Forty-Four

2012 Fishing Opener Featuring Jack Munger

The title says it all. I’ve been coming to Bob and Pat Scott’s cabin on Whiteface Lake for the Minnesota Fishing Opener since I was 13 years old. It started when Bob invited six of the dads in his Denfeld High School supper club to come up to his place on Whiteface, a reservoir lake maintained by Minnesota Power. The gathering grew year after year as the oldest of the sons (no daughters have ever been allowed, though the dads all have plenty of those) got married and had kids, until, at one point, the six original dads were surrounded by nearly two dozen sons and grandsons. Amongst the six original fathers in the crew, the group included a cookie salesman, a lawyer, an electrician, a railroad switchman, a grain elevator operator, and a appliance store owner. A melding of mid-America, if you will.

This year, with Bob and four of the other dads having passed away, the numbers are sparse. Four-plus decades of the Opener have seen joy in the form of weddings, graduations, births of grandkids and great grandkids, new jobs, and the retirement of old men from their chosen occupations. The group has seen its share of tragedy as well: cancer, heart attacks, Parkinson’s, the death of a daughter in a car crash, the death of a wife in a car crash and the resulting family turmoil caused because one of the sons sued his own father for his mother’s death, divorces (both for the dads and their sons) and all the other curve balls that a long history of affiliation tends to bring to a group of friends. But my old man, a stouthearted old man of German and English ancestry, is still hanging in there. Oh, he’s had his own bouts with mortality. A heart attack. A couple of small strokes. Intestinal bleeding. A hip replacement. He’s been dinged, to be sure, by age. But he’s with us on the Whiteface, tossing minnows to scrawny walleyes and snaky northern pike, just like he did back in the 1960s. A bit slower, I’ll grant you, on both the cast and the retrieve. And he needs help threading the line through the eye of the hook and keeping his line free of snarls. That’s my third son Chris’ job over the weekend; a job he gladly accepts to ensure Grandpa Harry is with us, in the boat, chasing fish. We’re missing Dylan, my second son, who is out in Williston working the oil fields to make his fortune, and Matt, my oldest, who is at home minding his beautiful wife, Lisa, and their new son, my first grandson, Adrien James Munger. Next year, boys. Next year.

Grandpa Harry Fishing the Whiteface

Bob and Pat’s second son Tim is a busy boy this weekend. He has coordinated buying the food for ten guys, about a third of the group at its peak, and then, he’s off to the college graduation of his daughter, Abbie, and other family events. He manages to spend time with us during the mornings and evenings but he doesn’t get to wet a line.

Jack, my youngest son, at 14 years old, is the youngest of the group. My Dad, at 85, is the oldest by two and a half decades. My brother Dave and his son, Jonathan, couldn’t come this year. John Scott, now the patriarch of the Scott clan, is absent as well. The other families that were once part of this event: the Listons, the Lundeens, the Tessiers, the Nelsons, have all stopped attending; not in a catastrophic departure; but like the erosion of a sand bank along a river, over time, they have simply found other things to do during the Opener. Not the Mungers. We’re persistent people. As long as the Scotts invite us, we’ll show up.

Saturday Night Bonfire. Chris and Jack Munger and Tim Scott.

Saturday morning. We’re on the lake before seven thirty, a rarity in the years we’ve been at Whiteface. Usually the bullshit and the beer fly in equal measure on Friday night as the older guys (like me) catch up with each other. This celebration of friendship usually leads to very slow departures on Saturday morning. Not this year. We’re serious about fishing for the first time in years. And it pays off. Pat “Poncho” Scott, the youngest of Bob and Pat’s kids and the captain of Boat No. 1 (I am captaining Boat No. 2), brings his crew to a school of walleye and they net quite a few. I manage to steer Chris, Jack, my dad, and me into a honey hole where we catch walleye, perch, and northern pike. My dad wants some fish to fry so we keep eight or nine. After lunch at the Scott cabin and a nap (there’s always a nap waiting at Whiteface!), we head back out but catch only snaky northerns.

Steaks sizzle. Beer is tipped. Grandpa Harry fillets his fish. After the dishes are done, we forgo the traditional Smear game and spend time sitting on benches talking around a fire. The topic turns to legislative gridlock and the wisdom of using state money to build a football stadium. The arguments for and against are passionate and heated. Chris and I take the losing side, the side opposing the deal. Voices grow louder. More beer flows. Joe Scott, the oldest grandchild of Bob and Pat, argues both sides of the case. The next morning, we greet a sunny, wondrous Whiteface morning sky, fire up the outboards, and scour the lake in search of fish. We don’t catch much on Sunday, never have. But what does it matter?

Jack and Chris Munger. Chris is mending our landing net with garden netting. The fish are very big on Whiteface!

Peace.

Mark