Minnesota

John, my attorney created a generic fishing contract which I could use in every state with a few minor changes. When I went to pick it up, he said he wanted to be the first person to sign one of my fishing contracts and he did sign one. About two weeks before our planned trip, we had talked about some legal stuff and he casually mentioned he bought a new house and he was having a yard sale in a couple of weeks and he and his wife had only three weeks to move from one house to the other. I knew this was the set up for a call the following week. I almost answered the phone: "Hi John, it would be nice if you could go, but we'll make it without you," but I didn't and he said he couldn't go or his wife would divorce him and I said I doubted it would come to that and he agreed but said he still couldn't go. He thus became the first person to break my fishing contract.

I asked John where the loophole was in the contract so I could stop other fishers from backing out of their obligations. He said there wasn't a loophole. The contract states that anyone reneging on the fishing trip will have 100 days in which to donate 100 hours of volunteer work to a nature group and when he dangled that fact in front of his wife as part of his argument to her, she pointed out he had already donated over 100 hours of work to a nature group in the last 100 days and so he was home free, ah well, at least he was home.

The trip plans were to fish in Pine Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) for Lake Trout the second weekend of May for Minnesota's fishing opener. Not all states have a fishing opener and so some people don't know what it is. Since the fishing season is closed for a couple of months to give the fish a little time to have some fun (mate that is), there is a first day after that period in which anglers can fish. That day is called the fishing opener and it is the biggest holiday in the state of Minnesota. Hundreds of thousands of people purchase fishing licenses and they spend one or two days fishing. Most lakes, some of which will have only a few boats or no boats at all on them the rest of the year, will bear hundreds of boats during these first couple of fishing days. This weekend the roads will have more traffic than Christmas weekend or Memorial Day weekend.

My fishing contract with John allowed four guests to be invited and since I had invited four guests, the fishing trip happened without John. Jim Morgan was a Kansas City art dealer, a TWA pilot, a very humorous character and my friend for about 12 years. When he died in the early eighties in a motorcycle accident, his children inherited a friendship with me. His youngest son, Dennis, who has taken Jim's place in the art world, runs an art gallery with his mom. Jim's daughter, Denise, and Denise's husband, Doug, live in Demopolis, Alabama where she is the librarian and he is a Pizza Hut manager. Dennis, Denise and Doug all like to fish and they signed on as guests for this fishing trip.

The other person to go on this fishing trip was Peter Carlsen, an architect in St Paul, Minnesota who I met while working on a project with the Minnesota Society of Architects. Peter does not like to fish and he thinks it is silly to spend time trying to fool an animal with a brain the size of a pea (and usually lose). Peter does have a canoeing habit. Peter and I often go canoeing to escape our daily routines and we try to be the first canoeists each year on the Sunrise River which runs through my property.

It took about six hours to drive from my house to McFarland Lake, which is at the eastern edge of the BWCA. McFarland Lake past the 'BWCA-*#%* You' flag that hangs on the pier of some rich guy who is angry that Pine Lake is now part of the BWCA and he can't take his motorboat in there anymore and fish. He found out he can't buy everything. It was a rather warm day for Minnesota that early in May, in the high seventies and very pleasant canoeing the four more miles into Pine Lake. A rare east wind at our backs made canoeing a breeze. We fished all the way to our campsite, trolling and casting for lake trout which can be anywhere that time of year, on the surface or in 100 feet of water or anywhere in-between. But for all I know they could have experienced rapture and were all in heaven. Our campsite was on a rock peninsula which pointed at the island several people had told me was a good place to fish for walleye. You're probably thinking, "this guy signs a contract to fish for lake trout and then he fishes for walleye?' I admit total guilt. I would fish for a fish not in the contract if I thought I could catch one. I have no principles when it comes to fishing and so... after we set up camp we went fishing for Walleye.

Back at camp and still without fish, I baited a hook with a night crawler and left the fishing line in the water for the night. A bell on the pole was supposed to wake me up if I got a fish, but in the morning I found I had caught my first ever eelpout which was too small to ring the bell.

The next day it was even warmer, in the 80s. Peter and his poodle went off to canoe a 20 mile loop, returning to camp at dusk to find out we had spent the day canoeing back and forth across the lake casting and trolling, trying every lure in three different tackle boxes and every possible water depth. We had even bounced jigs off the bottom and tried surface lures, but no fish. The other thing Peter found out was; during the day the trees all turned from winter gray to spring green, something I've never seen happen in just one day.

At least one of us was fishing every minute of the time we were there and still we didn't get any fish. I don't really care if I get any fish and during my other fishing trips I tried to tell the people who took me fishing that it was not important to me. They still felt real bad when I didn't get fish. Even though I tried to convince them I didn't care if I caught fish, they felt I should catch fish. Now the table was turned. I was the trip leader and I was responsible for everyone enjoying themselves and I was feeling bad because Doug, who has real bad case of the fishing disease, wasn't getting any fish. I knew Doug had to return to Alabama and tell all his friends he fished in Minnesota, the place known for good fishing and he was going to have to say, "Yeah, we had a great time! What kind of bird is that over there?" or "Are you kidding? What do you think? Did you sell a lot of pizzas while I was gone?"

The last day we had to get up early enough to break camp, canoe through Pine Lake and McFarland Lake and drive to the twin cities airport so Denise, Doug and Dennis could get flights back to their reality. Pine Lake was covered with a dense fog thick enough to play canoe hide and seek. You couldn't tell the water from the air. Good luck and a slight coloration difference in the sky in the direction of the sun helped direct us to the small stream which drops Pine Lake into McFarland Lake and takes us out of the BWCA and into the real world. The fog stayed with us through the narrows of McFarland Lake and part way into the big lake. When the sun finally gobbled up the fog we found ourselves canoeing by dozens of boats full of people fishing for walleye. We asked the usual question, “Any Luck?” None of them seemed to be bragging either, which made me feel a little better.

Back at the parking lot there is a river which takes McFarland Lake water about 80 feet for a slight drop into Little John Lake. From atop a wooden bridge over this river we could see 2 foot long suckers swimming up stream and back down again in a mating ritual. Mario Andretti couldn't have driven to the truck and back as fast as Doug and I ran to get our fishing gear. We used our ultralite rods and we drifted small hooks baited with night crawler pieces down the current in amongst the fish. After we figured out the amount of sinker weight to use we each landed a fish, a sucker, fun to catch but something I've since found out you can't brag about outside of a small circle of rough fish connoisseurs. I'm sure Doug got around it though, back in Alabama where he was probably asked, "Get any?" He probably said, "Yeah, you bet! One was over 2 foot long." and before they could ask what it was, he probably said, "how was the fishing here while I was gone?”

I have since learned, after fishing Pine Lake for Lake Trout three different times, “the lake does not have any Lake Trout.”