Birdshot and backlashes by Bob Cary

The BWCAW Visitor’s Permit was numbered 147384. It was issued for July 12, 2005 for four people in two canoes with the entry point at Moose Lake. It was a one-day free ticket to fun. And it was in my jacket pocket.Wilderness Outfitter’s towboat, driven by Jeff Schubert, delivered us to the portage with a promise to pick us up five hours later. We figured five hours was long enough to find out if the fish were biting.The day’s visit to the wilderness was sort of a re-run of one 25 years ago. In 1980, WCCO-TV News Manager Dave Nimmer and TV cameraman Dick Nordling had come up to film a BWCAW one-day fishing trip. Here we were again, same people, same place, same pursuit, only 25 years older. But this time we were not involved in work. Just fishing.Dave Nimmer had long retired from the hectic world of TV news plus a second career as journalism teacher at the University of St. Thomas where he now counsels would-be reporters on a part-time basis. Dick Nordling is still one of the most skilled film makers in Minnesota. Both are dedicated fisherfolk.A nice thing about this one-day jaunt was that we weren’t in any panic to do a story. None of us carried a notebook and Nordling left his TV camera in the car. We were just out to do some fishing. And visiting.Our fishing spot was one my wife Edith and I favored over the years. It had been a year since we had hiked this portage, but nothing had changed. Same rock ledges in the same places. Same landing on the other end where the waves lapped at ancient weathered logs on the shoreline. The lake looked the same as it has for the last 45 years. Even the same two friendly loons came over to our canoe to see what we were doing on their lake.Walleyes in same places, too. Using jigs with half a crawler on each hook, we prospected up the shore through a horde of small perch until we hit a spot that produced walleyes last summer. Bingo! For an hour and a half, Edie and I harvested fish which were in six feet of water on the breakline near a breeze-swept shore. Nimmer and Nordling, on the opposite shore, were tangling with smallmouth bass that were wolfing down leeches. We quit about noon, but so did the fish. We pulled the canoes up in the shade on a grassy point, enjoyed a snack and a cold drink. And we talked about other fishing trips from Minnesota to Alaska. Loons called out sleepily a couple of times. Ravens passed overhead. Dragonflies buzzed the shore. Back in the forest somewhere a woodpecker was chipping away looking for lunch. It was an effort to get up from our shady picnic spot and get back in the canoes. The fish continued to ignore us, but we didn’t care. We had an ample catch on the stringer.At 1:30 our towboat taxi was at the portage. By two we were back in the house having a cold drink and planning supper. Typical quiet Ely summer day. In three and a half months it might be snowing; but right then we’d take a Northern Minnesota summer day in canoes on the water. With a couple of good friends to share it. Life doesn’t get any better than this. We had left our yellow carbon copy of Permit No. 147384 in the little wooden deposit box at the Moose Lake Landing. And with it our thanks to the Forest Service staff for keeping the Boundary Waters maintained and for their bosses, the citizens of America, who created, own and pay for one of the finest pieces of recreational real estate in the nation. As the Norwegians might say: ‘Oof for lucky!”