Lake of the Woods Boatworks was founded in 2023 by Mitchell Johnson with the dream of bringing the excellence of the Winnipeg Yawl to the boating public. The Winnipeg Yawl began with the “fishing yawl” used extensively in the commercial gill-netting fishing industry on Manitoba’s greatest lake – Lake Winnipeg. Of Icelandic origin, and brought to the Gimli, Manitoba area in the late 1800s, the “fishing yawl” was manufactured by Star North Marine since the 1950s.

Mitchell Johnson first saw the “Gimli Yawl” – as it was then known – in the early 1990s. While on a fishing trip on Reindeer Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada, Mitchell and his fishing party were unable to get out on the lake because of terrible winds and rain. While keeping an eye on the weather, he and his companions saw three boats making their way across the water. He couldn’t believe that there were boats out in that weather. Not only were they out in the weather, they were making very good time. Later, he inquired about the boats. The drivers said they were “Gimli Yawls,” and that they had to get across the lake in that weather to attend the funeral of a young boy.

On the way back home Mitchell stopped in at Gimli, Manitoba – on the shores of Lake Winnipeg – and met the shop foreman at Star North Marine – Mark Hjorleifson. Mitchell bought a boat, and thus was born a decades-long love of “the Yawl” and a partnership with Mark Hjorleifson. Mark not only built the boats for the commercial gill-netters on Lake Winnipeg, but he was a fisherman himself. He began working at Star North Marine at 19 years old, and helped to bring “the Yawl” from a wooden boat to the modern era of fiberglass in the 1970s.   

Today, Mitchell and Mark, and their respective companies, continue their close partnership to bring to you the Winnipeg Yawl line of boats born of 70 years of hard-use experience on Manitoba’s greatest lake – Lake Winnipeg.