No doubt about it our campsite island was tiny, cozy, snug, boat-sized. But it was perfect. Slide-in landing onto a sofa sized patch of grass, open, rock slab tent and kitchen spot, little woods to do our business. And fishing. Oh yeah, fishing. I could have spent weeks there. Always something to do. While there broke out a well thumbed paperback to read aloud when the time came for me to cast my spinner toward the nearby mainland. Our leisure hours ashore were passed along the boundaries of our paradise, me with rod, Emil with Treasure Island.
"Archie me lad you've made a good choose. Doubt we'll finish it but she's a good read." Great way to pass the time whether in the daylight of camp or by flashlight in the tent. "Not often I get to read aloud. 'Specially a story as well told as this. Should you get tired of my voice, let me know."
Once ashore the packs were quickly hauled uphill, tent went up with poles Emil'd sawed on his last trip, tarp went down, air mattresses inflated and sleeping bags laid out. Homey. Cooking gear appeared, stove pumped and fired up, butter slabbed in the big pan, melted and foamed. You have to remember this was 1961. And keep in mind that Emil had been in the Army during the war. Spam it was, sliced thin and fried crisp on the outside, steamy within. The heart of the grilled cheese sandwiches he made. Slid down hot and easy followed by gulpings of lemonade to cool our blistered gums. Hungry? You bet.
Then we did what we did best. Nothing. Except for me, I was orbiting the island's shore like a satellite accompanied by the serenade of walleye and pike. Not on every cast but the numbers totaled in the dozens that afternoon under the slowly darkening sky. And not all the fish were small. My first ten pound pike put my wrists to the test and taught me to respect its brush-like teeth.
"You'll someday come to feel the same about jackfish as do the Canucks. A hundred pike equals bloody, raw fingertips. They're good to eat if you're up to the misery of slicing around all the bones but, oh my, those teeth."
Struck me as odd Emil didn't fish much while ashore. Mostly he seemed to enjoy my hoots and would wander over now and then to check out my latest big one. Then he'd fire up his pipe, pull out the dogeared paperback from a back pocket and read to me of Jake and the boys catching trout in Spain.
Biggest thing I caught was a jack pine. Happened in mid-cast and nearly pulled me off the ground. I was so intent on firing my lure all the way across the hundred foot channel I completely forgot what was right above my head. But my spinner sure didn't.
While I was staring to the blue sky and red of face, Emil strolled up. Crap. Here comes the riding. But no. My uncle simply gave the situation an up and down, then said, "Set the bail and let 'er hang. This is a moment to remember and savor for a few minutes. Archie me lad, I once did near the same thing, except I was in a canoe at the time, tucked to shore and working a channel much the same as this. And casting out for all I was worth. The jack pine wasn't big, doubt it topped forty feet. Probably the reason I was able to uproot it. This was back when I used to fish for muskies with a stout, four-sided, steel rod. Pretty much a six foot length of rebar with a reel holder and guides. Anyhow, the pine ripped loose and summersaulted into the bow of the canoe. Came down so hard it bent the boat and catapulted me near the top of a birch across the channel. Talk about embarrassing. Good thing there was nobody around to give me the grief I deserved. So I won't pass on any to you. Though I wish I'd brought a camera."
So it went. And so too was the sky invaded by an army of clouds. Finally the darkness above stopped dead as though resting up before the big show. Wedge glassed out, the water pitch black.
"She'll be a blow tonight. Maybe a good one."
We set to work tying down the tent from every angle to every conceivable nearby point. Rock, root, brush and tree. No tent pegs for the ground was nothing but slab rock. Dinner was chili and rice. Uncle Emil even baked up some pan bread out of bisquick, sugar, cinnamon and raisins afloat in butter. A feast in the wilderness.
"A full stomach is a warm and happy one. Tonight we fish 'til I say it's time to head in. When I say go, we go."
Under the heavy gray of the Canadian evening, reflected double on a sheet of glass, we fished. Endless streams of fish came to our canoe. All walleye and pike. No matter where our spinners landed in the bays they were greeted by 'v's of hungry pike slicing through fresh green reed tips. Or off the points in the rocks, the slam and chaotic run of walleyes.
Our spinners were hammered, tails shredded and shafts bent and restraightened 'til the wire flimsied or broke. My hands bled and fingers stunk of pike slime. The Grumman's gunwales were slowly painted by scale and speckled by blood. My spotted red blended with that of the fish, brothers in the hunt.
Most were small but every now and then it'd be time to hang on and go for a ride out of the bay toward the islands. Laugh? Lordy did we howl. Catching my share made me bold. I even began to deride the old man to my rear when he'd gone a few casts with nothing to show for his effort. And when it came to insult, Uncle Emil was no slouch.
"I'd call down on your manhood Archie me lad, if you weren't but a wee slip of a child only days apart from diapers. Throw another fishless cast and I'll be forced to call your mother to come get you. Tuck you in with your blankie to protect you from the big, bad walleyes of Wedge Lake."
And on it went. Fish on the line and weather settling down.
My last pike was a fitting end to our float. Seemed like it took me hours to reel her in. I'd get the fish to the canoe and she'd simply suspend there, finning, resting, eyeballing me with hate and fear. I'd make a move with my pliers to twist the spinner loose and off she'd go, motor boating and wiggling her tail at me in distain.
The treble wasn't sunk deep. Nothing but a single hook pierced the side of the pike's jaw. Didn't want to lose her but what the heck could I have done with something that size anyhow? Seemed a shame to kill a true beast of a fish simply because I could.
While I worked the pike, Emil worked the canoe. Kept the pressure on the fish but not too much. Emil used the canoe as my drag, fatiguing the pike at just the right rate. One last run and my line went limp. No pike, no spinner. What once was a snap swivel on the end of my leader was now a straightened length of wire. She was too much fish.
I sat there panting, exhilarated to the point of breathlessness.
"Now that's what I call fun Archie. And you might wanta to take a moment and look around, see where we are. Where your finny old lady dragged us over the last fifteen minutes."
What I took to be the bay's shore turned out to be an island. The hookup was a city block to our rear. Lost in concentration, for the duration of the fight all I'd seen was the pike, my line and the water.
"Where we are doesn't do justice to the route she hauled us. We zig-zagged half of this bay. Had some fish on in my life but nothing like that one. She was a wall-hanger and a half. Four foot or more."
"And that's all she wrote for tonight. Figure we've just enough time to brush our teeth, take a leak and batten down the hatches. She's nigh upon us."
So that's what we did. Before turning in, Emil stoked his pipe one last time. Above us passed a black roiling. Tobacco clouds swirled around and above Emil's Stetson. Once aloft they drifted slowly down lake, then paused. In the distance a soft, deep-throated roar arose. At the same time the stagnant pipe smoke reversed direction, drawn to the tumult.
Emil tapped his pipe dregs in the fire circle. "Here she comes. Don't know about you but I've no fondness for a soaking or to be turned into a kite. Let's skedaddle."
Started slow and cranked up to what Emil called a good old fashioned gully washer. It hammered down. Hard as steel. Hard enough to raise my hackles from fear. Don't know what I was afraid of outside of where we were, the black and deluge outside and the thin layer of cotton between us and the flood. Never'd heard a rain roar before but this downpour did. And not a wisp of wind to drive the storm on. I've yet to hear or smell a rain like that one on Wedge Lake.
"Shoulda brought us an ark. And would've had I known what a cubit was."
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