The reason I came to northern Minnesota was to fish. As a boy, I was captured by the thought that someday I would catch a big fish. One that would have my parents, siblings and neighbors standing in awe as I took my picture beside something with fins that weighed more than any other such fish ever caught. That was my dream.
Over the years, realism has crept into my life experience. I know now that what I thought at the age of eight is probably not attainable at the age of 62. Sad somehow to have come to this place in my earthly existence, but true, none-the-less.
Fishing was always a priority to me and I think my grandfather started my clock ticking. He would sit whittling a stick on the granary step and tell me stories of a giant largemouth bass that he had narrowly missed catching on Crystal Lake, an oxbow of the Missouri River, south of Sioux City. He explained how he had taken the red, white and blue strip off his chewing tobacco plug and flicked it into the edge of the lake, that a giant largemouth bass leaped from below the surface, devoured his strip of paper in mid-air and returned to the depths to sulk with a piece of chewing tobacco wrapping paper clenched between its jaws. My mouth must have been agape when he finished with his story.
That started it, my eternal quest of catching a big fish.
In my part of Iowa, before the dams on rivers were put in place, the number of fishing opportunities were extremely limited. Basically, we had the Floyd River or the Big Sioux River as possible places to catch a sizable specimen. Sure, we had the Whiskey Creek and the West Fork of the Little Sioux River to try, but about all one caught in those shallow streams were creek chubs or bullheads of small size. But, in those slim days of my fishing experience, any piece of water would do.
Then in the late 1950s there must have been a government program that came to bear, because a number of small streams began to be dammed throughout the countryside. These small dams throughout the hilly country provided deeper water where a fish could actually make it through winter and might even spawn. All at once fishing opportunities abounded. My Uncle Jim had such a dam, situated on a sharply hilled portion of his farm near Westfield, Iowa. Soon after the dam filled, he planted bass and crappie and catfish into that acre or so of water and soon we were actually catching fish like they did in more natural settings.
Suddenly a kid with a fishing itch to scratch didn't have to fish for bullheads in his cow tank anymore. We could actually buy a new rod and reel with a reasonable chance to catch something that weighed more than three ounces. Would miracles never cease?
But, somewhere around my sixteenth birthday, I ventured to northern Minnesota on my first fishing vacation. I would never be the same after that. Here were un-counted lakes that held un-counted numbers of fish that would actually fill a frying pan from edge to edge. Somehow my devotion to the Big Sioux, the Floyd and the small fishing ponds diminished in the glow of these extraordinary lakes that held just about every freshwater game fish that existed. You could say I was hooked.
During these late summer days, I think of all those trips to the rivers and ponds of my youth. They were immeasurable in the wealth of fishing memories given to a kid with a rod and a reel and a dream. Now, I have trophy walleyes, bass, northern pike and musky mounted and hanging on walls throughout our home.
But, it all started with a kid and a fishing pole, a piece of line, a bobber, sinker and hook. Even if I was casting it into the water-filled silo pit where no fish existed. Just watching a bobber floating on top of the water was enough for me then.
I don't know about you, but since moving to the Land of Lakes, Minnesota, my fishing dreams from boyhood have come true.
Even my wife has been impressed with one or two of my catches! Life is complete.
See you next time. Okay?
