Life comes and goes on a continuum. In the end I went to bed last night reading For Love of Lakes written by Darby Nelson. I am 78 years and one month old and it’s hard to believe that this is my brother’s 72nd birthday. Living in the Great Lakes Region has provided me and my brothers with lifelong experiences involving lakes and rivers.
This morning, I awoke with thoughts of this summer and the field trip to the fen at Baird Lake, Sherry’s presentations on loons and additional loon stories coming next Wednesday. Yesterday, walking the Bass Lake Trail, swimming in Little Long Lake, and viewing a large flock of Canada geese on Burntside Lake provided the contact with lakes around me.
It started so many years ago, as a child exploring the banks of the St. Joseph River in Michigan and being fascinated by finding shortnose gar. A week away from our smalltown business Corey Lake where I caught my first bullhead for handling and a bowfin that seemed to explode out of the water after attacking my cast into some shoreline plants.
After graduating 60 years ago, and studying natural resources in the university, a Vertebrate Biology course allowed me to pick some vertebrate and report throughout the class on different aspects of the biology. I continued my fascination and chose gars. When I went home for a weekend visit, my brother would treat me to a night of bullhead fishing. During those years my first trip on the Great Lakes was to ferry across Lake Superior to Isle Royale National Park for a backpacking trip that included camping and watching moose on a small island lake to a chorus of loons and white-throated sparrows.
Who could imagine that would lead eventually to moving to Ely and teaching at Vermilion Community College. My first winter year was living on the north shore of Shagawa Lake and driving a plowed ice road across to Spaulding on my way to work. Teaching allowed me to teach Fish Identification and later Vertebrate Biology to introduce future conservation officers, fisheries technicians and biologists, and other students to gars and so many of the other fish found in Minnesota waters.
During those years my parents would visit, and father and family would fish in a small flat bottom boat for panfish on Wolf Lake. Faculty outings during spring break included cross-country skiing to Knife Lake or going to Burntside Lake fishing for lake trout. Miner’s Lake provided after work paddles for stream trout. Shane Deadrick introduced me to summer crappie fishing below the inlet to White Iron Lake and students end spring class days by crappie fishing on Eagles Nest Lakes. My sons and I portaged and paddled to Horseshoe Lake to catch northern pike.
Every lake experience provided unexpected and memorable events. Reliving Sig Olsen’s chapter in his Listening Point book resulted in annual February nighttime visits to Outlet Bay on Burntside Lake to view burbot spawning. Annual spring trips to the Pike River inlet to Lake Vermilion allowed trapping of walleyes and suckers to provide eggs for the walleye hatchery. Many people remember viewing the great blue heron colony on an island in Birch Lake, gull island nesting colony on Lake Vermilion and osprey nesting near the shores of Minister Lake and Ed Shave Lake.
Reading For Love of Lakes with all its stories brings back my memories and may spark many of yours. Wednesday was special for me. Like any day that I meet with former students and other DNR Fisheries workers, because they will have lots to share that interests me. I am glad that Keith Reeves, the Tower Area Office Fisheries Supervisor, met with us this past week.
Last year Keith shared lots of information including what occurs in management and life of fish in stream trout lakes. This year there will me more to discover about current management activities and research that is beginning to learn more about the native lake trout, cisco and whitefish in “deep, cold waters” of our northern border lakes in northeastern Minnesota.
