Dennis Anderson: Part of the state, but like a foreign country

OAK ISLAND, NORTHWEST ANGLE, MINN. - In July the sun rises here early and stays in the sky late and nearly everyone thinks about fishing. Maybe not the postmaster on Oak Island, Don McClanathan, who opens his small office three days a week.

But everyone else.

The previous evening here, in a tall bucket beneath a table in a fish cleaning house, a few dozen walleye carcasses pooled themselves in odd shapes.

Their fillets had been extracted by anglers who by then were eating dinner or who had their feet up on porches, drinks in hand, overlooking Lake of the Woods.

This was at twilight and I flung a stringer of my own walleyes onto the cleaning table. The fish had been caught in the northernmost United States waters outside of Alaska, and in that respect were a fluke of geography dating to the Revolutionary War.

"After the war, the U.S. and Britain drew a boundary separating America from Canada," McClanathan said. "They thought the headwaters of the Mississippi were up here, so they agreed to the boundary being on the northwesternmost part of Lake of the Woods."

The suspicion that the generals who divvied up the two nations were deep into a bottle of tanglefoot seems warranted.

"You can drive through Manitoba to get here, you can come by floatplane or you can come across the lake," said McClanathan, 68 and a year-round Oak Island resident.

I chose the latter.

Leaving Baudette, Minn., a few days earlier in my boat, I set a heading of north by northwest, crossing the vastness of Big Traverse Bay before passing alongside uninhabited islands large and small en route to Oak Island.

The water was slightly off- color, and heavy gray clouds billowed overhead. Whitecaps curled atop waves that drew my attention as my boat rose and fell in the middle of Big Traverse.

As I watched my GPS I put more and more miles behind me. Five. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

• • •

The next morning I awoke early and was away from the dock when the sun was still at a low angle to the horizon.

The wind was brisker than I had expected, and as I banked around Oak Island the American waters to the south were alive with a good chop. I thought I might not be able to fish them long before retreating to Canadian waters nearby, which are more protected.

The "big picture" of Lake of the Woods is almost too big to consider. The lake measures some 1,500 square miles, with more than 14,000 islands.

You don't come here to be a part of the lake. You come here to be a part of a part of the lake.

Directly north of Oak Island, meanwhile, is a vast complex of Canadian waters and islands. And to the west of the island is the Northwest Angle itself; that is, the portion that is part of the mainland.

It and the many nearby islands lying in U.S. waters make up what is known as the Northwest Angle.

"Island life isn't for everyone, but I really enjoy it," said Chi Chi Lundsten, manager and co-owner of Sportsman's Oak Island Lodge. "I leave the island about six times a year, usually for weddings or funerals or other family gatherings."

Like McClanathan, the 36-year-old Lundsten has never married. They enjoy meeting visitors and clients who come to the Angle. But they also relish their homes' remoteness, and their relative isolation.

Isolation?

Isolation?

The islands have only 20 year-round residents. But they have their own zip code, 56741.

Not to be outdone, the mainland portion of the Angle (population about 150) -- most of which is held in trust by the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe -- also has a zip code of its own.

Settling the boat above a reef whose top was about 20 feet down, I tipped a jig with a leech and dropped it to the bottom.

Soon I had one walleye, then another. These weren't big fish; a couple of pounds or so apiece; good eating size. I released them and boated a few more, releasing them also, and when I had used up my leeches, I moved the boat again, this time leaving wakes behind that broke against a half-dozen rocky shorelines that alternately narrowed and widened.

Eagles soar here, along with ravens and loons. And pelicans vie with gulls for the remainders of fish cleaned on rocks for shore lunch.

Cutting the motor along a lee shore on the Canadian side of the lake, I soon picked up another walleye, this time on a jig and fake leech marketed under the name Gulp! Alive! Two walleyes are allowed daily on the Canadian side, one over 18 inches and one under, with four in possession, provided an angler holds a sportsman's license.

"Most of our guests fish the Canadian side because it's more protected for walleyes and because it offers the best muskie fishing," Lundsten said.

Muskie fishing on Lake of the Woods is perhaps unmatched anywhere in the world. So, too, is its crappie fishing, particularly in fall. And smallmouth bass are plentiful along rocky shorelines.

I had wanted to travel back to Baudette later that morning.

• • •

Michael Millsop met me at the Sportsman's Oak Island dock when I returned from fishing.

Millsop works the resort gig in summer and plies the popular Lake of the Woods ice fishing trade in winter.

"Fishing was good last winter," he said.

As Millsop spoke, the wind subsided, and I decided to make a run for it.

I had a few fish in the cooler.

Sprawling ahead of me were blue water and green islands.

By fluke or fancy, the Northwest Angle, with its relative handfuls of people and two zip codes, remains a part of the U.S. still these many years later.

And a part of Minnesota.

What a country.