David Heiller
Jim’s voice carried
over the tiny lake with the hushed urgency that only Jim could give it while
watching a fellow fisherman fighting a lunker.
“It’s a big sucker,”
he said. “Work him in easy.”
I had heard that
voice a year before, when an eight-pound lake trout graced the net which Jim
held. Now it was Dave’s turn, with Jim again at the net.
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| David and Paul entering the BWCAW bleacher. |
Dave’s gold and orange spoon clung to the mouth of a beauty, all
right. Even from our canoe bleacher seats 40 yards away, we could see Dave’s
arm muscles strain, could hear Jim’s urging.
Dave brought him in once, but this northern wouldn’t hear of that,
and peeled out another 20 yards of line. Dave worked him next to the canoe
again, and Jim brought the net around the head, and halfway up the belly.
That’s when the fish had had enough. It flicked the spoon into the
net, plunged back-ward into the air, then hit the water and in an instant, was
gone.
We were all a bit shocked, I think, and for a split second there was
silence on the lake. It had happened so quickly. Then Jim let some carefully
chosen words fly, unrepeatable here, and aimed at himself. Good fishermen are
their own worst critics.
It’s funny, but losing a northern like that has its place on any camping
trip. It’s almost as good as catching one. Dave could marvel at its girth, at
how it had attacked his spoon the second it hit the water, at how its teeth had
chipped some of the orange paint away, at how it wouldn’t fit into the dog-gone
net. He could even give it a weight: 12 pounds.
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| So much more than fishing. |
Dave wasn’t angry. Our main goal in this five-day trip into canoe
country has never been catching 12-pound northerns or eight-pound lake trout.
Then you might feel frustrated and swear bitterly and remember angrily those
near misses. You see guys like that, guys who pack in two pails of minnows and
a seine and a live-box the size of a trunk, who fish morning, noon, and night.
That’s fine I guess, but I think they are missing something.
Like our trip up into that chain of tiny lakes, just north of Insula,
where Dave’s 12-pounder still resides. We carried, pushed and pulled our two
canoes over logs and rocks from lake to lake, until we could go no further.
Then we hiked on without the canoes. In thick brush next to the stream, we
found morel mushrooms covering the ground, and picked till two hats were full.
We came to another lake, and wondered when anyone had last sat in the sun with their shoes off at its
bank, eating gorp, or sprang on the muskeg, or saw that blue racer snake
through the grass, or watched an osprey swing downstream, like we did.
We pulled in two smaller northerns from Dave’s Bay, then headed back.
The sinking sun turned the lake golden. It caught two hooded mergansers as they
watched us sweep around a corner; then they skipped into flight across our bow,
churning the water, etching their maroon-and-white beauty into our minds.
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| Dave L, the camp cook, always kept the gang satisfied. |
Back at the camp, Dave whipped up a pot of wild rice, and Jim sautéed
the morels, and Paul took out his fillet knife, and I caught another
two-pounder, and we ate the freshest fish supper ever, with trimmings no
restaurant could match, no where, no how.
We recounted Dave’s fish fight a few more times over the campfire.
The moon hung like a thumbnail in the west, flanked by Jupiter and Mars. The
lake was quiet. No campfires, no man-made noise. We were full, content, and we
carried another slice of memories to go with so many others, five years’ worth.
Memories like a big piece of pie, the kind that melts in your mouth and makes
you want one more hunk, one more crack at that 12-pound northern, one more
bushwhack, one more loon call hanging over the dark water, one more plate of
food as wild as this beautiful wilderness that keeps calling us back.
Yes, fish get away sometimes, but memories don’t. We’re lucky for
that.
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