Gone Fishing

 The shack is a pretty good getaway, especially when the trees in the ravine leaf out, but I find I need even more separation at times from the world outside.  I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with the news.  I think it’s a duty to stay informed of and involved in world and national events. But sometimes when I do, I get emotional.

The emotions range from anger to despair, and even panic.  When I saw police and students facing off on college campuses across our country, I was immediately taken back to May of 1970 and the shooting and killing of four students at Kent State University by Ohio’s National Guard. 

I was then an 18-year-old freshman at Illinois State University protesting U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam.  Nixon blamed “outside agitators” for the protests then too, but when we looked around at those gathered, and speaking out, we knew it was us.  We went to class with each other.  

The conflict that our government funded and supported in 1970 was in Asia rather than the Mideast, but the death and destruction, and collateral damage, were the same.  Call it a flashback if you will, but I never thought I’d witness such generational polarization again at age 72.

When I encounter those emotions now, I look for ways out.  Often, I escape by recalling images and recollections from better places and better times.

I always anticipate May 8^th but more so this year.  That date didn’t mean much for most of my life but when I retired it became significant.  It’s when the ice goes out (give or take, as good as any) on the lakes I now fish in Northern Ontario.  I’ve never seen the ice go out.  I only go there in summer. 

Winter is long and days are short up there.  On December 21, the winter solstice, there are only 4 hours and 8 minutes of daylight in the town of Red Lake Ontario, population 4,407 at the end of Canada Highway 105.  It is the town we fly out of to reach remote fishing lakes in the area. 

I monitor the temperature in Red Lake on my phone.  It’s balmy in August when we visit, but damn cold for most of the year.  Red Lake’s average daily low temperatures in December, January, and February are consistently below zero degrees Fahrenheit.  Spring comes late, and fall arrives early.

I’ve traveled with a good group of friends to several fly-in lakes near the town of Red Lake; Roderick, Marvin, Job, and Keeper.  We thought we had found a forever fishing home on Job Lake, but the cabin and the management of the operation on that lake deteriorated to the point where decided we had to move on.  It certainly wasn’t the fishing.  But then the fishing is good everywhere.  Any problems we encounter are manmade.

Float planes require a long and straight stretch of open water to land and take off.  The luckiest walleye and northern pike live on lakes not suited for floatplanes and without access by road.  Their lives are uncluttered by discarded fishing line, lost lures, beer cans, and rods and reels dropped intact to the bottom of the lake that is their home.  The many small inaccessible lakes are also free from the noise and exhaust of gas-powered outboard motors and the roar of small planes with their pontoons skidding across the surface of the water.  The fish in those lakes live without any direct interference from humans. 

The self-contained world of a remote lake too small for planes with no road access is true wilderness.  Threats to fish there are limited to natural predators-larger fish, bald eagles, loons, otters, and bears.  I picture those lakes as pristine, with no human-built structures of any kind-cabins, boat houses, docks, walkways, signs on trees, a floating plastic jug marking a submerged rock.  Nothing but trees, stones, plants, along with animals and their homes like beaver dams and eagles' nests. 

There is however a small in-between category of lakes up north known as portage lakes adjacent to lakes that support fishing camps for people.  The only way to access those lakes is by walking overland,  Rarely if ever is it an easy walk.  Hills, swamps, mud, boulders, mosquitoes, fallen logs, and losing the path are common.  Each portage is its own adventure.

Making a portage to an otherwise inaccessible lake does not guarantee better fishing than the one you came from, but it is often the case.  One golden year while fishing on Job Lake four of us made the portage to Century Lake, a legendary walleye lake that is catch and release only.  It was an all-day journey. 

We went by boat from Job Lake into the Musclow River, traveling slowly hoping to catch sight of a moose.  The river took us to the south end of Robert Lake.  At the north end, we encountered a long narrow waterfall flowing through steep rocky banks.  We tied our boats to shore and carried all our gear a hundred yards around the waterfall.  On the narrowest part of the passage, an elevated wooden walkway had been built.  We saw no other way to pass.

When the drop in elevation and the waterfall ended, we found two more boats tied to trees on shore.  We loaded our gear into them and entered Moose Lake.  Soon we found the headway of the portage trail to Century Lake. 

There we once again tied up and left the boats, packing up for what we’d been told was an hour’s trek.  Carrying our fishing gear, a cooler, lunch for four, and two full gas cans, we struck out by climbing over a large boulder.  From the other side, the path descended into thick woods.  Calling it a path may have been an overstatement. 

There is more rock than soil in the boreal forest of Northern Ontario.  A ribbon of worn dirt such as we know a path in Illinois is rarely seen.  Between the rocks were lichens, moss, and pine needles all making a spongy carpet.  Trailblazers who made the trip before us had tied bright plastic tape and cloth on brush and branches marking the way.

Jack pines, white and black spruce, and an occasional birch or balsam blocked the sky while seedlings and saplings crowded beneath them.  Soon the trail took us to a low bog of standing water and muck.  Trees had been felled with chain saws and their trunks laid end to end in the soft muck to walk on.  Falling was a real possibility. Dead saplings in the bog broken off by high winds left sharp stumps pointing skyward on both sides of the improvised walkway.

Falling on one of those pointed stumps could result in serious injury.  When I began to lose balance on the logs, I simply stepped in the muck to make sure I stayed upright.  When I did, I was in muck up to my calves.  I nearly had a shoe sucked off my foot in one of the deeper mires.  When I finally got out, I stopped and tied my shoes as tightly as possible.  I could not imagine getting back to the cabin without shoes. 

The bog ended and we found better footing.  We went up a rise, descended again, turned a corner, and there was a surreal sight.  Over another watery bog that looked even worse was a wooden sidewalk of new lumber, three feet wide, thirty-five feet long, and flat as a pancake.  It was built on stringers set on concrete pads.  How they got the material back there to build it was anyone’s guess.  But thank God they did. 

Soon after that the path angled down, we saw a clear blue sky in front of us, and we were at the shore of Century Lake.  Two old boats lay upside down by the water.  Under each was an ancient but operable outboard motor.  We made it. 

Century Lake was small but deep with a rock island rising from its center.  The weather that day was sunny and clear.  Soon my partner Gary Robinson and I had our lines in the water and between us caught and let go 90 fish in less than two hours.  Beautiful walleyes with golden bellies, all about the same size-16-18 inches.  We caught them all over the lake.  It was the best fishing I have ever experienced.

The trip back to camp was just as long but easier because we knew what to expect.  We got back to the cabin at sunset, and our friends had dinner on the table.  We slept well that night.  You don’t forget those days.

We went back to Job Lake many years after that but there was always a barrier of some kind reported by the outfitter which prevented us from making the portage to Century Lake:  low water levels in Robert, the wooden walkway around the falls washed out, motors stolen from the boats on Century but not replaced.  And then came the pandemic. 

Given the general decline of accommodations on Job Lake, I can’t imagine the portage trail to Century Lake has been maintained.  But still, when I think of the ice going off the lakes in the Red Lake region of Ontario I think of the beauty and simplicity of Century Lake. 

Sunlight, rather than reflecting off the ice, will warm the water directly.  The days lengthen quickly up there.  As the water temperature rises the walleye will become more active, ravenous after a long sluggish winter.  Insects will hatch out and fall into the lake.  Fish will spawn and their minnows will become food for the bigger fish.  If you and I could manage to make the trip to Century Lake next week we would catch more fish faster than we’ve ever caught in our lives. 

But in a way, I hope we can’t get there.  The North American walleye is believed to have become its own species, evolving as most did from the sturgeon, 15.4 million years ago.  Want to see that numerically?  15,400,000 years.  Homo Sapiens, the species that includes you and I, evolved from Neanderthals (maybe) a mere 180 thousand years ago. 180,000 years.  Century Lake and its walleye need us humans for nothing. 

My hope is that the ecosystem of Northern Ontario and its inhabitants survive human beings and the climate change we’ve caused to evolve and thrive far into the future.  They did fine without us for a very long time.  It brings me peace to imagine the sun shining on the open water of Century Lake.  When nations and governments explode into chaos and destruction that’s the place I go in my mind.  And when the pain of our political reality closes in on me that trip to Century Lake is the day I recall.