Marvin Lake

We left the water of Red Lake Ontario at 6:00 a.m. in a yellow 1956 high winged  de Havilland Otter equipped with pontoons. 

“Is the engine from 1956?”  In 1956 I was five.  Now I'm 64.

“No.”  He yelled over the noise of the single engine.  “It was replaced in 2010 with a new 750 horsepower Pratt & Whitney turbo.  Plenty of horsepower.  Lots of hours left.  Runs like a top.  Not to worry.”

Not that I was worried.  But by their standards we were overweight.  Before we boarded the plane dock hands put all our food and gear on a flat scale.  We exceeded the allowable pounds by over 250.  Mostly that meant we would pay the outfitter extra.  They also put us on the scale, six of us, and we weighed actually less than I imagined, just shy of half a ton.  A quick calculation done silently in my head told me I exceeded the average considerably.

“Don’t worry about the plane,” the pilot repeated.

Six of us were traveling with too much stuff to Marvin Lake.  Six men; five between the ages of 63 and 70, with the youngest, father of three young kids, hovering somewhere around forty.  Six men with twelve knees; ten God given and two artificial.  That God given number of knees promises to wane if the same six men return next year.  Included in our gear were medications and devices, medical supplies, hearing aid batteries and the like, all designed to keep us functioning for the week.  Leaving civilization does not miraculously make one healthy and whole.  I think we all privately hoped for the best.

Our final destination, Marvin Lake, is an outpost fishing camp 45 minutes north and west of Red Lake.  It is one of eleven outpost camps leased and maintained by Chimo Lodge, which operates its main resort on Roderick Lake.  The facilities at Roderick Lake, with flush toilets and wi-fi, are luxurious in comparison to the outposts.  There are no roads to any of these lakes.  Unless you want to strike out across the watery wilderness with a compass, a map, and a canoe you enter and exit via the plane.

All the controls in the old Otter are manual.  Our 32 year old pilot, Ian Partridge, worked the controls, seriously and silently, without looking.  He pumped a lever on the right side of his seat.  He fiddled with a dial in the ceiling above his head.  He turned a small steel wheel next to the lever a few revolutions, then back a little.  All the time he did this he scanned the sky.  After taxiing slowly across the water for a while he reached behind him and pulled a steel cable with a loop from a low peg to a higher peg, hooking it there by feel.  Then he gunned the engine and raced over the surface of the lake.  It seemed a long time before the pontoons left the water.  We cleared the trees, with many feet to spare, and were safely in the air.  Take offs and landings are what really matter. As take offs go, this one was pretty smooth.  On these short trips the Otter flies low under the clouds navigating by visual reference.  From there on it is all view.  Ian, like us, kept his eye not only the sky but on the lakes and land below.  Fortunately, he knew where he was going.

At 2500 feet it’s hard to determine if there is more land than water down there or the opposite.  At times the land seems only to infringe, to poke at the edges of big jagged lakes.  Other times the land, really mostly rock, is separated only by long snaking ribbons of water.  If you look at a map of Ontario North of Red Lake there are thousands of lakes and rivers. Too many to name.  Thank God nothing so valuable has yet been discovered up there which tempts humans to build roads and cities further north.  As it is the Canadian wilderness is home to bears and beavers, loons and bald eagles, moose and caribou, walleye and northern pike, and your occasional wide eyed fisherman or hunter.  Humans are seriously outnumbered, almost inconsequential, not only extraneous but also seasonal.  After November and until May few if any of us venture there. The creatures need only wait and we go away.  The air and the water are clean.  The land is wild and undisturbed.  It belongs to them not us.

The plane descended, the pontoons skimmed the surface of Marvin Lake, and quickly we were unloading our stuff onto the dock.  After doing so we helped the outgoing group of men put their gear into the plane.  Fishing had been good they said, though they reported annoyingly catching northern while fishing for walleye.  They recommended the portage to West Lake, and suggested we keep the motor running while fishing the outflow there.  Ian handed us a dirty yellow box containing a satellite phone to be used only in emergencies and then the plane was in the sky and we were alone.  The six of us would see and speak only to each other for seven days.  I touched the I Phone in my shirt pocket.  For the next week it would be merely a camera and a flashlight.

We were fishing within an hour, pushing three 14 foot aluminum boats off a good dock, 8 horsepower motors powering us across the lake in three directions, two to a boat, in search of spots.  The collective hum of the motors faded as we separated. We were armed with maps marked in blue pen by others who claimed to know where the fish would be, and depth finders, but also with the knowledge that during the week we would need to find our own spots to fish.  Fish like to be near things; rock piles, drop offs, weeds, anything that offers shelter and perhaps food beneath the water.  In the fishing world that is called “structure.” The other factor is water temperature, which correlates to depth.  We expected the walleye in the cumulative warmth of late August to be 14-20 feet deep, where the water was cooler.  It felt good to be back there, out on open water, awaiting our first fish.

The bottom of Marvin Lake is remarkably smooth and even.  Finding the small neighborhoods where the walleye hung out proved difficult.  We were able to catch supper that first afternoon of fishing, but little more.  All week we would keep only as many fish as we could eat and release the rest.  There is something refreshing about bringing fish into the boat, seeing them for a brief time, and watching them swim away vigorous and healthy.  Walleye are a beautiful species of fish.  But you know, the trip is not all about the fish.

It was hotter than normal, even that far north.  The wool socks, flannel shirt, thick sweater, and long underwear never made it out of my Duluth pack.  Nearly every day was tee shirt weather.  The cabin was three small rooms with cots (no sheets), a bathroom and a kitchen.  Propane refrigerators made the kitchen warm.  The deck had a picnic table but mosquitoes invaded after sunset.  When we weren’t on our cots we were together.  Occasionally someone would go to their room to read or nap but for the most part it was communal living; fishing in pairs, cooking, doing dishing, sitting around a table, talking as a group.  There was lots of talking.  Mature men talk about the past more than the future.  One memory invokes another.  Jokes are remembered.  Laughter is abundant.

A string of 25 annual treks to Canada surround this trip and create nostalgia.  A long and unknown list of men has participated.  There was a notebook which recorded such things but its whereabouts is now unknown.  Some of the men who fished on these trips have died and others are now unable to travel.  Some have drifted away.  Many were remembered, their words quoted, their deeds, no doubt exaggerated over the years, recalled.  Their stories were told around the kitchen table.  In addition to glee sadness sometimes crossed the faces of trip veterans.  I have been part of the group only this year and last.  I listened and watched with interest.

As the week went on we became more accustomed to the dead stillness that surrounded us.  We learned to distinguish between the occasional jet and a prop plane.  We learned that the sound of the solar powered water pump near the lake was not a faraway outboard motor.  We waited for the eerie sound of loons across the lake, often at night, quivery and lonely.  There were ducks, mergansers we thought, quacking softly above us.  Occasionally we heard a crow, or was it a raven?  Water lapped on stones.  Wind sifted through pine needles in a low whoosh.  More and more often we found times when there was no sound at all.  We settled into the stillness.

Stillness makes for good thinking.  Of course men think things they don’t say.  I thought of my kids and my wife, and our bigger family.  I thought of people I know and see and people I once knew and miss.  I thought of my long gone parents and what they experienced as they aged.  I wondered about the future.  The first few nights I slept restlessly, waking and not going back to sleep.  Our week in Canada included a full moon, the cabin brightly lit through curtain less windows.  Flashlights weren’t needed in the middle of the night.  After a few nights I fell into deep sleeps filled with crazy dreams.  The quiet up there is calming. 

One hot afternoon my fishing partner for the day, at the front of the boat, pointed excitedly toward shore.  We were exploring a shallow bay on the west side of the main lake.  A bear walked out of the water some fifty yards away, ambled onto shore, and hearing the boat motor (we think) turned to look at us.  He rose up on hind legs and sniffed.  I killed the motor and we sat still.   The bear, shiny and fat, gazed at us looking at him for maybe a minute before slowly, unimpressed and bored it seemed, returning to all fours and walking slowly into the woods. 

Beaver dams were abundant on all the lakes.  Returning to the cabin after a day’s fishing we saw a wide V of small waves on still water.  At the top of the V was the head of a beaver pushing a green stick with leaves and swimming towards his log covered lodge on a narrow inlet.

Each evening after we filleted our fish we put their remains and the day’s kitchen scraps in a white plastic bucket.  Across from the dock was a small island fronted by a shelf of flat rock.  We would make the short trip with fish guts and scraps in one of the boats and dump the bucket on that rock.  Before we were twenty yards away, headed back to camp, the bald eagles were landing in the trees, chasing off the gulls which competed for the food.  Mature white headed eagles along with their dark headed immature offspring were part of the crowd.  An eagle’s nest, prominent at the top of a tall pine on the north side of the lake, became one point of a rough triangle we used to mark a good fishing spot.  Bald eagles were our everyday companions.

Why do men go on these trips year after year?  I think it’s the beauty of wilderness, of which stillness is such a big part.  But the fishing helps.

On the third day my fishing partner and I decided to make the portage to West Lake in the afternoon after lunch.  The morning was hot and the fish weren’t biting.  Few fish had been brought in by any of the boats.  We were looking to change our luck.  We left our boat tied up at the portage point on Marvin knowing there was another, with gas, waiting for us at the other side on West Lake. 

The portage path between those two lakes is long and somewhat difficult.  The terrain is uneven.  A few boards and logs are placed in marshy areas but muck can still pull you down.  There are logs to step over and rocks to negotiate all while carrying tackle, rods and gear.  The going was slow.  At the end of the path we loaded our gear into an old patched boat and made our way into West Lake.

Using the map we motored to the inlet, where something of a river or the narrow throat of another lake flows swiftly into West Lake. The air was cooler there and the water moved quickly.  We caught a few walleye that were small and a big northern but it was a long time between bites.  We motored slowly back up the lake, using the depth finder to scout likely spots, but by the end of the day we had had little success.  No keepers.  We were trying to find the outflow at the opposite end of the lake but it eluded us.  We’d almost given up when we heard the sound of rushing water.

The outflow on West Lake is a cross between a waterfall and long steep rapids.  Big chunks of rock litter the passage from West Lake to its neighboring lake, unnamed on our map.  The guys on the dock that first day were right.  It’s a treacherous spot.  We made our way above the rocks and sized up our prospects.  My partner was driving the boat.  He put us in a likely spot, turned the boat sideways, and we got ready to fish. 

Walleye fishing is built around simple jigs, fish hooks embedded in a round lead head with an eyelet.  The heads are different weights and colors.  On the hook we thread a brightly colored rubber tail, mostly whites and yellows that week.  We tip the end of the hook with half of a plain night crawler, proven best for late summer walleye fishing.   We tie the jig directly to 8 pound test line with no leader.  The line is threaded through the guides of a slender graphite rod that is flexible and sensitive to movement.  Walleye bite lightly.  You need to feel when they tug the line even a little.

The jig sinks, it is on the bottom when your line goes slack, and then we pull it up a few cranks.  Let it sit.  Be patient.  After some time raise it up, cock your wrist, jig it.  Create some movement down there in the water, some flash, then let it settle again.  Repeat.  It’s simple fishing.  The only hard part is feeling the bites and knowing when to set the hook.  If you set it too early, jerk up too hard too soon, you can pull the bait out of the fish’s mouth.

We threw our jigs in the water at the same time.  They sank.  As my jig neared the bottom I had a strong bite.  I pulled quickly and had a fish on the line.  It’s customary for the second fisherman to reel in his line, grab the net, and prepare to land his partner’s fish when he has a fish on.  As my partner began to do that he had a similar bite and an equal result.  We both had fish on.  It was a double.

“Do you need the net?” he asked.

“I think maybe.”  I had my rod tip up but it was way bent.  I was reeling and the fish felt heavy.

“Do you?”

“I can’t tell.  I’ll try to keep it on and help you.” My partner is a good fisherman.

He raised his rod high with his left hand, grabbed the net in the right, and waited as I brought the walleye to the surface and laid it in the water, pulling it headfirst towards him and the waiting net.  It was big.  I put my rod down, took the net from him and brought the fish into the boat.  He found his fish still on the line and began to reel it in as I got my fish off the jig and fumbled for the stringer. 

“Do you need the net?”

“I think I’m OK.”

With that he hoisted his fish, only a little smaller, into the boat.  It flopped on the bottom.

“Let me get him on the stringer for you.”

“That’s good cause look where we are.”

In the excitement of the double catch the bow of our boat had been pulled toward the outflow.  Water flowed fast and loud on each side of a large rock not four feet away that marked the beginning of the rapids.  He threw the motor in reverse, revved the engine, and pulled us back to the safety of calmer water above the rapids.

“We gotta watch that.”   The guy is a master of understatement.  If we had gone through the rapids we might have gotten out, but not with the boat that was certain. 

I put the second fish on the stringer, tied it to the gunwale, and lowered them both into the water. 

“Let’s get some more.”

We dropped our jigs again.  My partner got the first strike this time and I was able to pull in my line and net his fish.  As he was getting it out of the net I dropped my jig and had another fish in seconds.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

That’s the way it went.  At one point, as my partner was backing the boat away from the rapids for the third time, we decided to forget about putting the fish on the stringer and just leave them in the bottom of the boat.  Finally as the sun neared the horizon and fish collected at our feet, we stopped. 

“We have enough for tonight’s dinner and more,” my partner said.  “And we have to carry them back across that portage.  Let’s leave the rest of them in the lake.” 

That’s what we did.  The fish never stopped biting.  We stopped fishing.  The sun was setting when we reached our boat at the other end of the portage.  Our friends, worried at our late return, assumed one of two things when we were so late; we ran out of gas or were otherwise in trouble, or we had gotten ourselves into a serious bunch of fish.  Hearing our motor across the lake, relieved, they realized it was the latter.  When we docked at the cabin and killed the motor the sun was gone.  I’d never caught that many fish that fast in my life.  It was a good day.

After a big fish dinner I put on bug spray and went out to the picnic table on the deck with two perhaps three fingers of Bushmills whiskey and a cigar.  I knew the moon would rise about where the sun had come up that morning.  It was very dark.  When I puffed on the cigar the end glowed red in front of my face.  It was so quiet.

You never know about the future.  You expect to come back next year but something else may be in store for you.  Life changes in unexpected ways.  After a while the sky brightened in the east and the moon glowed through the pines on the opposite shore.  When it rose above the trees a narrow white path of moonlight appeared.  It stretched clear across the water, lighting the small ripples in its path.  White light on the lake danced and sparkled all the way to the shore in front of the cabin where I sat.  The silence was broken by the far away cry of a loon.  I closed my eyes.