A Day to Myself

Wolf Lake

Friday. I’m off work because, well, because I need a vacation. I’ve got plenty of vacation days left over from last year and darn it, I’m gonna use them! My intention is to motor on up to one of my favorite North Shore trout streams and do a little brook trout fishing. Brookies are my favorite fish to catch and to eat. Better than walleye or crappie or salmon. You can disagree with that culinary assessment if you like. It’s a free country. Anyway, I took the day off to spend some time on a quiet north country stream. Just me, my fly rod, a few dozen nightcrawlers, flowing black water, and the closeness of the forest.

I’ve made this admission before. I, like the drunk would-be actor in A River Runs Through It, am a worm dunker, not a fly fisherman. I grew up plying the little streams of Hermantown and Duluth with a hand-me-down Heddon fly rod, a carton of hand picked worms, and a pair of distressed hips waders. My dad, though he had a collection of artificial flies in his tackle collection, never used them for anything other than decoration. Oh, he fished virtually every stream on the North Shore for brookies and steelhead (migrating rainbow trout), and threw lures at big German browns in Wisconsin’s beloved Brule. But use flies? I never saw him try his luck with one. So here I am, on the cusp of 60, and still fly impaired. It’s a deficit in character, I’ll grant you. But one I’m willing to live with.

“Jimber caught a nice bunch of brookies from a little creek up by Brimson,” my dad said a year or so ago.

Dad took Pauline, his significant other (and my Godmother) on a tour of the Brimson area and claimed to have located the stream. He gave me the name and the approximate location. Now, this “no-name” creek isn’t marked by the Minnesota DNR as a designated trout stream on its maps, which, if I was at all smart, should tell me something. But as I pack the Pacifica with my rod, four dozen night crawlers, my tackle, and some extra shoes (my waders seem to have gone missing, likely in the possession of son No. 3 who has a tendency to “borrow” sporting equipment), I think: What the hell. Maybe I should give the “no-name” creek a go. It is, as you’ll learn, an unfortunate decision.

After driving past Wolf Lake and other local landmarks of the Brimson area, I park the car by the side of the stream in the middle of nowhere. The land is not the steep and undulating terrain of the North Shore, where the short runs of the rivers and streams plummet from elevation to Lake Superior. No, the landscape I’m in is as flat as piss on a plate. This is not the first time I’ve gone on a wild trout chase: It likely, so long as I keep my health, won’t be my last. But as I wade into the stream, I should have known that:

1. Jimber was fibbing; or

2. I had the wrong stream.

The creek bottom isn’t pebbled and rock: It’s loon shit; thick with mud and silt, likely the result of a beaver dam further downstream. Now beaver dams, over the short term, can be great for brook trout fishing. The trout are trapped behind the dam and grow fat and impatient and hungry. But the downside to beaver dams is the silt: As the stream flows, it carries dirt and sand and debris with it. This natural trash piles up behind the dam and covers the sand and gravel beds where brookies lay their eggs. The long term impact of a beaver dam on a good trout stream is three or four years of great fishing followed by a collapse of the trout population.

“Shit”.

That’s me, about an hour into my trudge downstream on the secret creek. I make a half mile wading the oozy, yucky streambed. Walking along the bank isn’t an option: One one side, the floodplain of the creek is a mass of humps of swamp grass, the heaps of earth and root nearly waist high. On the other bank, there are black alders as thick as lambs’ wool. After stumbling and bumbling my way downstream, like I said, for over an hour, I make the decision to retreat. I’ve had one strike, a nice tug that ended up with an empty hook, but I don’t have the confidence to proclaim the fish that took a swipe at the offering was a trout and not a chub.

The path back is torturous.

“Shit.”

That’s me realizing the new worm carrier I’d just paid ten bucks for had, somewhere in the jungle of cedars and alders, slipped free of my belt and found a new home. So too my beloved Swiss army knife and black leather sheath, a knife I’ve had for over twenty years.

Damn Wal-Mart belt. I should have never listened to Harry.

I sit in the parking lot of the Two Harbors Tourist Information center listening to MPR and eating McDonalds for lunch. I have my faithful guide to Wisconsin and Minnesota trout streams open to the North Shore. I had a favorite stream picked out to fish. I had a plan. But despite the two hours I just wasted proving my age along the banks of a useless piece of troutless water, I feel adventurous. I change plans. I’m being called to a stream I’ve never fished by a ten year old guide book. It’s a  mistake I’ve made before but one that I’m willing to make again just for the sake of a story.

10″ Native Rainbow Trout I released.

I catch and release a nice, fat native rainbow trout on the stream and I catch and release a 7″ brookie all within the first ten minutes of wading the North Shore river. But the stretch of water I work is bouldery and flat; there are no pools, no undercut banks, no trees down creating trouty places. I work this first stretch for two hours and never have another bite.

I do manage, despite using an ash walking stick I peeled and carved after my last trout excursion (where I tumbled and spilled on slippery stones any number of times with, thankfully, only a few minor bruises), to once again deposit my large ass on a boulder and turn an ankle. I decide to leave this part of the river and search out the darker, calmer, deeper reaches of its nature. I decide, rather than slipping and sliding my way downstream, to bushwhack up a steep hill to the where I believe (I really don’t know for certain) I’ll connect with the Superior Hiking Trail. I am reduced to clawing my way up an earthen cliff, pulling my soggy, tired body up the slope by grabbing onto trees and roots. But I am rewarded when, indeed, I stand on the pinnacle of the ridge on a well maintained hiking path.

Looking over the river valley from the trail.

Four hours and no fish for the frying pan, a bruised ass, a lost knife, a lost worm holder, and half the worms I started out with, I think as I drive inland on gravel in search of the place the authors of my  guidebook say is a much better place to catch fish. Thankfully, I had a spare worm container in the car that didn’t get lost in my ill-fated trek down no-name creek. Otherwise, I’d be tossing flies into trees and making a damn fool out of myself. Yes, I have flies with me. Dry flies and wet flies sit, pretty much virgin and unused, in an aluminum case in my fishing vest. I have no idea how to “present” them to fish, as the experts say. I only know worms and I am happy I have some left.

The piece of water I fish, after the dust settles and I pull the Pacifica into the woods, is gorgeous.

Why the hell didn’t I start here?

Oh, I’ll be candid. The first few tosses into swirling water don’t amount to anything. The beginning stretch I worked pretty much reminded me of the flat, uninteresting topography I’d just left behind. But once I round the first bend, man, what a difference! There are impediments, man-made and natural, allowing the water to deepen without building up silt. And behind the rocks and trees and decaying structures are brookies. Fat, black backed, hungry, gloriously painted native trout.

The pond where I lost the big one.

I catch five nice (8″-10″) vigorous, dancing, tugging speckled fish in one pond. I watch a pair of blue winged teal emerge silently from rushes along the shore a few feet from where I fish, completely unconcerned about my presence. It’s the only wildlife I’ve seen today (except for a fat grouse who sat on a stump, three feet from my head as I stumbled through balsams along no-name creek). I release two smaller brookies and,down to my last three pieces of worm, decide to try a beautiful pool of black water for one last fish. On the very first cast, I hook into a monster. From the pull of the fish, from the weight of its power, from the bend of my fly rod, I can tell this fish is at least twice the size of the nice ones already in my fishing vest. I play the fish until its near the steep rooty bank where I lose her (I’m assuming it was a fat female heavy with spawn getting ready to lay her eggs). She’s smart, that big fish: I can’t entice her to bite again. I do catch one last nice fish for the frying pan as the sun descends over the treetops to the west.

The River at the end of the day.

I clamber down the riverbed until I can see the bridge. I make an executive decision to leave the water. I bushwhack again, fighting the thick boreal forest of my native land, until, exhausted, I spy the shiny blue of my car through the trees.

I take out the six small members of the char family that I have managed to catch on this fine, fine late summer day. Despite my ass throbbing like someone has branded me, I am infinitely happy.

Maybe next time I’ll try flies, I think as I pull the Pacifica onto gravel and head home.

Brookies ready for the frying pan

Peace.

Mark