically, most of the best bear hunting happens in the evenings. A nice thing about putting trail cameras on bear sites, you can target exactly when they are hitting the bait. With that it allows you to get in a boat in the morning and catch tons of walleyes with a chance of a trophy pike, or huge perch.
I was able to pull Kyle away from his many duties and get him in the boat with me. We were successful in finding some amazing areas where we could sit in one spot, drop our line over the side of the boat and catch walleye after walleye, or cast toward shore and hook into some nice pike.
Whether it’s pitching jigs and crankbaits for walleyes, chucking bucktails, spoons, and big crankbaits, or even working a leech-patterned fly on a fly rod for trophy pike, you are sure to have a sore arm from setting the hook by weeks end.
Brace Lake Outfitters is rich in history with some possible folklore mixed into the stories handed down. There is a rumor that Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Walter Firestone used to come up to Brace Lake and use it as a hunting and fishing cabin. The lodge was later owned by Wes and Tiny King, starting back in the mid-1920s (yes, her name was actually Tiny). The Kings used it as a trapper’s cabin in the winter and an anglers' camp during the summer months. They ended up selling to Dave and Barb Racicot up until Kyle and Teri bought it back in 2008 when the lodge consisted of five cabins. Since then, three of those have been remodeled with the remaining two cabins and the main lodge being torn down and totally rebuilt. These cabins are equipped with 24-hour electricity, WiFi, a full kitchen, and a bathroom for all the comforts of home. Not to mention your own private deck overlooking beautiful Brace Lake.
Brace Lake offers an opportunity to fish 225 miles of shoreline or a river system that also gives you access to Meta and Ara lakes which all offer a tremendous amount of adventure and fantastic fishing. When picking your next fishing adventure, trophy bear, or moose hunting destination, Brace Lake Outfitters should be on the top of your list. It’s definitely on my list of places to revisit!!
For more information on Brace Lake Outfitters, please visit: www.bracelakeoutfitters.com