Tales from Deadman lake

A composite of these posts is now in book form as Tales from Deadman Lake and Between Thought and the Treetops.

Waiting

     Being seventy-four in the age of covid, I take what time on the water I can. Canada remains ten months away, if then. Nothing is certain. Who knows what 2022 will bring? Time has shrunk our original northern Manitoba bound party of five to three due to covid vaccination restrictions. I not only understand the regulation, but approve of it. We make decisions in life and are bound by them.

     Only floated the canoe a half dozen times this year on cabin free water. Water, forest, sky and the occasional wild plum near the carry-in. On each outing I had a grandson in the bow seat, an eleven-year-old and a fifteen-year old. Neither time did I fish a lot. Honestly, I no longer care if I catch anything, or throw a lure, Mostly I'm happy to move the canoe around with hopes of setting the kid up front with good casting angles. I suppose you could say I've become a good grandpa, but that wouldn't be true. Simply put, I'm as selfish as ever and am only doing what I want to do. Call that a life lesson. What goes on between the ears doesn't matter near as much as what's happening in the real world. For me, it's a sharing thing that probably works on the soul a whole lot more than sitting in a pew. My Uncle Emil called wilderness water the cathedral of nature. If a little sweat is shed, so much the better

     On our paddlings, the boys caught a few fish and perhaps snagged a memory or two that will visit them a few decades down the road in a dream or a moment of "I remember when."

     

Road Trips

Thinking of road trips this morning but was sidetracked by a grocery trip. I guess that's the way the world goes round (thank you John Prine). Most of us like them, take them, and then wonder how the road home never seems as much fun as the one to adventure.

There's nothing like that 3:30 a.m. moment when you're ready to hit the road for your first trip to the Deep South after you've retired and you briefly awake to shift positions. Two eyes are staring in your face and asking, "Are you ready to get up?" Of course I grumbled and that's putting it mildly. A couple of minutes later I again grumbled, "What the hell, why not?" An hour later, the house shut down, Lois and I hit the road. There are few things as exciting as being on a road trip and watching a 24 below zero sunrise with better than a state's worth of pavement in your past.

My son and I have taken our share. In the early days he rode shotgun, but over years we shared the wheel. Thirty years ago it was the three hour jaunt to the cabin with fishing on our minds. Evolution led us to the Boundary Waters and finally to eight trips in northwest Manitoba. Those last trips, eight of them, are the ones I'll recall:

It's a bit over nine hundred miles to Cranberry Portage and a tad more to Snow Lake. Long, one-day drives taken after a half day of work, but the miles would fly by. Canoe on top and something over two hundred pounds of gear and food in the back. We'd leave around nine a.m. fueled by the knowledge a whole year had passed; a year I'd counted day by day. I loved our time together and where we chose to spend it.

We'd suffer though city traffic and get our road legs somewhere near St. Cloud, one eye on the pavement and the other on the canoe above. I was a beast on strapping down the boat and had built a dadoed a rack that'd allow us to pass a highballing semi at better than eighty miles per.

We'd roll the farmlands of Minnesota till the interstate dropped onto the near endless flat of the Red River Valley, once the glacial bed of a massive lake, all the while talking and listening to whatever music Allan chose to play—some hip-hop, a little Semisonics, a mix of R and B, the Beatles, and some John Prine. One time as we dove into our jumping off point I asked Allan to put on some wilderness, adventure music. He fired up Al Green. And we talked. We always talked, covering the gamut from God to Grapenuts.

We'd join with I-29 in Fargo and let it draw the Jeep directly north, a good direction, toward the border. Somehow, we'd manage to bumble ourselves through the inevitable questions. I'd always get the right answers to the wrong questions, or the wrong answers to the right ones, but never once did the latex gloves come out. The world needs more Canadians.

Across the border and past the Big Manitoba sign in front of the welcome station, the Red River would drift away and disappear into a tree line to our right, while the stark, concrete Highway 75 bee-lined toward Winnipeg passing though a few small towns along the way. Fast food in Winnipeg, bypassing the town on the Canadian version of a freeway, and less than an hour later we left the big city north-northwest on Highway 6. While still on the flats, the farms would disappear, the forests would close in, and curling rinks would replace bowling alleys.

By now we were passing through some of the most water infested land on the planet, swamp, bog, scruffy forest, and massive lakes to the east and west, the descendants of Lake Aggasiz. Once past the nearly non-existent town of St. Martin Junction, we left buildings behind for 225 miles. No demarcations of any kind till two hours later when we'd hang a left on Highway 60 and the world began to rise and fall for the first time in around 500 miles. The forest clamped down and closed us in like a corridor. At times the map would show we were passing within a mile of lakes the size of Leech and Mille Lacs but they remained unseen. All the while our conversation would play on against the background of music.

Conversation is universal and genetic. In one form or another, all forms of life communicate. It separates the living from the rocks. In the Army, particularly in Vietnam, us grunts had each other for entertainment. No radio, no television, no phone, nada. We talked of our pasts and our futures, our loves and our hates, and pissed and moaned all the time. But most of all, we worked together and shared what there was to share. If there is a good in war, it's the humanity on the ground and in the mud and rain and heat and death. Sharing time with my son in the silence of the road and then two weeks in the canoe and in camp, is one of the blessings of my life. We talked and listened to each other and read aloud, at many times with no one else within twenty miles. Treasured time.

Finally, we'd dead end at Highway 10 from the south and turn right toward our night in The Pas that now seemed only minutes away. Of course, it wasn't. Nothing in Northwest Manitoba is close by. The roads are long and towns are few. But we were on the verge. In the morning we'd draw on our woods clothes, grab breakfast, and hit the road once more knowing the government dock in Cranberry Portage and our doorway to the wilderness was only an hour away. 

Rods (part II - in progress)

      I believe the first rod I used was, like Superman, made of steel. Unlike Superman most of what I cast only flew about twenty feet and most of those traveled only as far as the snarl in the reel would allow. Oh well, I was seven years old and had all the time in the world to sit on that Lake Roosevelt dock, feet dangling in the water and work out the knots. I believe those were my first tests of patience and I probably failed them all. These days I still get the occasional snarl but always pack a backup supply of quality line and have learned to carry a knife to solve the unsolvable.

     Years passed, steel turned into fiberglass and casting reels became spin-cast, then spinning. More years passed and NASA gave us graphite. We bought land, built a cabin and when time loosened up I bought my first canoe and my son and I began to explore the nearby, out of the way lakes up north. When I went to buy rods my primary criteria was the price tag. No doubt they were dogs but I didn't care. Allan and I quickly evolved into pike and bass fisherman, mostly because that's what swam in the water we fished. That they were eager to snatch most anything thrown their way made it all the better.

     My experience told me longer rods cast farther than short ones and two piecers made more sense for our Boundary Waters, and later, Manitoba trips. And since the fish we targeted weren't finicky, I never once felt the need to pick up a Loomis rod in a tackle store. I'm sure they're close to being an act of God but they always felt like overkill when it came to bass and pike. High end rods seemed more like brain surgeons than hammer swingers to me. That I've always punched a clock and was an enlisted man grunt in Vietnam fit right in with the basic equipment we've always sported. Sensitivity was never as much a consideration as backbone and snapping the tip off a forty buck rod didn't hurt a whole lot.

     My favorite spinning rod that I'll never use but sure as heck would like to, is a nine foot lightweight. I don't recall why I bought it but there must've been a reason. I do remember rigging a spinning reel on a fly rod figuring I could really buggy whip tiny spinners a long, long way while sitting in a float tube. It did kind of work like I figured it would, but the way I hooked it on with zip strips, wasn't what you'd call comfortable. The nine foot spinning rod solved the problem, or at least I think it did seeing as how I've yet to use it. But there is hope for next year. Joining up a float tube, big walleyes and tiny Centre Lake in the backwoods of Manitoba comes to mind. Also, standing on the dock at the Elbow Lake Lodge with my grandson Jakob and bobber fishing for whatever came along, also perks me up. Though I tell myself to stop the nonsense, I'm already counting the days.

     Lastly, rods are simple tools that function as an extension of the arm. For years I've carried the image of tying into a wall hanger with nothing more than a lure, a line, and a sense of timing. Of course I'd wear leather gloves just in case it worked.

     

Rods - part I

      I suppose it's a sign of age when you rummage through your fishing poles and realize the new ones are twenty years old. I don't mind being old, figure the rods feel about the same and I sure don't feel a need to replace or add any rods that don't have the patina of use and decades of good times. Hell, that dirt on those cork handles didn't get there by itself. I like that dirt so much that I've sealed it over with layers on layers of sweat, grease, northern pike slime and a little blood—some fish, some mine. Call it a brotherhood of tool, fisherman and nature.

     Some rods are graphite, some are fiberglass and one old fly rod is a six-split bamboo that I'll never use. Simply knowing that after sixty years since I first heard of them, there's one in my rod basket. It's a decent cane rod from around 1950 that I found at an antique store a few years back. One of my pastimes is checking out vintage fly rods, both bamboo and fiberglass, on eBay and then ferreting out their histories and quality. Been doing it long enough to know what's a decent stick and what's trash. This rod was turned out by a bottom of the line company but was one of their best and compares favorably to a middling Heddon. I saw it on the shelf, turned the price tag, drew the rod from its bag, checked the model and quietly mumbled, "Holy crap, they don't know what this is." The spare tip has a crack near the tip top but everything else is fine. But regardless of quality, five years later it sits unfish.

     I have ten other fly rods that are a near even split between graphite and fiberglass. Five of the glass rods are from the '60s when they were state of the art. That's the thing about lesser rods, at some time in the past their material was state of the art. Can't say I ever was cutting edge but in my twenties I was a whole lot closer than I am today. So figure my rods and I to be a good match— some were pretty good back when I was also. Four were quality production rods and the fifth is a five buck, garage sale Shakespeare that was too good a deal to pass up. The one I like best is another garage sale find. That rod called for fifty cents up front and then twenty bucks more to strip and rebuild it from someone's bastardized attempt at making a top notch, fly rod blank into an ugly spinning rod. I don't mean to confuse you by writing these words and make it sound like it was an easy process and I'm a regular wizard at fine tuning fishing poles. Truth is it took a while, an internet search, a whole lot of cussing and finally an honest appraisal of "seen worse". My bumble fingers hated most every minute of the rebuild but I'd do it again if I stumbled on another rod of that quality (it's a Fisher fiberglass blank if you care to look it up). Don't ask me why, maybe I don't like myself? Or since I've retired I don't have enough to bitch about.

     The graphite fly rods vary from the sweet end to the uncastable. Oddly enough the clunker was built by a top of the line manufacturer and listed for four hundred dollars when new. I found it in the bargain room at Cabelas for forty cents on the dollar (do I ever pay full price?) She's a ten weight I bought to use as a pike rod but it doesn't come close to loading even with a ten weight line, no doubt that was why it was returned. Call it a nine foot pool cue. In the same bargain room I found a ten foot, eight weight that's proven to be great in a canoe. If was a halfway decent caster, all rods would be great canoe rods, but I'm not and doubt I'll ever be. Call me a buggy whipper.

     My problem is a lack of patience to properly learn a skill thousands have mastered, or as close to mastering as such a confounding tool will allow. Laying out a length of fly line without so much as a single unnecessary ripple on the water is close to art or at least a craft of the first order (keep in mind you can use craft but can only admire art). Even then it's a slower than molasses way of fishing. I don't spend a lot of time on the water these days and don't have the time to get all zen and accept the act of casting as an end in itself. I guess I've spent all of my life in the back of the boat making sure others have a shot at the fish of a lifetime. Call me an enabler. These days I only pick up the rod when I can put down the paddle or shut off the motor and when I do, there's not much enough to fiddle with a fly rod. 

     Enough for now; I'll continue in the next entry.

Same Old, Same Old

      Looks like we'll be heading up to Elbow Lake again, that is if the border's reopened. You'd think the world at large would give more thought to us fishermen. Guess you could say it's general lack of priorities. Who knows if the border will ever be open again? Oh well, if I'm going to miss out on a fishing trip I'd rather miss out on a great one than what we had this year.

     By the way, I did a lot of research about where to go that's closer to the Minnesota border. If you're looking for something that appears to be a solid cut above, check out Discovery Lake in Ontario. It's a drive and boat to affair with a handful of well designed log cabins on good looking water. That it's affordable is also a plus. On the other hand it might simply be a case of good writing and photography. 

No Free Lunch

     I've been thinking about next year since we got home from Voyageur's National Park. We're moving into a new world affecting where we might go and the possibilities are growing ever more limited. Questions arise. If the border opens, do we want to go to Canada? Are we up for the 900 mile drive to Grass River Park or would something closer to the border be better? The thing about 900 miles is the drive back; the excitement of what's up ahead is gone and the road home seems endless. Is the possibility of better fishing worth the effort required? The drive and a few other factors told me no and I sent off an e-mail canceling the Elbow lake trip we'd reserved better than a year ago. It hurt but felt right.

     Then there's the cost. Steve Japp at the Elbow Lake Lodge out of Cranberry Portage, Manitoba is more than generous and offers what I consider affordable, good, possibly great fishing. His rate is my benchmark. But that brings me back to the 900 mile drive. To get similar fishing calls for a Canadian fly-in and more than doubles the price. However there are a few, closer to the border alternatives that both intrigue and run about the same price. They're possibles. I won't say any more till we make up our minds.

     That brings us back to Minnesota, the cabin or the border lakes—closer, affordable but one thing's for sure; there's no way in hell we'd hit the border lakes in late July again. I don't need phenomenal fishing but without the possibility, what's the point in going? Last year's trip was a major disappointment. Finally there's the cabin and the dozen or more out of the way, quiet little lakes I've found over the decades that provide both good fishing and the comfortable feel of home water. For the moment I'm hung on the horns and at my age it's not the tolerable joy it once was.