I was fifteen minutes into my 3-hour drive when PJ called and informed me that I’d forgotten all my food in the refrigerator. I’d loaded my cooler with a few beers and water bottles, along with ice, but I’d spaced out on my lunch and supper fixings. Maybe old age was setting in. Or perhaps it was the usual restless night’s sleep I usually have when anticipating a long drive followed by a longer day of fishing. There are worse things than forgetting the vittles and I knew of a big grocery store in the town close to the river so rather than turning back for home I decided to go on and grab a couple of sandwiches on the way.
For a Friday morning the roads were peacefully vacant of traffic, which I appreciated as I wound my way southwest. My route twists and turns through a network of two-lane county roads that seem to lead to nowhere. Little towns passed quickly, the gas stations still closed in the early hour. Even passing through the Cuyuna Range -- a retired iron mining community now a mountain-biking mecca of northern Minnesota-- was void of the usual rack-mounted bikes and kayaks.
It wasn’t yet eight in the morning when I pulled into the market in a town that seems like a too big of a city in a place it shouldn’t be. But after the quick supply stop and a drive through town among lanes of vehicles in a hurry to be somewhere else, I finally escaped the busy-ness and was on the final leg to the river.
Tony had already launched his boat and arrived minutes behind me at the downstream take-out. Looking at the river easing its way downstream from the grassy parking lot felt otherworldly from the pavement left behind. It was a good place to be. After welcome greetings and an uncommon efficiency, we were soon back to our starting point and on the water.
The river was low, slow, and dirty -- the color of my maple dining room chairs. We couldn’t see bottom in water much over a foot deep. I’d fished this stretch before, and in an effort to prepare Tony I mentioned the first part of the float can be kind of slow fishing. With Tony on the oars, I started casting my deer-hair Dahlberg and hooked and landed the first smallmouth of the day barely a hundred feet from the boat launch! Tony dropped oars to stand and cast and we boated two nice bass in sight of the dock. Tony’s dog, Chester the pointer was along and appeared impressed. The largest bass of the day attacked my fly just past the first bend and Tony mentioned this could make someone’s day, that we could row back to the truck and be satisfied. Of course, we didn’t do that. But I had to eat my words about a slow start.
Despite low water the color of light chocolate, the fishing was fine. So was the catching, with good-sized smallmouth bass hitting with regularity. And the takes came in a variety of ways. Everyone loves the explosive, splashing topwater strikes bass are known for, and we enjoyed plenty of those. I had one hit at the end of my best cast that I first thought was a pike, as the bass porpoised out of the water next to my fly and came down on it from above. And there were the subtle, less aggressive takes from below, sort of like a trout sipping a dry fly off the surface but more workmanlike -- not so much a sip as a slurp, the way a man might slurp at a newly opened can of beer that’s foaming out the pop-top.
The low flowage exposed before hidden sandbars and rocks, offering a different view of the river, and different targets to cast to. I was taken by the sight of groups of large snapping turtles sunning at the edge of the sand, only to run as only turtles can, into the river at our approach. It would remind you of crocodiles entering a water hole in Africa. Much of the river feels that wild.
We were close to two miles from the take-out when Tony lowered his new electric trolling motor into the water for a pleasant ride out. On the river for ten hours, we were both tired, hungry, and satisfied. The final sight of a momma bear with three cubs was icing on the cake.
The bar/grill filled us with supper, then back to camp. I don’t think we could have stayed awake for a second beer, so I crawled into my tent and tony climbed into his trucktop penthouse.
In the morning we filled up with coffee and more stories before packing up and heading home. Livin’ large and happy for it!
