Memories, unlike fish, don’t get away ~ May 23, 1991

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.

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.

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.

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.

A little peace and quiet ~ July 24, 1997

David Heiller

That’s what we experienced last week. Peace and quiet. Our two kids were gone.

Mollie went to camp, and Noah went to visit a friend. So from Tuesday to Friday,

Malika was at camp.

we didn’t have the kids at home.

This has happened a few times in the last 14 years, but usually not for more than a day at a time. A four day stretch was a lot different. It took us back to the good old days, and maybe to some new days ahead.

When we came home from work on Tuesday, we could lie on the bed and read. We didn’t have to start making supper right away.

The house was quiet. The kids weren’t there to tell us about the blow-by-blow of their day, what Noah said to Mollie, what Mollie did back to Noah.

The house was clean, just like we left it in the morning. We could actually see our dining room table. It wasn’t piled with a basket of laundry and a couple books and a wrinkled newspaper.

The floor didn’t need sweeping, the living room didn’t need to be picked up. We didn’t have to ask Noah to put his shoes away, or Mollie to take her dirty clothes to the laundry room.

There were no basketball games to play, no softballs to toss, no chores to supervise. No arguing!

Hey, Dad, play some basketball with me?

No Sepultura. No Hanson. Those are music groups, in case you don’t have teenagers. They’re not my favorites, to put it politely. But my kids don’t like my music either.

On Wednesday we left work early and went to Duluth. We took our bikes along, and rode through the ritzy areas looking at mansions. We found a book store in someone’s house and browsed through used books. That was fun. One form of heaven for me would be a good used book store, and all the time in the world to spend there.

We ate supper at Taste of Saigon, bought candy at Hephzibah’s, and walked the board walk to the rose garden. Not once did we think about calling home to check on the kids.

A date is always nice!

We came home to a dark and quiet house. We were childless again.

We did think about the kids, Cindy more than me. We wondered especially about Mollie, how she was doing at camp. She never wrote, so we took that as a good sign, that she was having too much fun, or that she was too exhausted. Or both.

We enjoyed our time alone. It was a break. We were able to get a lot done. Not just work, but “quality time,” to use a phrase from the nineties.

Spouses need that, so they can become a couple again.

During their absence, I wondered what our life would be like without children. I kind of liked all that peace and quiet! A sense of freedom returned, that old feeling that I could go anywhere and do anything.

“Simplify, simplify,” Henry David Thoreau’s famous words, came to mind. The details of our life had simplified greatly without the kids: The big picture details that are a constant presence in the back of my mind, like how we’ll save enough money to send the kids to college. And the mundane ones, like how we’re going to get the kids to and from swimming lessons.

All together again!

Then it all changed, when a car door opened on Friday night and I heard Noah’s voice call out, “Hi Dad.” It was like a bolt traveled through the air between us, connecting us, triggered by his voice, by those two words, and I forgot about my new-found freedom.

On Saturday it happened again, when Mollie called me at work and asked if she could have Sarah spend the night. She was home, safe and sound! Wow, it was good to hear her voice.

It was good to give them hugs. It was good to have them back.

On the one hand, it would be nice not to have the worry and complications that our children bring. I’m envious of childless couples for that reason.

But on the other hand, I wouldn’t trade them for all the gold in Birch Creek township.

In search of the elusive, good used lawnmower ~ May 23, 1985

David Heiller

Buying a lawnmower is no small event in our family. The questions rage: “Should we buy new or used? Off-brand or name brand? Three horse or three-and-a-half horse? Twenty inch cut, or 22 inch cut?”

And of course the main question: “How much does it cost?”

My wife and I anguished over the issue for the past month. We knew the hand-me-down mower in the garage would not make another summer. Cindy wanted to go with a new mower. She figures we have a big lawn, and will probably always have a big lawn, so a new mower would be a wise investment. She also figures that if we still had the money spent on used mowers and repairs over the past three years, we could have a very good new mower.

I can’t argue that point. We’ve had four used mowers—three bought, one given—since 1981. Each of those mowers was serviced at least once during the summer. That’s between $150 and $200 in mowers, for three summers of sporadic cutting and abusive language.

But since I was in charge of researching the new purchase, I once again stuck my neck out and bought a used mower. I kept thinking, “One of these times, I’m going to get a gem, one that was used by a little old lady with a small lawn who only cut the grass on Sunday.”

The model I bought was an off-brand, didn’t even have a name. Its carriage was painted bright green, with a clean, white, three-and-a-half horse motor. It looked in good shape, and had been given the once-over by the dealer. The cost: $42.20, with a trade in.

When I bought home, my nearly two-year-old son crawled onto the engine, as if to ride it around. “Mo-mower, mo-mower, he said. He moved behind it, reached up for the handle, and tried to push it. It wouldn’t budge.

The lawn mower in residence with
the lawn mower of the moment.

Cindy was not quite as excited. “Oh, you bought a used mower,” she said. “I thought we had agreed to buy a new mower.”

“Did we?” I asked. My mind is able to block things out quite nicely when called to. “Oh yeah, you’re right. But this one looks so nice. I gave it a test cutting. And it’s been serviced. The guy even ground the valves for me.” I don’t know what the valve grinding entails, but it impressed me, so I tried it on Cindy. She returned to the kitchen, looking unimpressed.

The next night the “new” used mower had its debut, its first major league start. Halfway around the apple tree, after five minutes of mowing, something clanked and whizzed into the weeds. I stopped the mower. The air filter had blown off. All I could find was a twisted circle of tin. I picked it up: It was engine hot, and burned my fingers.

I glanced toward the house, feeling like Ron Davis after giving up one of those game-losing home runs. Here came the manager. Cindy approached the mower and me as I knelt by its side, trying not to look at the air filter hole.

“It doesn’t sound very good,” she said. “I wouldn’t write home about that mower if I were you.” She was showing great self-control, just like Billy Gardner must have in those ninth-inning disasters. The words “I told you so” were nearly bursting out from every pore.

“Let’s give it a chance,” I said in a compassionate voice. “I’m not even a quarter done.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, and turned back to the dugout.

I resumed cutting. The mower worked fine for the next half hour. Then it started stalling in the tall grass. Soon it was having trouble with the regular stuff, so that I was taking baby steps to let the blade keep up with the grass.

Finally, with only a 10 by 20 foot patch left, it quit altogether, and I knew it wouldn’t start again. I tried five or six times. Not even close to a spark.

I wheeled it into the garage, and parked it. It’s still sitting there, looking very clean and nice, waiting for one more shot at the lawn, one more shot at the big leagues. Then it’s either here to stay, or it’s back to the minors, and me with it.

On the moonlit waters of Lake Insula ~ May 26, 1988

David Heiller

The moon slid above the western horizon about a third of the way into the sky before Paul spotted it through the pine trees. He and we three other men turned from our seats around the campfire to peer at it, yellow and soft in the spring haze. It didn’t throw much light as it approached its first quarter stage last Friday, May 20.

“Let’s go out on the lake.” I threw out the suggestion to my three companions, much like we threw out bait from the big rocks in front of our campsite on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, hoping for a fish but not worrying about it.

“I remember once when we canoed in with a full moon,” Paul Dwyer said. The Duluth man was a veteran of this neck of the North Country.

“You couldn’t portage though?” I asked.

Paul answered with a healthy expletive, one not too strong for the campfire, but a little heavy for a weekly newspaper. “It was beautiful. Everything looked like a negative image of a picture.”

“So who wants to go out?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I’ve been out in a full moon like that,” Dave Landwehr answered, crouching over the cast iron grill that had “U.S. Forest Service” molded on top. “It’s nice.”

The Sturgeon Lake man’s voice said it was nice indeed, but it added a tone that said a soft seat on a boat cushion by a fire was nicer still.

Jim in the BWCAW

“C’mon Jim, whatdaya say?” I said, turning to Jim Ryczek for my last hope.

The Wisconsin man looked at the fire. “I don’t know,” he hesitated.

“Go,” Paul and Dave said almost simultaneously.

“I guess that's not such a bad idea,” Jim agreed.

We walked past our two tents, down to the bank to Dave’s 15-foot Grumman. We grabbed our Misukanis canoe paddles. I crawled in first, walking easily down the middle while Jim steadied the bow. It was easy keeping balance with none of our 100 pounds of gear on board.

Jim put one foot in the boat and pushed off with the other, leaving the shore without much notice. In that instance, we were in another world, a world of dark water and shadows and pale stars and that yellow, banana-shaped moon. For the past two days we had seen blue skies and bluer water. We had seen an eagle nesting atop a white pine. We had startled two moose, a cow and a spike bull, off an island hide-away, and paddled respectfully after them as they stretched and swam across a channel to disappear into the brush. We had seen mergansers mating, and 10-pound northerns flopping on the end of our stringers.

But the moon seemed to pull us to the dark water, and quickly showed us another side of the Boundary Waters.

We paddled west at first, seeking as much faint light as we could. We circled around a small bay, off the main western body of Insula. A thick shadow lay at the edge of the water, where the jack pines met their reflection.

“Get a little closer to shore,” Jim said, pointing his paddle to the northern shore. Butterflies rose in my stomach as we steered toward the trees, looming ever larger until they seemed to grab at the moon with their tips and smother what little light we had.

“I can see,” Jim said. “We’re fine.” Did he sense my butterflies, or maybe have a few of his own.

The whole crew.

We paddled along the edge of the bank, perhaps 10 yards off, maybe 10 inches. The darkness was too thick for me. But we could hear the shore, hear the closeness of the paddles as they dug into water, and the water as it split the front of the canoe and dribbled off with a metallic sound.

We cleared the bay and paddled across lake toward two islands north of the campsite. We could see the campfire’s red glow now, and see the two men lying on their pads alongside it. The water split up ahead, and we caught a blur out of the corner of our eyes. Then came a heavy ker-PLUSH, as the fish returned to the dark water from a high jump. The sound was repeated to our right. Some powerful northerns were showing off for us, and as their bellies hit the water with that heavy ker-PLUSH, I could imagine they were even bigger than the 10-pounders that Jim had pulled in three hours earlier a short distance away.

We continued on, around another island, losing sight of our campfire. But the moon stayed with us, following us south as we talked softly and paddled on. We came into view of the campsite again. Is there anything so reassuring on a dark, silent lake? We put our paddles down and floated. A slight breeze, barely noticeable, pushed us south, rocking the canoe slightly.

Then a loon called from the southern part of Insula, perhaps half a mile or more away. The cry was two syllables, the second longer than the first. The sound carried across the lake and bounced off the shore and back at us softly, so that the echo was repeating even as the first call hung in the loon’s throat.

Another loon to the north answered with a higher-pitched series of cries, like a gull, only deeper and richer. The sounds layered the lake, with the echoes adding to the spell. Their calls are hard to describe. Maybe they have to be heard on such a night to understand why the loon is the unquestioned master and symbol of the Boundary Waters.

The moon had climbed higher, now nearly overhead. Jim and I both sat up in the canoe at the same time, and headed back to the glow of the campfire. We had been guests of the moon and the water, the loons and fish. And we felt very lucky indeed because we knew we had been given something more precious than a fortune, an experience and memory to take back with us as we left the moonlight and the Boundary Waters.

It’s a memory we look forward to reliving, and exploring in a new light, again.

There’s more than fish to a fishing trip ~ May 21, 1992

David Heiller

We might even catch some fish. Last week’s column ended on that spurt of optimism, and it came true, except for Dave.

Dave Landwehr waiting for a lunker...
or a snag.

There comes a time every year, when we go canoeing up north, that Dave does his “Pretend I’ve Got A Lunker” trick. That’s when his lure gets snagged on a stick or rock, and instead of carefully working it off, he strains and jerks and bends the tip of his rod like he’s Babe Winkleman bringing in an eight pound lake trout.

That’s what he was doing on Saturday afternoon, when Paul and I paddled up. There he sat, making faces, groaning against the rod, snagged solid. It was kind of funny. We smiled like you smile at an old story that you’ve heard a few times.

Then suddenly Dave crashed back into his seat, and held up his rod and started swearing. The top section had broken clean in two. Now THAT was funny. We smiled, we laughed, we roared. It was an Oscar-winning performance, unfortunately better than even Dave had expected.

I figure that Dave tempted the fates one too many times, like the boy that cried fish. He never did catch one. But at least he can brag about the one that got away: it was so big that it broke his rod.

The rest of us did catch some fish, nothing to brag about, but enough for supper every night except the first night, when Dave made spaghetti with ground venison sauce which was so good we forgot about fish anyway.

The other three nights we sat around the camp fire full of boiled lake trout, wild rice, noodles, and potatoes. That’s a fine way to end a day in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

You can’t ask for any more than that, but you get it anyway. You always catch more than fish in the Boundary Waters.

Like when Dave and Paul saw a ruffed grouse drumming as they took trips to the biffy one morning. Or an otter in Cherokee Creek on Sunday, coming out. Or naps, sweet, long naps in the sun, no phones ringing, no power saws buzzing, not even any mosquitoes buzzing.

A beautiful morning

Or on the granite slab in front of our campsite before sunrise on Friday morning, reading Sigurd Olson and listening to the birds of the north, their songs fresh and new and wild like the lakes and islands of the boundary waters.

The lake was dark and silent, save for a rim of rose at the shoreline. The island 200 yards out front emerged from the gloom, the pine tree branches a lacey black. A loon called and another, far down the lake, answered hoarsely.

The clear sky changed as morning mists rolled in. The air became clammy and thick. The sun inched above the distant shoreline, then glowed like a spotlight above the trees, and the fog melted and crept away. That was my cue to make a fire for coffee. What a way to start a morning.

Old-timers scoff at such romantic descriptions. They remind me that this country was logged at the turn of the century. It wasn’t so pretty then. They mention the mercury in the lake trout, the USDA caution to eat no more than one fish a month. The water isn’t so pure after all. They shake their heads at how much poorer the fishing is now than it used to be in the good old days. “Before schmucks like you discovered it,” they almost say.

Let them say it. There’s enough room for everybody, as long as we treat the land and water with the respect it has coming.

A Gift in the Moonlight

Jim and I paddled into the moonlight on Friday night. First we hugged the shoreline. Patches of moss glowed eerily in the darkness. Tree roots loomed like misshapen monsters.

Jim and David on a daytime paddle.

We moved into the middle of the lake, and the moon instantly cleared the tree line and shone clear and bright. It brightened our spirits too, made us grin and talk. Talk can’t describe how bright and pretty a full moon on a quiet lake can be.

We paddled around a dark island, then came out to a shimmering path of moonlight that lead like a yellow brick road back to camp. Two loons swam through it, silhouetted for an instant against a glittering ribbon of yellow wonder. It was a vision worth a thousand words, a gift no money could buy. Even old-timers would have enjoyed it.

We followed the moon down a narrow channel, toward our camp. A beaver splashed on our left. The voices of Dave and Paul guided us home, their campfire an orange dot on the dark shore. What a beautiful, age-old sight.

Welcome home

I could go on and on, but anyone who has been to the Boundary Waters can rekindle their own memories. In fact, I feel a little foolish for this sixth annual gushing about our trip.

But one more gush: When we got to Dave’s on Sunday evening, his son Matt stood waiting by the mailbox. As we approached, he stuck his hand out like he was hitch-hiking. His eyes gleamed above a grin a mile wide. It was a look saved for only Dad, gone five whole days, from a 10-year-old boy. It’s not a look you see every day, and not a look you easily forget. A look of pure love and affection. If it’s aimed at you, you’re the luckiest person in the world. I know I am.

That’s another thing you get from a trip up north, maybe the best thing of all. It’s enough to make you forget about whether or not you catch a fish, or even break your rod.

Spring: a cure for all ills ~ May 13, 1993

David Heiller

Nature has a way of healing people, both their bodies and their minds. I’m reminded of that every year about this time. I get down on my hands and knees, and you could say I’m praying in a primitive way, though mostly I’m pulling weeds.

There was a lot of healing to be done last weekend. Cindy took sick on Thursday, and could barely get out of bed for two days. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat with us and help with homework and add that un-definable magic that mothers bring to a home. A cloud fell over the house.

Out of commission...

But the sun shone on Friday. Rain fell in warm spurts on Saturday, a good rain, gentle and full of life. The rhubarb grew about three inches each day. By Sunday Cindy was able to stand and talk and say thank you for her Mother’s Day cards and flowers, and the cloud was gone.

In another time and place that plague might have killed her. But not this time of year. Not with weeds being pulled from the garden by the wheelbarrow-full, and orioles singing at 6 a.m.

More proof? Noah took sick on Sunday, and had the same symptoms as Cindy. He lay on the couch all day Monday, even missed school, something he hates. He’s only nine.

I came home from work on Monday afternoon to spell Cindy. Noah and I sat on the couch, and spied a rose breasted grosbeak in the maple tree, 15 feet away. He was staring at the double-sided, Alvin Jensen deluxe bird feeder, which was filled with black sunflower seeds next to the window. He looked uncertain, like maybe he had never sat on an Alvin Jensen bird feeder before. If so, he’s one of the few birds that hadn’t.

Birds cured Noah!

After 10 seconds, he flew over, hovered in the air for five seconds, then made a gentle landing. He seemed to stare through the window at Noah and me. I couldn’t see him smile, but he probably did. His rose breast filled us with joy. What a beauty.

An hour later, Noah was playing outside with the dog. He was better, and that was no coincidence. You can’t bottle rose-breasted grosbeaks and take them like medicine three times a day. They’re much more powerful than that.

How powerful is the earth in spring? Pearl S. Buck had a character in The Good Earth who worked in the fields while she was pregnant, right up until she gave birth. Then she strapped the baby to her back, and kept working, her milk dripping onto the black soil.

It was like that last weekend. There was Sue Landwehr, crouching over her flower beds, pulling weeds. She had that contented look on her face, and you could see that she wouldn’t have traded places with anyone anywhere right then.

There was Frank Magdziarz, straight as a bean pole at age 76, looking over the 20 acres of oats that he had planted that morning, a field as spotless as a new brown carpet.

There was Steve Hillbrand, stretching in the morning sun like a cat, feeling the warmth in the air and saying in an almost surprised voice, yes, by golly, spring IS here.

There was Donna Cronin with an excited grin and an armful of trees that she had received from the Finlayson Sportsmen’s Club. She couldn’t wait to plant them on her farm.

And there was Cindy, on her feet, the flu driven back like a lifting fog, on her hands and knees, helping me pull weeds.

Ah spring. It’ll cure what ails you.

Now if only the Twins would start winning.

It was raining cats and dogs and ‘crawlers ~ May 3, 2006

David Heiller

For the first few days my eye hurt, and the vision was cloudy. It was like looking through a dirty window.

But now, wow.

It’s hard to convey what is happening.

I woke up the other morning and looked out the window and saw a squirrel on a tree branch outside the window. Without putting my glasses on. That hasn’t happened since we bought this house in 1981.

This was probably a good nightcrawler day,
but not maybe the best nightcrawler spot.

So at 6:30 a.m., when the darkness left the sky enough for me to see the ground well, I slipped on a cap and jacket and headed out. A light rain was still falling, and I knew I would get soaked, but that was just fine on a Sunday morning. No rush to get to work, no deadlines. Just a walk down the road.

And it was a good one. The driveway and township road were covered with worms. You couldn’t lay down without touching one. Not that I tried that—I don’t like them that much. But they were everywhere.

Not all the worms were full-grown, mind you. That would he asking too much. But every couple minutes, sometimes more often, I would spy a huge, healthy crawler.

Walking down the road on a Sunday morning, no traffic, serenaded by a cardinal, that’s getting close to heaven for me.

If you aren’t a fisherman, you maybe puzzled by this. What’s the big deal? Well, last summer a dozen crawlers cost $2.25, so there’s the practical side of things.

There’s another thing too though. Getting your own bait, beating the system, is fun. It adds to the adventure, and the fish seem to taste better with home-grown nightcrawlers.

Gathering nightcrawlers was a big part of my youth. We didn’t seem to get nightcrawler rains back then, at least that I was aware of. We did it the old fashioned way, with a flashlight at night in the backyards of Brownsville.

It wasn’t easy. My brother, Danny, and I would take the one flashlight that Mom owned. The batteries always seemed about half dead too. We would go into the backyard, walking as quietly as possible, then we’d carefully shine the light on the grass. The trick was to not shine the light directly on the crawler, because that would send it collapsing back into its hole. If that happened, you had to make a quick reach to get it before it disappeared. Sometimes we would get a good hold, and carefully tug it out. That took some finesse, because you didn’t want to break it or squeeze too hard and damage it.

Our yard was always pretty good pickings, but it wasn’t enough, so Danny and I would venture through the town. First we’d go to Burfields next door. We had to be careful though, because they had a houseful of fishermen too, and Billy protected his turf like a Doberman. There was a sink hole below their house where they would throw the kitchen waste, and it was full of worms and crawlers, but Billy did everything short of erecting a guard tower and 50 caliber machine gun to keep us out of that prime spot.

Everett Nelson’s garden was also a ‘crawler haven, but we had to be desperate to venture there. He seemed to have a sixth sense of when the crawlers and the little boys would be out. He always seemed to be looking out his window on the south side of the house on the best nightcrawler nights. We’d hear a yell from him and scramble off to another spot.

But there were plenty of good spots and friendly yards. Mrs. Bulman’s. The Collerans. Hansens. Bill Miller’s. Brownsville seemed to have a lot more open territory then.

One night I gathered such a windfall that I counted out 100 crawlers and took them to Serres’ Marina the next morning. Uncle Joe gave me a penny a piece for them. He sold nightcrawlers at his bait store at the marina for 25 cents a dozen, I recall. I don’t know if Joe really needed them or if he was just doing his good deed.

Last Sunday wasn’t quite that good: I picked up 80 in just under an hour. Still it was a lot of fun. Putting them to use will be even better.

The one that got away on Walter Lake ~ May 22, 1997

David Heiller

Paul, Dave, Jim and I had a chilly five days in the Boundary Waters last week. It froze most of the nights, and snowed most of the days.

But we didn’t mind, because the fish were biting.

Jim caught the first one a few hours after we set up camp on the Walter Lake. It was a 27-inch lake trout. We figured its weight, using a DNR formula, at 13 pounds.

Jim and a northern in the snow.

Later that afternoon, Paul landed a 42-inch northern. It weighed 21 pounds. The next day it was Jim with a 39-inch northern and Paul with a 38-inch one, 17 and 16 pounds respectively. Then Dave pulled in a 30-inch, eight pound northern.

It’s funny how a person can put up with crummy weather when he is catching fish like that.

Well, technically, I didn’t catch a fish like that. I caught a few smaller ones that fit nicely into the frying pan. It’s all luck anyway, right?

The fish I’ll remember most is the one that got away.

It took my cisco and bobber and ran with incredible power toward the shore of the bay where we were camped. Then it veered left, toward the center of the bay.

It stopped for a few seconds to swallow the cisco. Then it started swimming again. That’s when I set the hook. Wow. It was the biggest fish I ever felt. It was almost scary, thinking what was at the end of my line.

I started reeling in. The fish and my line went back toward shore. Then it stopped. I couldn’t budge the fish.

With a sickening feeling, I realized the fish was snagged on something. Paul came over with a canoe. I hopped in the front, and we paddled to the spot. He saw a flash of the fish amidst the branches of a dead tree under the water. The fish had taken a side trip through the snag when it ran with my minnow, and was now wrapped around a branch.

I gave one more tug, the line broke, and the big fish was gone.

How big was it? A 25-pounder, at least.

I moped about the lost fish a time or two. Dave tried to console me. “It’s just a fish. It’s just life,” he said in the canoe later that day. I knew he was right. But I couldn’t help feeling sad. I couldn’t help wondering how big that fish was. Thirty pounds, easy.

I lamented the loss the next night around the campfire. Dave said, “Well, at least you can beat it in cribbage.” We all laughed, and that was the last I mentioned it. No use crying over lost lunkers.

FISHING WAS only part of our trip’s highlights. We saw a cow moose and her calf one morning. The calf was sucking milk, while the mother eyed us warily from behind white cedar branches.

Seeing a mamma and baby moose in the wild is worth at least one big fish. It’s always amazing how big they are. The cow was six feet high at her hips.

ONE afternoon two forest service employees came across the lake and checked our latrine to see if a new one would have to be dug. They were clearing portages, using axes and saws.

We were glad they followed us in. It made the trip out much easier. On the trip in, we had to climb over several trees that had blown over the portages. That’s not easy to do with a pack and canoe on your shoulders.

The rangers were both young women, fresh out of Northland College. We told them about some of our past 11 trips together. They listened politely. That impressed me. It’s nice when people know how to listen. We felt like old-timers compared to them. But they looked very competent, and no doubt they were.

“They pay you to do this job?” Jim asked them. That summed up our feelings as they paddled off to the next campsite.

ANOTHER memory: We were crossing the first portage on our way to Walter Lake. Paul was walking ahead of me. He was carrying two packs, one in front and one in back; three paddles, two life jackets, and a minnow bucket. We pride ourselves on making portages in one trip, and Paul wasn’t going to break that tradition.

Paul is not a small man. He says he weighs 300 pounds. As my daughter would say, “Yeah right, Dad.”

Paul, on an easier portage,
during a different year's trip.

We came to a spot on the portage where water from snow melt was rushing across. A half-rotten log lay on one side of the trail. Paul didn’t want to get his feet wet, so he tried walking across the log. The log cracked and sagged. Paul jolted from one side and the other, like a cement truck on a high wire. He couldn’t see his feet because of the pack in front.

We stood and watched and tried very, very hard not to laugh, the way you do when you see someone slip on a patch of ice.

As usual, Paul made it across. He always does. He is surprisingly nimble for a mountain. A few well chosen words always seem to help him. He provided a humorous moment for the rest of us insensitive louts.

The four of us plan on returning to our fishing hot spot again next year. I want to take another stab at that 35-pounder that I lost.

By the way, Walter Lake isn’t the real name of the lake. If I mentioned the real name, I might not live long enough to return there with my three fine friends.