The morning of Monday June 10th was not warm. I cannot say exactly how lacking in warmth it was, but I do remember my feeling like 6 of my toes were not present after a morning nap in my sleeping bag during a rain storm. In North Carolina, where I grew up, there were only two months a year when one could not wear flip flops. In Minnesota, there are only two weeks a year, reliably, when it is safe to wear flip flips. Minnesota produces the most hardy people I have ever met. I quickly learned, the best thing to do when you are cold is to get moving. The second best thing I learned from the people of Minnesota is - Don't feel sorry for yourself (you chose this, remember?)

With firewood processed, the wind blowing 20 mph, and rain spitting on Bradley Cooper (the name of my rain jacket...vest...garbage bag), we decided to put the canoe in the water and get fishing. While it was difficult to cast accurately, the fish didn't seem to mind. They were post spawn and hungry. There are a few strange and noteable side effects to a tight line for an angler. Very suddenly, you are no longer cold, wet, hungry, nor sore after the magic of a bent rod and the act of detaching a few fish from your hook. It seemed our neighbors on the nearby campsite we had seen a few days earlier were fibbing.

The weather continued to improve throughout the week. We continued to learn about the eating habits of the aquatic wildlife along with the eating habits of the mosquitos. The fish were all hungover in the mornings from too much Boundary Waters bourbon and late night partying, sticking to deeper and darker waters. They would hide in the shadows of down timber during the afternoons coming out to strike if your bait was close enough. They were most active during the evenings from about 7:30 – sundown preferring to move into shallow water to feed on hatching insects. We continued to trade off with one person angling and one person positioning the canoe. I learned from a friend last summer that fishing out of a canoe, raft, or drift boat is a team sport and to treat it as such. If you put one in the boat, everybody wins.

Thursday evening, something pretty spectacular by my standards happened. We finished dinner and headed into a shallow back bay to fish topwater poppers and a jitterbug. There was no wind and the angle of the sun had the pine forest alight with vibrant green color. The water was a dark glass reflection of our surroundings. We heard the steady hum of dragonflies zipping around us – hopefully eating mosquitoes. Amid the occasional click of the bail on my father’s spinning reel and gurgle of his jitterbug, we started to hear splashing. Turning our heads, we both witnessed a sizeable smallmouth bass launch itself out of the water, fly two feet into the air and inhale a passing dragonfly. My dad had a moment of stunned amazement and said, “I have never seen anything like that in my entire life.” My head was stuck somewhere down in the canoe looking for my fly box. I was hoping I had remembered to throw my dragonfly pattern meant for trout in with my other flies. With relief, I located the fly and quickly tied it onto the end of the leader on my floating line.

We sat for a few moments watching fish launch themselves out of sparse lily pad groups to catch more dragonflies. My dad positioned me near a clump and after a couple of false casts, I let the line fly. It dropped amidst the pads, wire leader and all, with a bit of a thud. Any self-respecting stream trout would have seen through my ruse immediately and refused the fly thinking to itself: that is not the right color dragonfly, it landed harder than it should have, those wings are not quite straight, that metal thing sticking out of my meal’s mouth doesn’t seem quite right, I was expecting seven segments on the thorax, not six.

Smallmouth bass are not trout. Bass are greedy, aggressive, and opportunistic. I counted to ten. Nothing happened. I watched my fly sink below the surface. Thinking that my fly had taken on water and with the intent of casting again, I held the tip of my rod in the water, stripped the line a foot for good measure, and watched in amazement as the end of my line seemed to start moving off to my right. “That’s odd” I thought, my instincts telling me I had snagged a lily stem. The smallmouth on the other end of the line was probably just as confused as I. Thinking it had just had an evening snack and finding itself with a new lip piercing, it launched out of the water and the fight was on. With the fish safely in the net, my dad and I both began to laugh simultaneously… out there on the water by ourselves. With our quarry released, we continued back toward camp. She was not the largest nor smallest fish landed during the trip but the most memorable. I thank her for that memory I will always cherish. ~Red Rock Lake, Alpine Lake