Is that an oxymoron? Though it sounds that way, it isn't. After being puzzled for a couple of weeks about how to reserve a boat on Shoepack Lake in the park's interior, the lightbulb finally lit and I fired off an e-mail to Voyageur Park headquarters asking them if I needed a camping permit to fish the lake. I use e-mail a lot, even when a phone call would be quicker. Call me a Minnesotan with a heavy dose of Swede that I know for sure there's only one kind of answer and that one's always on the dark side. Watch an Ingmar Bergman movie and you'll know what I mean. An e-mail is rarely answered right away, particularly when it's as interesting and confused as the one's I usually send, and gives me a few more hours to savor my foolish hopes. However, this time the ranger wrote back this morning with a simple, "yah sure, you betcha," and I was off and running.
Shoepack Lake has it's own strain of muskies and it's thick with them. Rumor and a half dozen videos I've watched says they're almost easy to catch. We'll see about that. Their only drawback is being a little short on size, around two feet is normal and thirty inches is a wall hanger. But they are muskies, look like them and fight like them. Think long, skinny smallmouth bass with big teeth and evil eyes.
To get there we have to take a half hour boat ride, hike 2 1/2 miles, unlock and paddle a canoe across Little Shoepack Lake (it's smaller than Shoepack), hike another half mile to the stored rowboat and we're there. Problem is there are five of us and if anyone is using the campsite on Shoepack they have till noon to vacate so figure they won't get back to the access on Little Shoepack till one or so. I'll leave it at that—logistics sinks another dagger and twists it ever so painfully. Oh well, we'll figure it out.
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