Chapter 2c

Eventually my brother would find a fishing partner more his age and I was farmed out to my best friend and his dad for the unsanctioned Minnesota holiday. It worked out well however, as they had a “real” fishing boat that enabled us to fish the bigger lakes for walleyes. It was a 12’ Lund with a 1952 Johnson, 35 horsepower motor. It ran quite well for how old it was and although it didn’t look pretty, it definitely got us to where we needed to be.

On one opener I remember going with Paul and his dad to Lake Winnebegosh in Northern Minnesota. The weather was miserable but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Sheets of rain came down for days prior to the opening weekend but the rain could have easily been snow as with some openers. Packing up our rain-gear, and layers upon layers of clothes, we ventured north and spent a night camping lake-side.

On that opening morning, we tooled across the bay to a rock-pile. Rock-piles always seemed to hold walleyes and with the aid of the depth finder, we located the structure. We marked it with a buoy and using Lindy-rigs and leaches; we started up-wind of the marker and drifted our way past it into deeper water. Drifting with the wind allowed us to cover water slow enough putting our rigs right in front of the fish’s noses without ripping it past them.

The Lindy-rig is a simple set-up developed by the Lindner family having three main components: a slip sinker heavy enough to bring the bait to the bottom of the lake in choppy water, a swivel to hold the weight 18 inches or so off the hook, and a small hook with a leach, minnow or night crawler at the end of a light monofilament leader. The idea is to have the sinker bounce off the bottom of the lake with the bait drifting naturally behind. To be successful, the fisherman would have to feel a walleye take the bait and immediately let the tension off the line allowing the fish to run. The slip sinker would fall to the bottom allowing line to slide through without the fish being able to feel any resistance. After allowing the fish to run for a few seconds, the fisherman would reel in any access slack and violently set the hook hoping the walleye would still be there. The trick was in differentiating between fish and rocks.

On occasion, a northern pike would take the rig, which was usually easy to tell. There was nothing subtle about a pike and they almost always set the hooks on themselves. Another tall tell sign of a pike is they liked to come up to the surface when hooked whereas walleyes liked the safer deeper water. One such fish happened to take Paul’s rig late in the morning on the first day.

Watching out of the corner of my eye I could see Paul’s rod jerk straight down rapping the gunnels of the boat. Surely by instinct, he jerked back as kind of a retaliating motion much like swinging at someone after getting punched in the arm. His rod doubled over and the pike ran straight out and then up to the surface. It was a little guy and once on the surface, it planed out and Paul skipped it toward the boat trying to keep it out of the buoy.

One thing you need to know about pike is they have large, sharp teeth and 6 lb monofilament line becomes pretty vulnerable when you hook one. As Paul gave the pike a little more tug to get it past the buoy, the leader snapped sending a ¼ once slip-sinker whistling through the cold wet air. The pike was a good fifty yards out from the boat when the line snapped and although it seemed to travel through space and time at mach speed, everything around it was moving in slow motion. There was no getting out of the way of this deadly projectile. It was like it had some kind of honing device on it and with a thwap on his rain gear it found its target hitting Paul directly in the groin.

Doubling over, Paul immediately flopped onto the bottom of the aluminum boat. I’m not sure what is so funny about watching someone get hit like that. Maybe it was the sound of lead on plastic, maybe it was the gasp of air and the high pitched squeal, or maybe it was jubilation that it wasn’t me but I couldn’t help but hit the bottom of the boat myself. I also shed a tear but it wasn’t from pain, it was from laughing my ass off. So now both of us were rolling on the bottom of the boat and Paul’s dad had no idea why. He was concentrating so hard on his own line he didn’t see what had happened. And Paul was in so much pain and I was laughing so hard neither one of us could fill him in, which just aggravated him more and more.

“All right boys, knock it off,” he demanded.
Knock it off? Are you fricken kidding me? This was the absolute funniest thing I have ever seen and he’s telling us to, “Knock it off?”

Paul and I spent numerous days on the water together. Sometimes we fished with his dad but mostly we fished by ourselves. I don’t think the old man ever really understood us and by the time we were 14 he would have rather kept the serenity of fishing by himself than accompanying us. We were always trying new tactics that we read in the In-Fisherman magazine or saw on shows and even though we weren’t always successful, we were never afraid to step outside the box, which has definitely helped as a guide.