A hot-tub sunrise under northern stars. A beached fuel barge after the dam closes. Guests stepping off rocks because the docks aren’t ready yet—but they can see the heart and the plan. We sit down with Willie “the Oil Man” to unpack the real work behind Two Rivers Lodge’s first season and why oil patch grit translates surprisingly well to backcountry hospitality.

We start with the bones: levelling a tired lodge in careful stages so doors swing and windows seal, rebuilding docks and cribbing, and keeping operations running when shipments depend on ice and wind. Then we get into the hard part—fuel. When water levels dropped and stranded the barge, Willie’s crew built a workaround fleet: slip tanks and 50-gallon drums, rolled aboard an old Crestliner that itself had been stolen years ago and tracked down by serial number. The fix now is smarter, not harder: partner with the White Dog community, haul fuel across a short ice route, fill on-site tanks, and downsize to a 40 kW generator that matches real loads.

The fishing is the reward and the engine. Sitting where the Winnipeg and English Rivers meet, Two Rivers taps a rare network that connects Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, Lac Seul, and Lake Winnipeg. That current brings forage and mixed DNA lines—blond and barred muskies, waves of walleye, and pike that behave like far-north fish. We share numbers days that blend 30–40 pike on swimbaits and jerkbaits with 75–100 walleye, a season top-end walleye around 31–32 inches (including one on fly), and muskies to 51 with a push to weigh fish for truer benchmarks. It’s a fishery built for both stories and stats.

Business-wise, we’re honest about bookings and strategy: target roughly 20 guests per week, keep quality high, and pick shows where a lodge stands out—oil and gas, marine, even PGA—so corporate groups and serious anglers find us without the brochure parade. And yes, there’s an oil patch story you won’t forget: a lost flip phone, a murky water tank, and a duct-taped “scuba” plan that delivers laughs and life lessons about improvisation.