Some pleasure and pain and serious fishing ~ March 1, 2001

David Heiller

Tom declared war on the trout at about 11:30 Sunday morning, February 18. We were camped on an island on Thomas Lake, 12 miles into the boundary waters. We had caught only two trout since pulling in the day before, and that just wasn’t cutting it for Tom.

“It’s time to get serious about fishing, I’ll tell you that,” he said as he toasted a bagel with jam over the campfire. Tom was always toasting something good.

Tom doing some serious ice chopping.

“I thought we were serious,” I said. We had four lines in the water at various depths, in a tried and true spot—one that Tom picked out, I might add. We checked the flags on the tip-ups every few minutes. We chopped open the frozen holes every half hour or so. That’s not serious?

“That’s not serious,” Tom replied, as if he could read my mind. “I mean serious. We’re going to go after them. Drill new holes. Move around. Start jigging.”

I felt like doing 20 push-ups on the spot.

Tom stalked onto the ice to check the tip-ups. I stayed by the fire. There is nothing as cheerful as a fire on a winter camping trip. The wind on the lake was downright raw. Back home the radio was probably talking about “dangerous wind-chills.” We didn’t need a radio announcer to tell us that.

Ten minutes later Tom was back. Nothing. He slumped down by the fire—he was toasting banana bread by this time. I decided I’d better get serious too, so I took a look at the flags through my binoculars. No need to venture too far from the fire.

Then I got to say the words that every ice fisherman longs to hear: “You’ve got a flag up.” Tom sprinted past me before my words were blown away on that howling wind. I grabbed my camera and followed.

By the time I caught up, he had chopped his hole free and was pulling up line. At first there was nothing.

Then Tom gave a yank. “He’s got it!” he said, pulling in more in line.

Tom stopped and said, “He’s gone.” He pulled up more line, hand over hand.

David and the pretty trout.

“He’s on again!” Tom said. He pulled and pulled, 70 feet of line and more. Then he reached into the hole and lifted out a trout. It was a beauty, 27 inches long. Very dark, almost black, with red at the tips of its fins. A good eight pounds.

That trout was the exclamation point of our winter camping trip last week. It was a pleasure to see, and there is a lot of pleasure in winter camping. There’s a lot of pain too.

The pain is as obvious as numb fingers and frozen toes. Or try getting out of your sleeping bag in the middle of the night to go to the bath-room when the temperature is pushing 30 below zero. Need I say more?

It’s a lot of work, skiing 12 miles, drilling holes for fishing, gathering and cutting firewood, and trying to stay warm when your hands are dipped in ice water.

The pleasure is more subtle. It is partly tied to the beauty of the wilderness. Like when we hit Thomas Lake on Saturday afternoon. We came across a torn up piece of ground that was littered with the bones of a moose. A pack of wolves had devoured it there. We found the skull and spine and hooves and other bones. Patches of melted snow on the grass marked spots where the wolves had slept. The ground was covered with their tracks and scat, and with the tracks of ravens that had cleaned up after them. It wasn’t a disturbing sight. It made me think that things were in balance there. Darwin’s theory lay right before our eyes.

The beauty really shined when we skied out on Monday morning. The temperature had risen about 40 degrees, to about 20 above zero. Our trail followed a creek that meandered through beaver ponds and hidden lakes for many miles. In the summer this area would have been impassable, a bug-infested swamp. But last week it was a crown jewel.

We had to work hard to see it, pulling a heavy sled through sub-zero temperatures. But seeing that land unfold like a field of diamonds made it worthwhile. It lifted my spirits and made me thankful to be a part of this land.

I was proud of it, and proud of myself for being able to do what I did. Some people look at me like I’m crazy when I go winter camping. And there are times when I feel a bit crazy while I’m doing it. It would be a lot easier to stay home.

But the rewards are there, especially with a good friend like Tom Deering, who is as smart and tough as they come. Besides being a serious fisherman.

A couple of snakes ~ April 3, 2003

David Heiller

We were heading off the lake on Saturday afternoon, but Tom had one more stop to make.

There was a spot of blood next to one of the holes in the ice. Tom scraped some clean snow over it with his boot and tamped it down. The blood was gone, and so was the evidence of the fish he had caught.

This was vintage Tom Deering. The location of Osama Bin Laden is better known than Tom’s fishing holes.

Never mind that we had hiked six miles over four lakes and four portages—unmarked ones at that—or that we were on a lake the size of Denmark.

Better not leave any evidence next to a fishing hole.

We had started for the lake early that morning, laden with packs and sleds and ice fishing gear, Tom, his friend Ken Hupila, Ken’s two dogs, and me.

Tom and a couple of snakes.

It felt so good, after this strange winter of no snow, to actually head into the wilderness. We made it to Tom’s Bay in two hours.

Tom’s Bay is not its real name. I can’t say the real name without entering the Witness Protection program. I named it after him because he discovered it about six years ago.

We’ve been back several times since. The reason why became clear about 15 minutes after our holes were drilled, when Tom pulled out a five-pound northern. Then Ken’s tip-up flag went up, and out came a 14-pound northern.

We didn’t even have time to stash our gear by shore before Ken had another flag. He kept a poker face as he casually pulled in some line, then let some line go, and repeated this for about five minutes.

“Got a nice one?” Tom asked. We knew the answer.

“Well, his head won’t fit in the hole,” Ken answered nonchalantly. He guided the fish slowly upward, then Tom reached in with his gaff and pulled out a lunker. It measured 42 inches, and weighed exactly 20 pounds.

It was an awesome northern, big and dark, and with a stomach that hung out like a drunk’s on a barstool.

“That’s it, I’m done fishing for the day,” Ken said.

That was partially true. “You’ve got a flag again,” I yelled to him a little later. Ken didn’t move from his perch next to the fire. “Yοu take it.”

When the top of the spool quit spinning, I raised the line and gave a slight jerk to set the hook. The other end of the line pulled back like a tow truck. We played tug-of-war for several minutes, then the northern came out of the hole like a missile. I carefully grabbed it under the gill plate and laid it on the ice.

David with a sled full of wood and snakes.

It was exactly the same size and weight as Ken’s giant. We admired it for a half a minute, then I let it slide back home. That felt almost as good as catching it.

That’s the way the day went. Fish after fish. A couple 10-pounders. More five-pounders than we could keep track of. It got to the point that when a flag would go up, the owner of that tip-up would grumble good-naturedly. But deep down we all knew this was just what the doctor had ordered.

What could be finer? Sitting on a lake in the Upper Midwest. Late March. Warm sun shining. Roasting venison sausages over a fire. Talking about important things like frozen septic systems. And catching fish.

We headed home at 4:30. Α long walk lay ahead, but it didn’t seem daunting. The sun was setting, its soft light hinting of spring. I felt good that at midlife, I could still make this beautiful outing. Tom and Ken said they felt the same way.

Tom stopped at the last hole, one that had produced about 40 pounds of fish, and did the old soft shoe to cover up the blood on the ice.

We met a couple of people at the first portage. They had been fishing further out, and said they had been skunked. “How about you?” the man asked. “Catch anything?”

“Couple of snakes,” Tom replied, and we headed home.

A great trip, despite the one that got away ~ March 7, 2001

David Heiller

Tom pointed out the bare hills bordering Moose Lake shortly after we started skiing down it on Saturday, February 23. They looked black and stony, as if a fire had burned them, but the deforestation actually came from a wind storm.

The real magnitude of that famous July 4, 1999 storm hit us a little later, as we skied on a portage into Rice Lake. Three years ago, the portage was right out of a Boundary Waters postcard. Big, beautiful birches and poplars lined the ski trail.

But not now. About 90 percent of the trees were on the ground, or snapped off at right angles 15 feet above the ground. They all lay in the same direction, as if a volcano had erupted to the west.

David cooking on Little Puffer.

“Look at all the new growth,” Tom said when we stopped in the midst of the mess. He was right; you couldn’t put your arm out without hitting a small tree. Fickle old Mother Nature was fast at work, undoing the damage she had wrought.

And once we got to Basswood Lake, the storm damage was gone. That was amazing too. How could the wind mow down a whole forest like a scythe, and not touch a tree a mile away? Those are the kinds of questions that winter ski trips bring out.

Once we hit the bay on Basswood, we drilled holes and started fishing. This spot had yielded some big northerns in the past, and both Tom and I expected no less this time.

Then we pitched our tent on an island. Several huge white pines still stood there untouched. They seemed like stout old friends to me. Tom figured they were a couple hundred years old. It was good to see them standing, although Tom noted that they were in poor health and would probably fall down soon. Science teachers notice things like that.

Tom put Little Puffer in the middle of the tent. Little Puffer is a stove that he made out of an old gas can, and it is a testimony to the importance of a stove in winter camping that it is given a name.

We cut firewood and watched for the flags on our tip-ups to spring into action. Not more than an hour later, I had the first northern on the ice, a four-pounder. Then Tom pulled in two more, a couple pounds bigger than mine. They were dark and fat. “You just don’t see northerns like that back home,” Tom marveled.

As darkness fell, a west wind whipped across the bay. We foolishly ate our supper outside by the campfire. It was cold! But that changed after we crawled into the tent and lit Little Puffer. “What took you so long?” the stove almost seemed to say as Tom struck a match to the birch bark and twigs inside it. In just a few minutes we were sitting on our sleeping pads and starting to shed our layers of clothing.

We lit two candle lanterns and hung them from the center pole. They cast a golden light. Our pads were on benches of snow that conformed to our bodies better than the most expensive mattress. We talked and read. Then I started dozing off. It was getting late. I looked at my watch: 7:30 p.m.

If there is a better recipe for sleep, I would like to find it: a cozy tent, a warm sleeping bag. The sound of the wind blowing through the friendly pines. A body that is tired from a seven-mile ski.

Skiing till your head is clear.

We were both asleep by nine. I can’t remember the last time I slept that well.

The fish of the weekend hit Tom’s tip-up the next morning. He set the hook, and the fish didn’t give. It was like the cliché that fisherman say: “I thought it was a snag,” although Tom to his credit didn’t say that, because snags don’t tear line off a reel like this one did. Then it shook its head and the line sliced into Tom’s little finger, and it was gone. Tom pulled in the line with a mixed grin of disappointment and admiration.

We will never know how big it was. That’s kind of fun to think about. Basswood Lake holds the state record for northern pike, 45 pounds, 10 ounces. Maybe this one was its grandson.

And that was the peak of the fishing for us. That happens sometimes. After that, the fish quit biting. They would take a line and run with the bait, then drop it. When it came time to set the hook, there would be nothing to set. The storm system that was dumping a foot of snow on Pine County was sending its signals all the way to the Canadian border, telling those big dumb northerns not to eat any more smelt.

On Sunday afternoon, I took a day trip and skied into Canada for several miles. I didn’t see another person, or any animals. But it was still a fantastic time. The songs that were rattling around in my head finally quieted down. That’s when I know I’ve reached some inner peace, when my brain is empty, and I can just think about the wind and the lake and my skis gliding effortlessly over the snow like I could have skied forever, just kept going.

“Did you catch any fish?” I asked Tom when I got back to camp later that afternoon.

Hanging up stuff.

“Look by the fire,” he said with a poker players grin.

I walked over and saw five nice northerns on the snow. Tom let me babble on for a bit, he told me that they were the fish we had caught earlier. He had had to move them because a mink had discovered them and was trying to eat them. Tom said he had to chase the animal away three times.

That night, before we went to bed, we hung the fish in a pack from a tree, to make sure the mink wouldn’t return.

We skied back on Monday, after a morning of fruitless fishing. The seven mile ski back home seemed easy. Just before we reached the landing on Moose Lake, two dog teams sped past us. They were cruising. What a beautiful sight. They moved with such ease and joy, and each musher gave us a wave as they rode past. The sight will stick with me for a long time, a carefree memory from a successful winter camping trip with the big fish that got away.

You call that a winter camping trip? ~ February 19, 1998

David Heiller

That’s what we wondered when we woke up last Monday morning on Tom’s Bay on Basswood Lake.

Tom and I lay in the tent and listened to rain fall on it. Rain falling on a tent is usually a comforting sound. But in the middle of February, it seemed out of place and a little worrisome.

After all, we had six miles to ski back to the landing, pulling heavy sleds. Neither of us wanted to do that in the rain. We had cross-country skis, not water skis.

I’m sure Noah didn’t either, although he wasn’t talking to us at the moment. He was snoring in his two sleeping bags.

Noah and Tom

Noah, my son, had worried before the trip that one of us would snore and keep him awake And now this.

But he wasn’t keeping us awake. Tom and I had woken up all by ourselves at five a.m. That isn’t early if you consider that we were asleep by 8:30 the previous night. When you go winter camping, there isn’t a lot to do after dark except lay in your sleeping bag and talk.

It was fun to have Noah along to lighten up the talk, which can get pretty ponderous between two men. It takes a teenager to bring you back to the real world, like whether the Vikings would re-sign John Randle.

I stepped out of the tent. It was still dark. The rain wasn’t falling hard. It didn’t feel like it would last. My worry lifted. What was to complain about? The temperature was above freezing. Our fishing holes hadn’t even frozen over.

Last year at this time and spot, the temperature had dipped to minus 23. I’ll take El Niño any year.

Getting some wood for the Little Puffer.

Sleeping sure was better this year. Last year I brought one sleeping bag and got darn cold. This year Noah and I had each brought two bags. We stayed plenty warm, even after Little Puffer, Tom’s woodstove, turned cold.

The fishing this year was probably the best of my life, although we didn’t catch a true lunker. Last year I caught a 17-pound northern, and so did Tom’s son, Ben. Even that isn’t a big fish to some people. Tom, for example, thinks that some day he will catch a big northern.

“How big is that,” Ι asked him on Monday morning.

“About 35 pounds,” he said with a little smile. I wouldn’t bet against him.

The fishing was thrilling. At one point on Sunday, two flags popped up on tip-ups at the same time. I took one and Noah took the other. I kept one eye on my son and one eye on my line. My fish fought hard, but I pulled him in steadily. Fourteen pound line gives you a lot of confidence.

I eased the fish into the hole. It gave a thrust and came six inches out of the hole. Ι hooked my finger under its gills and lifted it into the air.

“Look at this!” I shouted to Noah. It was a beauty, about 34 inches long and weighing about 10 pounds. He barely glanced my way: Who cares about someone else’s fish when you’ve got one on yourself? I dropped my fish and ran over to help him haul it out. It was a measly seven pounder.

Noah and Tom and a nice catch

We ended up catching our limit of three fish each. We let many go. We lost some nice ones too, fish that tugged as hard as the 17-pounder did last year. One broke a line. Another wound itself around a snag.

Noah lost a big one in a way I had never seen before. When he set the hook, he felt the fish for several seconds, then it was gone. He pulled up his line, and found a half-digested eel pout on the end of his hook.

A northern apparently had swallowed Noah’s cisco, then when he set the hook, instead of the hook catching in its throat, it dug into a fish in the northern’s stomach and came out. The eel pout saved the northern’s life.

“How big do you think that fish was, 35 pounds?” Tom asked me later, with Noah standing nearby.

Checking the weight on Noah's fish.

“No, it was probably about 17 pounds.” I can’t let my son out-fish me. But Tom might be right. That’s the thing about fishing. You never know. It keeps you going back.

The rain quit early Monday morning. We broke camp and took down the tent and started packing our sleds. We stood by a fire at the edge of the lake. Tom heated up some left over spaghetti. I cooked up two hotdogs. It’s funny how good food can taste around a campfire. We drank coffee. Noah had a cup of cocoa.

At about 11:30 we headed back. The snow was slushy. The sleds pulled hard. But it wasn’t bad enough to complain about. I didn’t even have to wear gloves. That’s how warm it was on February16 in the coldest area of the United States.

Tom stopped to point out some fresh otter tracks to Noah. He is always doing things like that. He teaches science for a living and his teaching day doesn’t end at 3 p.m. Often during the trip he would ask things like, ^“What critter made those tracks?” or “What bird call is that?” You’re always learning something from Tom.

At one point we skied four feet from the edge of a creek that was open. It was a little scary. None of us wanted to go through the ice with skis on, belted to a sled.

But having an element of risk is a big part of camping. We trusted our judgment, and with Tom leading the way, things felt safe. He really knows his way in the wilderness.

David with one of the sleds.

The hardest part out was a half-mile-long portage. It had been downhill coming in, and the skiing conditions had been perfect. But now it—was hot and slushy. We sweated and struggled up slope after slope, carrying our skis and poles, and pulling our sleds. Warm weather can work against you in the winter.

Noah’s sled snagged on a few trees. I saw him wave his arms angrily. Ι heard him yelling. I had to stifle a smile. Every good trip has a moment where you struggle physically and reach a low point. That was it for Noah, and me too.

But Tom kept a steady pace, and we gritted our teeth and followed. When we came down the hill to the end of the portage, Noah broke into a run. I smiled at that. We rested then, and ate candy and drank water. It tasted good.

That portage is one reason why Tom’s Bay is full of big fish, I thought. Not many people could make it. But we did. And it won’t be the last time, El Niño or not.

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.