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ALONG THE MINNESOTA-ONTARIO BORDER - The hike into and out of Slim Lake is a half-mile long and straight up both ways. Lake trout were said to be there and also smallmouth bass. A canoe and a small boat were cached on its shore, and at the end of the portage we pushed onto the cold, clear lake in the two craft. Rain spat from a low sky. A downpour followed. We let out line, and more line still, falling easily into another day of fishing.
Izaak Walton said that God never has made a more "calm, quiet innocent recreation than angling," and the four of us wouldn't argue. Contented in the bow of the canoe that I paddled from the stern, Dan Steichen of West Lakeland seemed dwarfed by the steep rock shoreline not far away. Nearby, brothers Bob (of Stillwater) and Pete (of Grant) Simmet trolled in their loaner boat, one rod extending to each side, like outriggers.
Cruising for lake trout, we pulled behind us variations of small, shiny spoons, and wondered just how deep these cold-water fish might be. Though lake trout inhabit only a relative handful of Minnesota lakes, they are bountiful a stone's throw away, in Ontario, where a quarter of the world's population swims.
There.
A lake trout struck my lure just that quickly, its struggle disproportionate to its weight, and my line tightening nearly straight toward the lake bottom, telltale of the head-tossing protests these fish mount.
Turning toward me, and peering into the depths, Dan awaited the congealing in the clear water of a fish that is as pretty as it is stubborn.
Nice fish.
Alongside the canoe, the trout was resplendent. Gray-brown on its sides, to silvery, with light-colored spots, the fish had suspended itself far beneath the canoe before succumbing to its fate.
Hoisting the fish by a gill plate, I introduced it briefly to the human netherworld, then removed the lure, releasing it again to roam its home waters.
A happy conclusion to the skirmish depended on the canoe staying upright, and Dan and I had accomplished that.
Now we again let out our lines, and more line still, our shiny spoons tightening their angles of descent as we did.
Let's get another.
The rain had let up. Not quite like glass, neither was the lake's surface anything more than ripples, even to the far windward shore.
Again I pulled on my paddle, bracing the butt of my rod against the canoe's floor, and sandwiching it in front of one ankle and behind the other.
Our plan over three days on giant Lac la Croix, which straddles the Minnesota-Ontario border, and other lakes thereabouts, was to catch as many fish as possible. More than that, we wanted to run the table on four species, landing some of each. Lake trout and smallmouth bass were two. Also we targeted northern pike and, of course, walleyes.
The day before we portaged into Slim Lake, we had fished for walleyes on Lac la Croix. The action had been good, and we also caught northerns, though none of them big. Wes Ottertail, a longtime friend who lives in the Lac la Croix First Nation village on the lake, and Howard Brown, another village resident, had guided Pete, Bob, Dan and me in two boats a long distance up Lac la Croix, to Twin Falls, where the fast-moving Maligne River spills into the big lake.
It's at Twin Falls where I often begin springtime canoe trips into Quetico Provincial Park, paddling upriver and eventually into Poohbah and other lakes. This year, however, we were fishing from a home base, a cabin at Zup's Fishing Resort and Canoe Outfitters on an island on the Canadian side of Lac la Croix, and heading out each morning from there, fishing rods in hand.
We had come seeking fish, but not only that. The suspension of familiar lives and familiar schedules is a big part of these trips. Norman Maclean, in the 1976 novella "A River Runs Through It," argued that three obligations should never be subject to tardiness: work, church and fishing. Not least of these should be fishing; alone as needed, but just as well also with others. Passing daylong good times on the water, cooking lunch beneath evergreen canopies, then motoring, in early evening, toward a homespun cabin, deflate pressure like pins into balloons. Vagrant anglers might even sit in a sauna upon their return to camp, as we did at Zup's, unwinding in the Finlanders' version of a sweat lodge and excising routine's dulling effects on the spirit. Uncorking a dram of tanglefoot is also an option as a prelude to dinner. All of these and more are part of Zen and the art of vagabond angling, and can kick-start for the fisherman the return of original thought, the journey's ral whopper.
Wes and Howard pride their labors over a hot fire, and while walleye fishing, they cooked a mess of these fish at noontime. As accouterments, Wes spilled beans into a pot with diced onions and butter, and sizzled Irish potatoes in oil. Then he arranged in the frying pan neat rows of the morning's fillets, enough to support the welcome promise of "all you can eat."
Pete, Bob, Dan and I, with our crooked hats and stubbly faces, might have appeared to passersby like hillbillies on the lam, extending our paper plates as we did for second helpings, and even thirds. But these were whiz-bang cooks at the shore-lunch helm, and we savored their work enthusiastically.
"I started guiding when I was just a teenager," Wes said. "I've cooked thousands of these lunches."
On Slim Lake, we fended for ourselves at lunchtime. The lake trout held our interest all morning, and at noon we cleaned sacramental portions of these fish to pack out. Slim Lake does indeed hold smallmouth bass as well, and we caught those, too, on the surface and underneath, in the morning and after lunch.
Then we portaged back to Lac la Croix, where we had stashed boats for our return to Zup's.
Now it was our third and last day, and Pete, Dan, Bob and I cranked to life outboards on two resort boats and angled up Lac la Croix beneath a disquieting sky.
As we learned on Slim Lake, not all smallmouth bass had yet moved into the shallows, preparing to spawn. But some had, and some of those would hit poppers or similar floating baits, boiling the glassy lake surface before erupting, mouths agape.
Divvying up a large bay where smallies were likely to hang out, we deployed from our two boats electric trolling motors, while overhead a bald eagle pivoted in sweeping arcs, suggesting the handiwork of angels.
Just another day, perhaps, to the big bird. But to us, floating atop Lac la Croix, casting to shorelines framed by white and red pines, jack pines and aspens, with ravens on the wing throughout, the morning bore the promise of hope itself.
As it turned out, the catching on this morning was only pretty good. But the fishing was excellent, an important distinction.
As Thoreau said, "Many go fishing all their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after," and we wanted not to make that mistake.
Dennis Anderson
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