At the tip of Lake Superior in Duluth, people fish off the ship canal for "lakers" in the summer and drag their ice houses right out onto Lake Superior in the winter. They drill holes in the ice and settle down to stay warm and maybe catch a fish dinner. I love to fish — but, not at 20 below. I can sit on an overturned bucket and drink beer in my garage. And, there's a bathroom much closer by.
I was born and raised in upstate New York, land of the Finger Lakes, where people fish for pickerel, perch and pumpkinseeds. They have lake places that they call "cottages" or "camps” on lakes with names like Keuka, Skaneatlas and Tuscarora.
I started fishing with my mom and dad when I was very little. We would rent a small cottage on one of the closer lakes and spend our week “fishing.” (My dad would row the three of us to the middle of the lake, where they would sit all day with their lines in the water, and I would play with my paper dolls. We said we were fishing.)
Opening fishing weekend has always been a big deal for us. Starting when I was about 4, we would head over to the Catskill Mountains to fish the small river that ran through the dairy farm of some friends — in West Bovina, New York. Dairy/bovine? Nope, I didn't make that up.
My mom would pack everything into our 1936 Ford, and we would pick my dad up from work at exactly 5 o'clock and drive into the night, heading about 5 hours to the east.
On this big dairy farm, just before fishing opener, came "sugaring off," when they would tap the maple trees. We would stumble into that sleepy old farmhouse after the long drive, and the first thing that washed over us was the warm smell of maple sugar cakes drying in the oven.
Sometimes, there were new baby calves to see. And always, there were the huge draft horses you could catch a ride on. When you were a little kid, your feet stuck out on either side of their broad backs, like riding on an overstuffed couch. We have a picture of my mother, down by the river, wearing her favorite fishing outfit, a white blouse and a pair of riding jodhpurs — I have no idea where she got them; she wasn’t a horse person. But she was standing there, holding at arm’s length, the nasty-looking eel she had just caught. From the look on her face, you knew she was building up to a piercing scream.
Fondly remembering our childhood fishing vacations, Tom and I planned a few family adventures of our own: day trips fishing on the Whiteface, weeks at the family cabin, and a houseboat trip into the boundary waters with three kids and a dog, to see the moose and bears. The wildest animals we saw all week were chipmunks. And they had to be coaxed out of hiding with peanut butter.
When our kids were still little, we flew in on a big old rumbly Beaver prop pontoon plane to a Canadian fishing camp, a place 25 miles and 7 portages away from the nearest scrap of humanity.
"Oh, please don't let anyone have an appendicitis attack," I mumbled as we stood on the shoreline and watched the plane get smaller and smaller in the sky.
Once the kids got over the scary nighttime visits to the outhouse, it was a wonderful time, fishing and swimming in the pristine wilderness and cool, quiet lake. Just at dusk one day, the guys were out fishing in the boat, and middle son snagged into something that didn’t budge. He and his little Zebco fishing rod tried their hardest, but finally, the immovable object loomed out of the water, gave them all the fishy “stink eye” and plunged to the bottom of the lake, taking the Zebco (but not the kid) with it. Whoa!
“Hey Dad, lets go back to the cabin and play Battleships, OK?” No late-night skinny-dipping that night! So what do the kids remember about this wild adventure? That by the last morning, we had run out of milk, and I made them put root beer on their Cheerios. You’d think they’d get over it — but nooooo.
Next time, I’ll tell you about our five-day canoe trip that turned into a week-long, never-again disaster.
Claudia Myers is a former costume designer for The Baltimore Opera, Minnesota Ballet and has taught design and construction at The College of St Scholastica. She is a national award-winning quilter, author and a local antique dealer, specializing in Persian rugs.
The Link LonkMay 19, 2021 at 06:00PM
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Claudia Myers column: 10,000 lakes, and as many fish stories - Duluth News Tribune
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