YOUR GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES
outdoors
Karl Seckinger
Karl "Trout Whisperer" Seckinger is an outdoor enthusiast and resides in northeastern Minnesota.
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The chine log is facing west and all I really care about is leaving the east. My dripping right boot is the last thing in the canoe as we shove off.
We can’t see more than twenty feet in front of us and every deep dip of the paddle we gain on the combers but no more expanse to the view. He yells “were crazy”.
What sounded like manageable waves from shore, is now no joke. I dig hard into the water. I can feel his initial paddle stroke and try to match his timing.
Fog swirling, we paddle hard, wisps rise up, we dig the blades deep. It looks like were going nowhere, it feels weird and a twenty foot fog to paddle ratio isn’t soon to change based on this morning’s air temps, luckily we know where were going.
We’re going west; and since it’s the only direction today on this water we can go, we just blade after blade try to get to the point.
My shoulders burn, the sky does nothing in its foaming white and gray. Waves seem big, and then sometimes recede. We paddle. He grunts and shifts, I must sound about the same, but we paddle without daring to stop.
He yells switch. I switch, with no change in scenery, but my arms feel a smidgeon of relief.
When the wind finally starts to die down I know were close to the big point, I can’t see it, but paddling here year after year he feels like I do and he tells me without missing a paddle stroke “it shouldn’t be too much further and we will be in the lee water and can rest”. I yelled “what are you tired”? he said “ shut up and paddle”.
When the waves subsided a bit, without telling or asking him I quit paddling, and he yells “not yet, I want to be well inside the bay”, so I dig some more and oh how my arms feel like hot fire wood.
When he finally quits, I barely lift the beautiful woods seemingly weightless blade out of the water. My head is hanging on my chest, just to catch my breath.
Now he can’t read my mind. He won’t turn to see the same old guy he’s not watched paddle this lake for years, he knows what I look like, he won’t check on me, were way past those days, if I dropped dead, he’d about laugh at the splash and say, I went out happy.
But my chest is pounding and I can feel the heart beats of blood in my head. I could die of a heart attack right here and call it good, except he’d be so mad, I better live long enough, just to hold up my end of this trip.
When I look up he’s sucking fresh air pretty good too. He wipes his brow and resettles his cap. Then I think well maybe were both getting older. Maybe this is the last time we take on one of these treks.
Then he says out loud “are we nuts”. I said “I sure as heck hope so”. He started paddling, so I did too. The trout whisperer
The last truck just pulled out of my driveway. I’m back from the first really big, jam packed, peanut butter protein proof, weather tested, and not enough days of fishing and camping trip of the year. It’s done, I’m home again, completely unpacked. But my mind is still in the woods and on the water.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s nothing more than how I recall hearing little waves wash up against the shore. Is it my shirt that I haven’t washed and still smells like a campfire from five days ago? I decided I aint gonna wash it until next week anyway, just to see if I can just whiff the last little pine scented smoke plumes out of it all by myself.
The first morning, just after sunrise I set the hook in the lower jaw of a set of walleye choppers I won’t soon forget, and there were three other boats of folks watching. Talk about an ego boost, it was the first fish for any of us and I’m still relishing the positive energy from that.
No bugs, no dang bugs, no stinking bugs, it was too cold at night, and not hot enough to hatch ’em during the day. That sure won’t last any longer this summer, than this trip just past, but for one long week and part of a weekend I didn’t swat at anything winged, and that won’t happen again for me, until next fall. I detest bugs, but I love fishing, so I’m grinning like I stole something from that old lady in nature, who missed my tender old flesh without me giving blood.
We all heard wolves howl during a cooler morning and not one of us had ventured out to add a bit of wood to the fire because we all didn’t want to move from our warm sleeping bags just lying there, hoping, waiting for someone else to do it.
Then the wolves howled, one by one, in the dark we lay talking about that, right through tent fabric walls we chatted until, as a group, we all got up and froze restokeing the coals, eventually getting us all warm again.
Which suddenly turned into coffee in the predawn and well, as a group, we decided the heck with breakfast because the sunrise was sunny, huge, glowing, in an unreal calm that had us shuffle pretty quick for the boats and we fished a morning away with the friskiest minnows we’ve ever seen.
It was noon when we got back, but we cooked pan cakes even it was lunch time. And now back in my yard, and there all gone, it’s over, time. The trout whisperer
She is perched in the bow, visible only as being very dark, as opposed to the night surrounding her, which appears less dark.
Soundlessly and without the aid of her headlamp she unties us, and with nothing more than a deft paddle stroke eases us out and away from the lakes shoreline. She even knows not to look at me at night. The light just blinds you, she knows about night fishing. She knows because she goes.
Once I feel were deep enough I start the motor and head for the mid lake humps we electronically fished together this afternoon. Tonight it will be for real, for keepers, for fish that will be filleted for breakfast.
It’s a balmy forty two degrees, no wind, and as we run up Lake, I’m struck under a star filled night that the boat motor seems loud and it’s suddenly chilly. Some of it might be, I’m just very excited.
I cut the motor, my headlamp goes on, and in unison hers does as well, beaming around in the bow. Her minnow bucket is lifted same time as mine, the bait buckets are exactly the same size and model.
Jigs get a charging from a hand held penlight and at one second past midnight, the glowing minnow tipped jigs start there sub surface decent.
There are back at the campground eight other fishing friends or partners of mine. They come to fish with me for walleyes or trout, and even an occasional salmon.
They are better friends to me, than I am to them, because I don’t fish with them, they always fish with me, as they have some habits over the past forty or fifty years I’ve never acquired.
They go to bed early during some prime fishing hours. They fish for muskies or catfish and they at times, will not even consider using live bait opting to tossing huge painted stick baits, none of which appeals to me.
So it is to the perfect fishing pardner, years before we met she purchased, after reasoning in just her way, that ancient tackle box would work, last, as in being durable, and be serviceable, I own the twin.
We have matching rods, reels, fishing tackle, boats and clothing far beyond coincidence and when everyone else is making mid-day plans, she sez, so no one else can hear, “we going at midnight”.
I smile, give a half laugh, and say you’re darn right. She disappears for an afternoon nap while everyone else hikes, eats or gathers firewood.
She hoists the first walleye, and then the second, I bring in the third, she gets the fourth, the fifth, and I bring in number six. She whispers across the dark, you ready for coffee, I say yes, and set the hook on number seven. She offers to just sip her coffee until I catch up on the stringer; I think, ah the perfect fishing pardner. The trout whisperer
What wisdom should the great fishing histories allow, if one such as myself could one call upon for times such as these, where this day, of soon to be days, oh where would I grasp the knowledge to in reading my past, make for an exceptional future?
Do I call up the modern tackle barons, the high hypoed anglers of the day, no, alas, tis not for me, I humble fisherman that I be, must go to the highest height, the moist regal precepts, and like a lightning bolt from Zeus himself I find to wit:
Angels attest to Ithuriel, using his extremely sharp Spear, removed the hidden persona of the toad, thereby revealing the truest nature of the devil.
And again;
Poseidon the Greek, or Neptune the roman, could cast much upon the high seas with great forbearance or trepidation when in full grasp of the trident.
It to this that, that this week, more than any other of the fishing year, one should be so armed with the mightiest, the strongest, and the sharpest hooks of the season.
Dull hooks, bent hooks, rusted hooks, hooks made with too fine a wire, or any hook that has seen better days, is not for the opener. This week, is the show, and it’s also a show down, so are you prepared, are you ready. Do you have the strongest mettle?
The deceit in your fish hook, this upcoming week, let not even the great Ithuriel expose to a record book walleye, a leviathan northern pike or greatest trout in the majestic waters of the Superior National Forest. You ply great clear depths, and shall sound waters pure, so make it count.
Make your trident of personal choice sting thy great fish lips into a fish fry to roil even the likes of the long since departed and reverently bearded mythical water kings.
Make you’re knot in binding stout of lash, long of cord, and be about yourself for whence the great strike comes you can shudder the underwater beast with the iron you set to its jaws.
Command your steel to win, to achieve greatness, to once upon dry shore hoist your golden stringer to rampart cries of eternal fishing glory in the very dock of your domain.
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled fishing opener tips segments, my point is, and I hope you get it, or got it, sharpen your(hooks)metal. The trout whisperer
Rush City bakery
Several mornings each year I’m treated to extremely fresh bakery consisting of oh say , custard filled Bismarck’s, or donuts covered in every conceivable coating for an oral fixation to wit I have no available recourse of action but to ingest more, and more, resigning myself to a sugary surrender.
This past week it was apple fritters whilst salmon fishing on Lake Superior during a productive, but cold morning. In between fish we noshed the apples right out of the biggest fritters I’ve ever seen. The guys fishing next to us early morning coffee and baked goods club were jealous to say the least.
So we split some of our break wall breakfast fare with them and they asked where we got the baked goods. I said it came from Rush City bakery and that I knew most of the crew who produced this stuff.
I said they give me baked goods, and I give the two head donut holes fishing lessons. They said you get bakery from Rush City Minnesota delivered to Two Harbors, and I replied, anyone coming north fishing with me had better stop and pick up some bakery goods from there and nowhere else, or fish with someone else.
I have a rather steady and reliable following during spring and fall, it’s the steelhead season when I get most of my rolls, its brook trout season when I get the loaves to go with my fishes and thence again in the fall salmon run I try to ply away from the owners a bit of pie in my ala fishing mode. It’s the summer months that leave me a bit high and dry with respect to my baked epicurean delights.
Which brings me to my point, everyone I fish with, has a favorite boat, bait shop, fishing rod and fishing hole, well to my favorites list, I add my favorite bakery in the entire world, Rush City Bakery. Someday I hope they can fish, as good as they can bake, in the meantime, I’ll just have another delicious cookie. The trout whisperer
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