What a Long Strange Trip (Report)

O.K., by far not my favorite Dead song but:

Got to Ely MN and found BurntsideLake to be so cold (How cold was it?)
that it made your hands start aching after a few minutes in the water.
Needless to say the bass were still in pre spawn mode. Lots of little
males (fish, that is) lined up in the shallows but the hog females
(fish, again) were making their absence felt.

It was so wet (How wet... yadayadayada...) that every little hollow
was filled but it was cool enough that the skeets and no-goddam- seems
weren't unbearable.

After an all day cool rain Tuesday it turned warm... and then hot.

And then things began to get weird...


Thursday Sam and I went into Lake One on a day trip. Paddled to our
"secret spot" only to find another canoe there. After awhile they
paddled off downshore and we started drifting leeches through the
rapids. Sam lost a large something and then landed a bass. Then the
other canoe reappeared and its inhabitants proceeded to glare at us
from 50 feet away. After 15 minutes or so they paddled away a again.
Made a few more drifts, turned around and there was another canoe
whose inhabitants were sitting 50' away from us and glaring at us.
After awhile, feeling guilty (for what?),and since fishing was slow,
we paddled down river. As we passed the canoe, I mentioned to the bow
paddler that fishing was unusually slow for that spot. He allowed, in
turn, that it never seemed to have many fish. I allowed in re-return
that I didn't know, it always seemed to hold alot of fish when we
fished it. He reallowed (under his breath) "Damn...". I think it was
his secret spot too.

We fished down the Kawishiwiway aways. Sam had a northern bite off
his Rapala and I hooked and lost a nice bass (the water in Lake 1 was
much warmer). At the foot of one of the portage paths Sam lost a Tiny
Torpedo to a northern only to have the lure pop back up to the
surface. The exact same thing happened to me a minute later, with my
deerhair diver reappearing with an inch of tippet still hanging off
its hook eye. While paddling down to the takeout from the portage
path, Sam hooked another northern on his TT. Since I had added a bite
guard of braided wire he landed it. A few casts later he hooked,
fought and lost a huge bass along with the TT. Disappointing for my
son but boy was he pumped. It was our last Tiny Torpedo and the fish
ignored the other anachronisms we pulled from the depths of my 20
years dead Uncle Cussy's tackle box. And the fish also ignored my
deerhair bugs when I had that bit of wire tied to them. Until, that
is, we were packing the gear up to the car, I made another cast and
hooked a big, big bluegill... as pretty of a fish as you would see
outside of a brook trout stream.

We loaded up and headed west into the setting sun. Between Tofte Lake
and Wood Lake though there was a quick "Oh shi... " followed by a big
thump. Next thing I knew I was looking out the driver's window of my
braking (but not broken) car and seeing the twitching body of a little
button horn buck skid past me. With a single leap he had jumped from
the dark ditch and into my left front end, taking out a headlight,
customizing my hood and quarter panel and snapping off the bow ropes
on our canoe before doing the pavement slide. We pulled over, a
following car pulled over and an approaching truck and boat pulled
over. A quick survey showed that the damage was mostly cosmetic;
broken lenses, shattered fiberglass, bent metal. Sam and I were
unhurt. Sam thought I had hit a big bird (he was looking down when we
hit). The guy in the truck said he was a DNR employee and that it was
"too bad... these things happen... glad to see you're alright... I'll
just throw this in the boat here" and sped off. Leaving me wondering
if DNR employees were allowed to wear Rapala caps or whether someone
would be enjoying fresh yearling buck backstraps that evening.

Jacci went into town with Mason while Sam and I took the day trip
into the BWCAW to fish. While there she be-friended a youngish woman
with two kids ( 9 and 10 ). She invited the kids out to the cabin the
next day and they spent the day swimming and fishing. The kids were
nice enough but they had that aura around them that bespoke a life
that wasn't quite out of Father Knows Best. Their Mom was a bar tender
and was off at 7 and promised to pick them up then. 7 came and went.
When 8 o'clock rolled past I cast a longing look at the calm lake and
the reef just offshore from our cabin. The little girl had earlier
claimed that she loved canoeing. So, since the reef was in easy haling
distance from shore, we soon had her en-PFDed and sitting in the bow
of the canoe. Off I paddled, fly rod strung and ready at my feet. We
drifted over the rocks of the reef and I quickly cast and hooked a
small male bass. I handed her the rod and she clumsily reeled it in,
at first with enthusiasm but then, after she observed "Oh... its just
a little one", with less excitement. The next couple of fish were
landed the same way. The girl remarked that her Dad, who was living in
Duluth and trapped there due to a DUI, used to catch big fish. But
that "we don't like him very much" now. Seems he has a mean girlfriend
and can be mean himself. I got the impression, though, that while Dad
wasn't much missed, the little girl suspected he was the better
fisherman. To appease her I let her look through my fly boxes for a
"big fish" fly and she pulled out a big musky type deerhair diver. I
averred that it is so big we probably wouldn't get a bite. Shortly
after casting it out Jacci called us in and while turning the canoe
around to go to shore the fly, which was dragging in the canoes wake
was engulfed by a huge boil! I frantically clawed for the loose coils
of line at my feet and futilely tugged at what I hoped was the coil
that went through the rod guides. It wasn't the right one and I ended
up festooned gaily in loops of day-glo chartreuse fly line. The boil
subsided. The girl looked at me. I shrugged. We paddled to shore.

The sun is setting and still no "Mom". Finally Jacci goes up on top
of the hill, where the cell phone can get reception, and calls the bar
where "Mom" works. "Mom" is supposedly frantic, having come to the
resort, so she says, and not having been able to find our cabin. She
has had a couple of drinks, obviously, to calm her nerves though. So
we haul the kids into Ely to the bar where Mom holds a tipsy reunion
with her babies. She thanks us for taking the kids for the day,
offers to pay us (we decline), and the kids, after pleading to spend
the night at the cabin, return with her to the bar. All the patrons
call out slurred greetings to the kids. The kids respond quietly to
the drunks conviviality. Old friends, obviously, well met. (This is a
side of Ely that the tourists don't see. But it is familiar to me. I'd
met the "Harried, Overworked, Underpaid Mom", the "Too Knowing Kids",
the "Absent Drunk Despised Dad" and the "Bleary Eyed Bar Buddies"
many times over 25 years or so ago, when I was myself a denizen of the
part of northern towns that the tourists don't frequent.)

Flash forward to Sunday, our day of departure. I have a tradition of
taking a solitary paddle in the dawn of our last day. The two days of
mid 80 weather have markedly warmed the lake. I am hoping to catch a
few big females moving onshore to spawn. But the first hour finds only
a few males, and they seem to be keyed on an olive bodied Dahlberg
Diver. Not gray. Not chartreuse. Coming back into shore, on a whim I
took the boat around the small point immediately behind our cabin.
The shoreline there was in full sun. Exposed. I set up the canoe to
drift back up shore and immediately hooked a large fish. Lost it. Then
another large fish. Lost that one too. Finally I connected solidly to
a fish. It was a small male. Frodo the ratdog, who was accompanying
me, barked at the pale green fish. Our neighbor, who was sitting on a
web chair at the end of her dock, turned, glared, and then turned
herself and her chair away from my canoe, my small fish, my small dog
and me, and pointedly returned to her Sunday Star Tribune. We packed
up and head for home.

The trip home was fairly uneventful...except for a brief excursion
that I lead us on when I took the small short cut I "knew" would would
lead us up to the Skyline Parkway in Duluth... never saw UM Duluth
before... that Saint Scholastica is sure some fancy digs... wow, what
a view of the harbor. After wards we made the drive down through
Hayward to check out the Moose Lake campground for the upcoming
Wisconsin Fly Fishing Message Board Smallie Clave.
(http://www.wisflyfishing.com/cgi-bin...num=1108490345
anyone interested?) We drove up Hwy S and then turned east on Forest
Road 164 and drove... and drove... and drove. I had imagined a lake
that was ringed with cottages and an occasional resort and instead
found the dwellings few and far. We finally crossed the Big Moose
River, which reminded me in size and appearance of the upper Mayfly,
except it is rated Class B musky water. To hook a big fish in confines
as close as that would be a trip. Then we came to the road to the
campground.

We pulled up to one of the sites we have reserved for the second
weekend in July and took a photo, then we drove up to the next site. I
got out, as did Jacci. I snapped a picture. I heard the car door slam.
Mason walked up to his mom and asked her in a low voice if she had a
set of keys, because he thinks he has accidentally locked the doors.
We both scrambled for the idling Taurus SW. (Sam had driven the Subaru
and the dogs straight back to Merrill.) It was locked up tighter than
a GM plant in Indiana. Jacci turned pale. I blew my top. How could you
do anything so dumb I scream at our now sobbing 7 year old.
"Goddamgodadamitfriggingnutssonofabirchingfrigging goddampieceofgadddamau
tolockingdetroit****" I tantrumized. I glared at Mason. Jacci walked
over to the only other campsite that is occupied. I glared at Mason
some more. Cursed some more under my breath and shot another dirty
look towards our tear streaked son's face (And a Happy Fathers Day to
You, Little Man.). Jacci returned with a musky fisherman from the Fox
Valley who is also a construction firm owner and, better yet, a Ford
owner. After bending our windows out of line a disturbingly long way
he finagled enough room for Jacci to hit the window button with long
maple twig. And we are in. Thanks poured out of our mouths along with
apologies to him about having to over hear my tantrum. My apologies
also went out to my little son and have continued, off and on, until
this very morning. I felt like a real sheisskopf but I also felt a
relief so vast (as visions of two hour walks to the nearest phone
followed by a hour or so wait for the sheriff to come unlock our now
gas depleted, deer battered car faded) that the contrast in emotions
(of guilt and elation) made my head spin.

We drove to the campground boat landing and took a few more pictures
(I'm sorry Mason), Its very fishy water. We drove up towards the
bridge over the West Fork of the Chip (So sorry Mason) and found a
boat landing with a reedy slow stretch upstream from the footings of
and old lumber era dam that screamed muskies to me (Very, very sorry
Mason) and a riffly section below that cried smallmouth in a voice so
loud it left an echo in the shoreline trees. It was almost full dark
now. We did a little reconnoitering (the Orvis affiliated Boulder
Lodge is very close to the junction of the USFS road and Hwy 77, and
yes, I'm really, really sorry Mason) and headed east towards home.
Then it became obvious that my run in with the little buck had left me
a little deer shy. Every patch of grass appeared ready to bolt out of
the twilight into our path. When the car ahead of us flashed its tail
lights I slowed down and yep, sure enough there was a deer grazing in
a small field next to the highway. A big deer. A very big deer. A very
big deer with a collar on it...

One of the elk that have been stocked near the small town of Clam
Lake calmly lifted its head and looked at our car idling at the side
of the road. It chewed its mouthful of grass as I "imagined" it
crashing into the bumper and then through the windshield. Blood, glass
and the stench of elk cud. And I realized again that things could have
been worse (We could have hit a moose!). We slowly made our way home
through the night, dodging driveway reflectors and menacing bushes.
And our vacation was over. (I'm really, very, truly sorry, Mason.)


g.c.

George Cleveland wrote:

O.K., by far not my favorite Dead song but:

Enjoyed the report George but if I were Mason, I'd be blackmailing you
big time by now

Wayne

George Cleveland wrote:
O.K., by far not my favorite Dead song but:

Got to Ely MN snip
g.c.

Thanks for sharing. I was last on Lake 1 in 1999 and was planning to go
back this year...
--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps

"Stan Gula" wrote in message
news:6hGte.5$2s.3@trndny02...
George Cleveland wrote:
O.K., by far not my favorite Dead song but:

Got to Ely MN snip
g.c.

Thanks for sharing. I was last on Lake 1 in 1999 and was planning to go
back this year...
--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps


I suppose Lake 1 is the first of the 10,000 in MN. Just curious, how did
this particular lake earn the primero moniker vs poor, sad little Lake
9,836?

Danl

George Cleveland wrote:

.......
We fished down the Kawishiwiway aways.

Easy for *you* to say.

Interesting read. Thanks.

JR