Warren LaFave dates his family’s fishing lodge legacy back to his grandfather’s return from the trenches of World War I with mustard gas burns scarring his lungs. The LaFaves opened Agate Bay Lodge in 1933, then Kluane Wilderness Lodge in ‘74, and Warren completed and opened the original Inconnu Lodge in 1987, flying fishermen into some 25 lakes deep into the headwaters of the Liard and Yukon river drainages.
In those 38 years, he has never witnessed another angler on the water. Moose, mountain caribou, stone sheep, wolves, wolverines, grizzlies, yes. People do not reach this place except by Warren’s and his son Shawn’s immaculate De Havilland Beaver floatplanes. The depths of the Amazon Rainforest don’t feel as inaccessible as this.
That kind of wilderness brings its challenges. In June of 2022, a pine marten gnawed its way into the lodge, damaging wires, causing an electrical fire. The LaFave Family watched their home burn to the ground. Then they had a choice to make: settle into a more domesticated life or fly millions of pounds of concrete and lumber into the mountains to rebuild, board by board. People who operate beyond the edge of civilization are not easily deterred, and the choice was not really a choice at all.
Warren’s son Shawn, the fourth-generation LaFave to run lodges in Western Canada, now takes up the torch, overseeing reconstruction of the Inconnu Lodge and ushering a new era in the fishery.
While lake trout up to and beyond 60 pounds headline the festival, the territory also hosts swing-water bull trout, utterly fearless northern pike, omnipresent Arctic grayling, and the enigmatic sheefish or inconnu — a French word meaning “unknown.” These “Arctic tarpon” might look like another whitefish until you learn they travel hundreds of miles to the ocean and the world record stands at 53 pounds.
We hope you enjoy our film, Yukon Resurrection, about the rebirth of the hallowed Inconnu Lodge and the endurance of one family’s century in the fishing lodge business. If you’d like to come see this magnificent place for yourself, have a look and send a note at yukonlaketrout.com.
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