We were having a hard time keeping a straight face as we trudged up the portage from Moose Lake to Splash Lake. Everyone except Paul, that is. Paul’s face was set, straight and hard. Hard as a rock, you might say.
He was carrying a Duluth Pack front and back, full of camping gear for five days in the lake country east of Ely. What he didn’t know what that I had slipped a 10-pound rock into his pack while we loaded the canoes.
There’s something perversely funny, watching a man carry a 10-pound rock in a pack. It’s like watching someone fall down on a patch of ice. You try not to laugh, but you just can’t help it. Especially someone like Paul, someone who has canoed every lake, who has pulled in 25-pound northerns, who has done if all. All except carry 10-pound rocks around on his back.
After the portage, we faced a small rapids. Dave and Jim clawed up it in their canoe ahead of us, paddling furiously. Paul and I followed, and Paul put his back into it. That’s saying a lot. Paul has a big back, 6-foot-4, 275 pounds worth. It’s broad. You could show home movies off his back.
Suddenly, in the midst of the rapids, with white water on all sides, a sharp crack sounded, and we careened sideways and backwards, and Paul swore as only a man who has just broken the shaft of a Misukanis paddle can swear.
Bo Jackson can break a baseball bat over his knee, and Paul Dwyer can break a paddle on a rapids. A broad back. We ended up hopping out and pulling the canoe through the rapids.
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| Paul and Dave L. |
Later that day, when we pitched camp, Paul picked up his pack by its trump-line, and the trump-line broke, and Paul swore again. Then he opened his pack and saw the 10-pound rock. Jim and Dave smiled, and I finally let out my laugh, and Paul swore and laughed too, like we knew he would. Don’t try this trick otherwise.
The Rock became a theme for our five days in the Boundary Waters. (Newspaper editors make themes out of anything, even canoe trips.) When conversation lagged, Paul would get a twinkle in his eye and you could see what he was thinking. “Revenge is sweetest which lasteth longest,” he smiled. “How do firecrackers sound? Or dynamite?”
The Rock became a scapegoat, too. Paul immediately blamed it for breaking his paddle and his trump-line. When the weather brought sheets of wind and rain, it was The Rock’s fault. When we ran low on a certain blood-warming beverage, The Rock felt the brunt of our words.
Jim even composed the first line of an epic poem. “But for The Rock,” he said as we shivered under a tarp on Thursday evening, taking another sip of Blood-Warmer. That was as far as he got.
But we forgot about The Rock on Saturday. We had paddled up three portages and across two lakes to a trout hole that Dave had heard about. It sat on top of the world to us, spring-fed, ice-cold, blue-green. Throw in a blue sky and a warm spot in the sun, and it was as close to heaven as you can travel.
An otter slid off the bank and crossed over our lines. “That’s a sign of good luck,” Paul said. About a minute later, Jim had a strike and a fight on his hands.
“It’s a big one, guys,” Jim said. “Look at him run. Oops, got to keep my rod tip up. That’s right, you can run with it.” Jim is the Howard Cosell of fishermen. He gives the play-by-play of every fish he catches.
He finally landed a nice-sized lake trout, maybe two pounds, a foot-and-a-half long.
We hadn’t settled back down more than five minutes when my eight-pound line started to peel out. I picked up the rod and watched for several seconds as my line disappeared into the lake. Dave and I looked at each other as if to say, “What the heck is that?” Then I set the hook.
It was a snag. Nothing moved. I felt like an idiot.
Then the snag started swimming away.
Dave and Jim reeled in their lines. They each grabbed a net. Four men who were portaging their canoes nearby stopped and watched. My drag whirred. Jim started his broadcast, and Paul and Dave served as color men. “Keep the rod tip up. Don’t let the reel drag like that. Let the rod do the work. Tip the rod down, then reel it in. DON’T GIVE IT SLACK. Here he comes. Don’t scare him. If he wants to run, let him run!”
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| David, Jim, Paul, and Dave L: ready for whatever each trip brought them. |
And I listened to all their words, because I’d never had a fish like this on the end of a line before. Twice it came to the surface, a brown-speckled swirl. I worked it to shore, but it saw Jim and the net and ran back to deep water.
Finally, after 10 minutes, it tired, and Jim got it in the net. It barely fit. What a beauty! It almost hurt to look at it, 30 inches long, eight pounds of heaving, ice-cold lake trout. We all admired it, because we all had caught it in a sense. And I felt proud. I always tell people that fishing is just my excuse to get away for five days with some good friends, and that’s true. But what an excuse, when you hold up an eight-pound lake trout as long as your leg!
That was the last fish we caught on our trip, too. We tried for more, but the lake seemed to say, “That was your thrill, boys. Take it or leave it.” We took it, and cleaned it, and fried it in oil and butter and ate it with rice and morel mushrooms that Dave spied on the way back, and though I felt a bit sad at the trout’s death, it gave our group something. Something we get every year about this time, with our canoe trip, something that keeps us returning, year after year.
Rocks and all.
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