Trip brought good fishing, and much more ~ February 20, 1997

David Heiller

We headed up the lake and into the Boundary Waters on Saturday morning, three people on skis, pulling sleds, heading for a weekend of winter camping and who knows what else.

The temperature was about 10 above. The sun tried to shine through a thin layer of clouds. Yet bit of snow was falling. Odd weather. Tom called it a small Alberta Clipper. He knows things like that.

Tom pulling his sled.

We stopped and took our coats off. You get a workout on cross country skis, especially with a sled tugging from behind.

Tom set the pace. He was our leader. Ben was next. He had just turned 11, and he prided himself on being able to keep up with Tom, who happened to be his dad. Staying close to Dad also allowed Ben to ask important questions.

“How long till we get to the next lake, Dad?” “How many minutes will it take to ski down this creek?”

Tom answered the questions with patience. Ηe is used to them. He heaps them at home, and probably at work from his science students at Moose Lake High School. You have to have patience to be a good dad and a good teacher.

Tom had a few questions of his own for Ben, like, “What kind of tracks are those?” Ben would usually come up with the answer. Mink. Fox. Otter. They all left their trails in the snow.

Two dog teams came up behind us. We stepped off the trail and let them pass with a friendly wave. Two men with each team, eight dogs to a team. They said they were headed for Knife Lake.

Tom said two of the men were clients, and two were guides who were being paid $200 a day fog the hard job of taking them fishing on Knife Lake.

Dog teams are important in the Boundary Waters. Yes, they leave brown klister on the trails. But they make the trails to begin with, and when there is three feet of snow on the ground, the trails come in very handy.

On one lake we crossed, the trail had been obliterated by drifting snow. We couldn’t see a trace of it. Tom felt his way across, using his ski poles like a blind man. Without a trail to follow, we probably would have stayed home.

Tom and I took off our skis and walked over two portages. One wasn’t marked on a map. Tom knew about it. He knew the old man who had made it and used it as a trap line. He knew about a fishing hole on the other side. That’s here we headed.

What a difference the portage was in the winter. No bugs. No mud. No branches scraping on canoes. No canoes scraping on shoulders. Just trudging, pulling a sled, admiring the quiet winter woods.

But you had to stay on the trail. Once I slipped off and went up to my knee in the snow. Thank you, dog teams.

After three hours and seven miles, we came to Tom’s Bay, on Basswood Lake. We each took on different chores: First things first, of course. We dug five holes in the ice, and put in our tip ups, using frozen ciscoes for bait. We were fishing for northerns.

Tom knew this bay had promise. He knew the old man who fished it. Tom had looked down from a canoe and had seen the weed beds where the northerns spawned. The edge of the weed beds would be a gathering spot for northerns, on the best lake for northerns in Minnesota. Basswood holds the state record for northern pike, a 45 pounds, 12 ounce fish.

The Tent

Tom and Ben set up their old canvas tent. Tom’s uncle had found it in a dump. Tom cut the floor out and made it into a good winter shelter. He even cut a chimney hole and flashed it with aluminum.

They dug a trench down the middle, and made benches of snow on either side, and laid tarps on the benches. They let the benches set for a couple hours. Then they were hard enough to sit on.

Tom set up a homemade stove in the middle of the tent. He had made it out of a five-gallon fuel oil can. It worked great, and like the tent, the price was right.

Nothing fancy. Everything functional. That could be Tom’s motto. If you had to choose one person to get you through the north woods, winter or summer, you couldn’t choose better than Tom. He just plain knows what he is doing.

We cut a lot of firewood, and lit a fire by the lake, so that we could watch our tip ups and stay warm. The afternoon was starting to fade when a dogsled approached from the way we had come. It stopped 100 yards away. A man walked to us. He worked for the Forest Service.

What a job, I thought. Cruising the Boundary Waters on a dogsled for the United States Forest Service. Not exactly N.Y.P.D. Blue. He asked to see our permit. We had forgotten to fill one out. So he wrote down Tom’s name, and Tom promised to register on his way out.

The fishing was dandy

“Now all we need is a flag,” I said. The ranger glanced at the lake. “There’s one up,” he said. Sure enough and it was my tip-up.

I walked to it. My fishing luck has been down lately. In fact, this tip-up was four years old, and it had never caught a fish. Not one. I thought it might be jinxed. No point in rushing, I thought.

David didn't have his camera on this trip,
but I know he wished he did. He always brought 
it on the subsequent winter treks with Tom.

Still, as I knelt by the hole and picked up the line, I couldn’t help but feel that excitement of not knowing what was at the end of the line.

The fish had stopped running by the time I got to the hole. Whatever it was, it had either eaten the cisco or dropped it. I gave a quick tug and set the hook, and started pulling. Then the fish started pulling. It pulled hard. I let line slip through my fingers. I couldn’t tell how big it was. It seemed big. I’m not a person to get my hopes up quickly.

The fish and I played tug of war for about five minutes. Tom came running with a gaff in his hand. “You got something decent?” he asked.

“I don’t know,“ I said truthfully. But my hopes were beginning to rise.

The ranger and Ben walked over too. They all watched while the fish ran and came in, growing more tired every time. I would get to the bottom of the hole, but it would stick there like a jammed log.

Finally we saw a flash of white in the hole, and Tom stabbed his gaff. The fish twisted and disappeared. For a second I thought the line had broken. Then I felt his powerful tug. What a relief!

It was a big fish. The biggest I had ever seen on the end of my line, or anyone else’s.

Tom apologized, and grumbled to himself. He doesn’t make many mistakes. He wanted another chance. He wouldn’t miss twice. The fish came up again, and Tom yanked him out.

We all hollered and stared at the monster. “That’s a dandy,” Tom said. Α dandy is about as big a compliment as you’ll get from Tom.

One man’s dandy is another man’s monster.

“I’d say it’s at least 12 pounds,” I said with false confidence.

“It’s way more than that,” Tom answered. Even the ranger was impressed. He hollered to his partner, “Hey Zeke, look at this!” I held up the fish for Zeke and his dogs to see.

The big fish warmed us up that night. It measured 39 inches long. That made it 16.9 pounds, according to a DNR conversion table. We talked about it as we sat in the tent and fed Little Puffer, as Tom and Ben called their stove. The temperature fell to 25 below. Tom and Ben slept soundly. I shivered and squirmed all night.

The next morning, after eating oatmeal in the tent, we lit a fire by the lake, and caught two more fish right away, three pounders. Then a flag went up, and Tom told Ben to take it.

Ben knelt by the hole and set the hook. It took off. Ben pulled it in. It ran a long way. It was fighting just like mine. Ben took his time. He let the fish run when it wanted to. That’s the trick to fishing, but not all kids know it.

After about 15 minutes, it came into the hole, and Tom gaffed it on the first try. And out came another dandy, slightly bigger than mine.

I had been excited catching my trophy. But it was every bit as fun watching Ben rejoice with his. What is more fun than watching a kid catch a lunker?

We caught a lot more fish over the next day and a half. We lost count. We gave an eight pounder to a friend of Tom’s who skied in on Sunday for a visit. We let a seven pounder go. The fishing was that good.

But there was a lot more to the trip than fishing. We did a lot of talking and joshing, and a lot of sitting and listening to the wind whisper through the big white pines near our tent. We got a good feel for each other, and we got a good feel for ourselves. That always happens on a good camping trip. Catching fish is icing on the cake.

We headed for home on Monday afternoon. The sun came out, and the snow got sticky. It was hard skiing for me, like paddling into a headwind. You grit your teeth and do it. You are tempted to stop, but stopping isn’t an option, so you do it, and maybe it’s even good for you.

I could barely keep up with Tom and Ben. Ben stuck to his dad’s heels like a loyal puppy, no doubt asking his share of questions.

“How many minutes till we get to the portage?”

“When will we reach Moose Lake?”

What a pair, I thought. I wondered if Ben knew how lucky he was to have a dad like Tom, and vice versa. I think they do, although they don't need to talk about such things. Actions almost always speak louder than words.