Our story · On Sydney Lake since 1933
My great-grandfather bought a fishing camp on Sydney Lake in 1933. My father built the lodge here in 1980. Today I run it on the same water, and almost a hundred years of our family fishing this lake goes into every tip we give you at the dock.
My great-grandfather, John Edwin Johnston Fahlgren, on Sydney Lake
1933
our family on Sydney Lake
My great-grandfather bought the first camp.
1980
the lodge opens
My father started it with three cabins he built.
1987
conservation fishing
Trophies go back in the lake, every year since.
4
generations of Fahlgrens
Same family, same lake, one lodge.
The first generation · 1933
Our family's Sydney Lake story starts in 1933, when my great-grandfather and great-grandmother bought an old fishing camp from Anton Vick. The lake drew him in. Out here he found the peace and quiet he couldn't find at work, and the fish kept answering his hook and line.
In 1947 he built his first cabin, and his own boats. In 1949 he built a small cabin for my great-grandmother, and in 1950 a third cabin, this one for guests. In the evenings he would stand on the shore and cast for walleye. Some days he just drifted out in front of camp and fished for lake trout.
His best lake trout weighed 58 lb. It took him 45 minutes to land it: he worked the boat into two feet of water beside the shore and jumped in to grab the fish. He ran the camp until he was 87.
Great-grandpa at home in camp
The first cabin, 1947
Founding the lodge · 1980
In 1980 my father turned the family camp into Sydney Lake Lodge, together with his brothers Peter, Ted and Doug and his sister Susan. He opened with three cabins he built himself.
Dad was a Gold Seal carpenter, and the two of us designed and built most of the cabins you stay in today. He taught me the lake the way his family taught him: where the walleye go each month, which reefs to watch for, and how to put a big fish back so it's there next year.
Dad passed away on August 29, 2025. His work is in every cabin, dock and boardwalk at camp, and the lodge carries on the way he built it: family run, on the same water.
Dad with a Sydney Lake laker
Today · Your host
I've fished Sydney Lake since I was five and worked at camp since I was ten, building cabins and helping guests. I built the lodge's first website in 1996 and ran the camp with Dad for years after that.
In 2024 I took over with my sister Lara, and we've spent the last three seasons rebuilding: new boats and motors, air conditioning in every cabin, and a lot of fresh lumber. We're now Sydney Lake Wilderness Lodge. Same lake, same family, new name.
My sister, Lara Clarke, owns the lodge with me. Between the two of us, the camp stays in the family for the next generation.
Many of our groups have been coming back for 30 years, and a few for more than 40. Most new guests arrive as strangers and leave as friends. When you call or text to book, you're talking to me.
Call or text Jeb →Meet the whole crew →
My sister and co-owner, Lara Clarke, with a Sydney Lake walleye.
Sydney Lake through the years
Before us
People were fishing these lakes long before our family arrived.
Anishinaabe people have lived, fished and hunted here for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Into the early 1900s families camped above Rowdy Falls, just below Sydney. On a rock plateau above Pineneedle Lake, about 4 miles east of camp, red ochre paintings still mark the rock, handprints among them. It's a tough 2-mile hike and paddle, and well worth it.
Pimachiowin Aki World Heritage Site →In the 1800s and early 1900s the Hudson's Bay Company kept a fur trading post on the Sturgeon River, the stretch of river between Sydney and Kilburn. The post wasted away long ago, but the clearing is still there, with odd bits lying around the old site.
Sydney Lake is named for Sydney Forester, who surveyed it for the Dominion of Canada in 1926. He took this photo at the south end of the lake that year.
Taking care of the lake
We keep a few fish to eat and put the big ones back. We've fished that way since 1987, and it's a big part of why the fishing is still this good. Our camp rule is simple: 2 walleye 18 inches or under, 2 pike 27 inches or under and 1 lake trout 30 inches or under. Everything bigger goes back.
The science backs it up. In a four-year federal fisheries study of six northwestern Ontario lakes that started in 1987, the biggest walleye came from Sydney Lake, and its walleye were among the fastest growing. The deep basin is full of cisco, an oily baitfish that grows big walleye and lake trout.
Sydney and Kilburn are inside Ontario's Trophy Waters, a government-backed area with tighter limits to grow big fish, and the Sydney Lake pilot project sets the lake's own catch limits. Both lakes also sit inside Woodland Caribou Provincial Park.
Why these lakes grow big fish →Limits and the Sydney Lake pilot project →
Barbless hooks, or pinch the barbs. Single hooks instead of trebles. If a hook is swallowed, cut the line.
Measure it, snap a picture and get it back in the water. Skip the jaw spreaders, and pinch the tail when you measure.
Hold big fish horizontally, not by the jaw. If one doesn't swim off, hold it by the tail, upright, until it kicks away.
Get a replica. Take the length, girth and a photo. Replicas last longer and never stink, and the fish keeps growing.
Guest reviews
★★★★★
“My family has been coming here for over 30 years and it never disappoints.”
★★★★★
“Sydney Lake keeps getting better”
★★★★★
“Killer fishing, great staff, amenities improving ever year, we will be back”
5.0 on Tripadvisor from 12 reviews · 5 stars on Google · Read all guest reviews →
Come fish with us
Every morning at the dock we'll tell you where they're biting, how deep and on what. That's almost a hundred years of our family on this lake, and it's yours for the week.
