Fish, football, and Folgers

When you last read about me I was climbing mountains and eating with goats. In my latest exploit, I am sitting on the minnow bucket on a frozen Trout Lake.

My uncle Greg drove my Dad (Brian), and I across Lake Vermilion to the Trout Lake portage, after meeting at his house to assemble relevant gear for another exciting Nelson camping trip: our tent, really a folding fish-house; fishing rods; bait; chairs; and our wood stove, all pulled in pulks—kitassembled sleds. I don’t exactly trust ice, so I always undo my seatbelt and keep a death grip on the door handle.

We parked on the ice by the portage, then put on our snowshoes and our daypacks serving as our harnesses to pull the pulks. Another group arrived in their pickups and followed to the lake. When going over, the sleds had a tendency to go to one side or the other of the uneven trail. Once across, our trio and the others crossed Portage Bay to portage yet again. We had to help each other while traversing around the logs and rocks on the trail, lifting up the back of the sled to get over. We proceeded along the shore past Windy Point—the other group headed off toward Stony Island—our feet occasionally sinking into the snow. The weather was on our side. The snow was packed down well, and an hour and half later, and three miles from Lake Vermilion, we arrived at camp around one o’clock.

Tucker's four pound lake trout. Dad and I came with Greg last year as well, but encountered many problems that we fixed this trip—we can still improve for our next one, though. These included: Our stove, made out of a garbage can last year. The new stove is warm, is easy to control, and is portable, all problems seen with the previous stove, with a cover made by Greg’s wife, Debbie. (She runs the Canvas Shop in Embarrass.) In addition, our pulks last year were not very user friendly, like the new Microsoft Office 2007 program—personally, I like Word ‘02. Two weren’t designed to be pulled with harnesses, and the ones we had were bunchy and dug in to our shoulders. We carried them all on a larger sleigh behind Greg’s snowmobile to the portage, and on the way back last year became stuck. Daypacks now have loops sewn in to clip in to our metal poles, and improvement from rope. (The poles have their downsides, too; you’ll see why later.) Finally, the weather did not help. Not much we can do in that area, but in 2009 we saw temperatures of eighteen below, high winds, and snow. We reduced our time greatly from more than three hours to one and a half in 2010.

Brian and Tucker with their tent. Greg, Dad, and I stopped in the general vicinity of the Five Sisters Islands. I say this because a good fisherman would never tell you exactly where he fished. We shoveled an eight by fourteen foot clearing in the snow by the shore of “one of the islands” and put up the tent. The pulks had covers and were left in the snow. As Dad finished setting up the nice little camp, Greg and I went in search of fishing spots for walleye. Using his Vexilar, we went around checking the depth. I wrote the depths in the snow with my foot—12, 23, 45, 50. Once we established the location of the structure, Greg and I returned to check Dad’s progress and load our fishing gear into one of the pulks. Our set-up consisted of four tip-ups and Greg and I sat jigging. I consider Dad to be the Radar O’Reilly of our M*A*S*H unit on ice. He doesn’t go with to fish, necessarily, but he does all the important behind-thescenes work.

We fished for the rest of the day, returning with a huge catch of zero. Two false alarms on the tip-ups got us out of our chairs, but turned out to be just minnow runs. While we fished, Dad had been trying to get KGPZ— Real Country—out of Grand Rapids on my radio; coming out to sit he found Patsy Cline mournfully yodeling “Walkin’ After Midnight” only to find it drowned out in static. We resorted to “Radio USA,” that new stuff.

Greg and I reeled up once it got dark. Dad had homemade polish cooking on the stove. Greg taught us the card game Hearts, and we played for a while, but I couldn’t quite get the idea of counting points. Going to sleep was a drawn-out process. Our tent was six by twelve feet and had two zippered doors on each corner. The stove was on one of these sides. Greg took the cot already inside the tent, so he got into bed first. Then I took in my cot and took off my boots, taking out the liners to dry. To dry my hat and gloves I put them in my sleeping bag with me. Dad came in with his cot next to the stove, in position to stoke the fire at night.

In the middle of the night, I wake up. Hmm, I’m cold…

Tea warmed me in the morning. Dad and Greg drank their Folgers-in-a-bag. Greg was being a good Swedish boy and made a little joke. I had been talking in my sleep: “Yes, Cindy Lou, I will go to the prom with you!” For all I know... Back in the real world, Greg and I went to check depth again at a new location. This time our intended target was lake trout instead of walleyed-pike. We used bucktail trout jigs with strips of cisco clipped in. We took turns watching the “TV” for fish. They were there, but didn’t bite. Dad brought out our breakfast - rice, walnuts, and dried fruit - a few hours later. The group by Stony had been active throughout the day and the one before, but left in the evening. When quarter to noon came around, we turned to Ely’s radio station on my radio, Iris Dement’s “Our Town” leading up to the Vikings game against Dallas.

When you think about it, fishing isn’t really all that boring. Your motivation to stay out is the fact that the fish might bite if you stay there a little bit longer. That’s why I like it so much. It’s very versatile, and the weather’s an afterthought if you plan for it. Just remember the rule of thumb: if you’re in pain and misery you won’t succumb, but if you’re happy and all the world’s fine, that’s hypothermia talking, you don’t have much time! (Thanks, Kevin Kling!) The Eskimo fishes in the Arctic, while the Arab can fish in the Sahara’s underground streams, both sitting on a bucket with stubby little poles.

One o’clock finally brought some action in the form of a four pound trout on a tip-up. After two minutes of bringing in seventysome odd feet of line, we had my fish on the ice. Kodak moment, pose for the camera! Our spirits were lifted by this, and the Vikes’ victory, but the fish otherwise didn’t bite our jigs. We relocated to twenty feet of water in hopes of some walleye or northern, but nothing here either. We quit for the day, and stepped inside to play some more Hearts and enjoy a well deserved cup of coffee. Dad had moved the tent a few feet and repositioned the tarp for our floor, which had become a mess. The problem of water on the ice improved from last year because we fished inside the tent last year.

In the middle of the night, I wake up. What? Classic rock? Hmm, that’s not right...

I had Monday off school so our trio could stay late. Greg’s morning taunt today was, “No Cindy Lou, I don’t wanna dance anymore, I’m too tired. Go dance with that Tommy Watkins fellow!” We wouldn’t be fishing today, just relaxing. Not so with the dogsled team we could see mushing along the ice at eight in the morning. We had however left non-cooperating tip-ups out overnight. Dad, Greg, and I spent our morning doing something I was surprised hadn’t happened earlier: complaining about how Liberals ruin our lives. The debate of whether a log that made your legs fall asleep, or an outhouse with spiders made a worse privy also made it into the conversation. It was here that Greg suggested to write about our trip for the Focus. Tin foil didn’t help the reception of the radio, suspended from the frame of the tent, slowly spinning back and forth.

A Minnesota Long Goodbye, we got dressed and once again assembled relevant gear, packed up the tent, put everything in the pulks—including my frozen fish!—and hooked into our packs. Before we left we kicked snow over our hole where the tent had been. Leave no trace, right? Going over the portage to Portage Bay, I had a 911, as Greg put it. The poles that connect to the pulks are metal, and are fairly flexible, but going down the hill my pulk caught up with me and one pole snapped. Both had broken before, but I guess glue hadn’t held them together. Now you see the downside to poles. Rope doesn’t snap. Dad taped it up as best he could. Our only other real setback was that Greg’s truck had a flat tire. Getting the spare proved that Microsoft Office has competition.

The tire fixed, we drove back across the ice. That night, before I went to sleep, wanting to pass to the Third Circle of Dante’s Inferno—Gluttony, by the way—I thought to myself, “Gee, Cindy Lou, it sure would be nice if you could cook my fish for breakfast…”

Tucker Nelson is a student and lives in Eveleth, MN. He is the creator of HTF’s “Words of Wisdom” which features seniors from our Iron Range communities.

Trout Lake history

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978 forbid permanent structures and logging in what we now call the Boundary Waters. Before that, Trout Lake’s surrounding woods had been extensively logged. The Trout Lake Lumber Company stripped the lakeshore of its tamarack and pine until it ceased operation in 1918. In the logging camps’ heyday, train tracks were supposedly laid across the ice in the wintertime for mules to haul carts of logs to the landing. (A few local oldtimers will tell you that a locomotive was used, and that one of these logging trains fell through the ice and now sits at the bottom of the lake.) A gold mine, stamp mill, and crusher were located near the present-day portage during the 1866 Vermilion Gold Rush. There were once plans to develop the lakeshore heavily, including luxury hotels, golf courses, and huge planned communities; most of these were the efforts of crooked businessmen. None of these came to pass, other than some cabins on the lake. Trout Lake offered camping and fishing opportunities (for trout), and thus required a means to get there. The owners of the Morcom Inn, on nearby Lake Vermilion, at one time operated the portage between Vermilion and Trout, using a flatbed truck. Now managed by the U.S. Forest Service, a "four-wheeler" will take you across for a fee.