Day 8: Fishing on Grandpa
Friday, June 13th, 2025
It is our last full day in the wilderness. With a high today of only 53 and east winds at 5-10 with gusts to 20 mph, we don’t have high fishing hopes, so the first order of business is letting Andrew sleep in as late as he wants…8 A.M. After breakfast, with nothing but time on our hands and low fishing expectations, I tell Andrew we are going to do something goofy this morning. All week long he’s been paddling from the bow. I haven’t sat in the bow seat of a canoe since I was his age. So, in the name of instruction, I told him that we were going to paddle a little bit in the shallow secluded bay near our campsite so both of us can gain a totally new perspective on canoeing! Right away, we are both surprised at how different the view feels when we change seats. The floor space open for legroom is also different, though as a taller guy I’m still quite comfortable in the bow. We push off from the landing and I tell him I’m just going to steadily paddle on one side so he can choose which side he wants to paddle on for steering. I give him free rein of where he wants to paddle in our little mucky bay and tell him I will respond to any paddling command he makes from the back. Right away he is laughing at how awkward he feels back there, while I overplay the part of a happy-go-lucky paddler without a care in the world, just loving the view and trusting Andrew to get us where we are supposed to go. Both of us are taken aback by how much fun this 10 minutes on the water was, just learning what it’s like to be the “other guy” in the boat.
Lookin’ back over my life
Spent the most of it tongue-tied
And I wish I’d had more time
Listenin’ to you speak your mind
~Caamp “By and By”
We head out for our final morning of fishing, again with the Syclops and an old reliable X-Rap. We quickly pick up two pike and then the bite slows way down. For the greater part of this week, we have been very blessed with good fishing. Most of our interaction with each other while canoeing has been related to the fishing, with the exception of our paddle across the choppy water on Saganaga. In cool weather, well-rested and both thankful for all we’ve experienced this week, Andrew and I pass the morning in easy, comfortable discussions about anything and everything in our lives. Andrew shares many stories and thoughts from his past school year that I have never heard until now. I even share a story or two from my growing up days that I have never spoken to anyone about.
But mostly, I share with him how a trip just like this one has been a dream of mine for decades, and how that came to be. I grew up on a farm in central Kansas. I was fortunate to have access to plenty of places to fish where I grew up, and was mostly taught how to bass fish by my late Grandma “Boots”. Occasionally my dad would take me fishing in a pasture pond or even bring me along in the Grumman canoe to check bank lines he and his friends had set for flathead catfish in the river. Once when I was about 10 years old, my dad was shocked to find out he had purchased enough seed for the farm over the past year that he had earned enough “points” for a large reward: Either two brand new sets of Craftsman wrenches and sockets, or an outfitted Canadian fishing trip. Having never had a truly complete set of tools for the farm before, my father chose the wrenches…and he still uses them today! It was the right choice for our family, but I still remember how excited I was for a moment, thinking about the possibility of taking a big fishing trip with my dad. Fast forward a few years, and I continued to spend plenty of time in junior high and high school fishing with some of my best friends, or alone. As life got busy after college with building a career and a life of my own in the Denver area, I rarely had the time to do any fishing at all, especially with my old fishing spots now hundreds of miles away. But something changed one Fourth of July weekend, when I was assigned a last minute work trip near Bemidji, MN. All of the hotels in the area were sold out for the weekend. But somehow, my colleague and I found a rustic cabin on Black Duck Lake that we shared. During our down time, we trolled the lake using a small aluminum boat with a 10 hp pull start motor, trolling leeches along the weed beds. We caught and released multiple pike, gazed at the stars, drank cheap beer, and had the best work trip ever. I had never dreamed while growing up catching largemouth bass and catfish that someday I would catch northern pike, the mythical giant alligator fish of the north country. To say the least, I was hooked. Years after that, another co-worker happened to tell me about the Boundary Waters. That was when this trip fully took shape in my head, as the ultimate coming-of-age father-son backcountry fishing getaway. Over a decade later, and with countless sacrifices and learning along the way, that dream was finally a reality.
That led me to share with Andrew how blessed we truly are, much of it due to the sacrifices of my parents, as well as generations that came before. My grandpa also grew up on the farm, but during the 40’s, he was a gunner’s mate on a destroyer in the South Pacific during World War II, and had at least one very near miss with a kamikaze during the war. He returned home to discover that in addition to the pain he carried each day as a result of what he’d witnessed, the entire farm had been passed on to his older brother, leaving him to forge his own path. He managed to do so, raising three boys, but losing his first wife to cancer along the way. During a very trying time in the 80’s, he contemplated declaring bankruptcy and moving the family to St. Louis to be a truck driver. But he persisted, mainly because his middle son struggled in school and he worried about finding a good school system away from our small central Kansas community. Through great sacrifice and dogged determination, he succeeded at farming and was able to pass a legacy on to my father, who continues that tradition still today. Had my grandpa not made it through the war, given up on farming, or moved away, I wouldn’t be here today. Nor would my son. I never would have learned fishing from my grandma in the small pasture ponds of my youth…and who knows if I ever would have considered finding solace in a place like the Boundary Waters. By the support and sacrifice of my family, I made it through the lean years of my career after college, which led to my current career that affords me the time off to make a trip like this happen. I shared all this with Andrew to show him that his dream, my dream, and our very existence was truly built on the shoulders of those who sacrificed before us, who never knew the long-term effects of their sacrifice. They just did what they knew to be right. If we can be strong enough to follow their example, we can change the world…for generations.
We manage to eventually catch one more pike and make sure to snap a photo, but that’s all she wrote for today. Andrew has another knot failure with the Syclops at the tail end of our session, but it can be replaced. Three hours on the water, and three small fish to show for it. But as far as discussion goes, this was the best morning of fishing we had the entire trip. We get back to the site and have lunch until about 2:15, at which point it we finally rise from our chairs and come to grips with the reality that our trip is ending. We’ll be driving all the way home tomorrow, and we estimate our journey back to Voyageur will take about three hours, provided it goes smoothly. In order to get home before midnight, we’ll have to be paddling out well before sunrise.

We spend the afternoon organizing and packing, turning our cozy campsite into even cozier little bundles that will fit in the canoe tomorrow. We take down the tarp before supper, which is enjoyed in front of the most persistently smoky fire of the trip on the coldest night of the trip, due to the wind blowing directly into the site. At least the mosquitoes aren’t around! We break out the maps and I review with Andrew how to use the compass and map so he’s ready for tomorrow’s paddle. Then we review every single step of tomorrow’s route so we can execute the plan without a hitch. During supper, I again tell Andrew what a special week this was, but also say how much I enjoyed this morning, even though we didn’t have much fishing success. He barely remembers or never met any of the grandparents on my side of the family, so I share anecdotes about all of them. How my paternal grandpa always came to our athletic and music events, unless it was a strings concert, because he was openly not a fan of youth strings concerts. How my paternal grandmother taught me how to bake a pie and was the best gardener in town. How my maternal grandmother taught me how to fish, but more importantly how to enjoy life. And how my paternal grandfather, seemingly out of sheer orneriness, drove a mail route for the postal service well into his 80’s. More campfire connections made.

Our goal is to paddle out at 3:30 AM tomorrow, I set my alarm for 2:15, my earliest wake up yet in the Boundary Waters, Can we do it? We will soon find out. Before turning in, we take one last photo together from the landing. Even though it’s 7:50 PM and still very bright, we both sleep the deep, satisfying slumber familiar to all who give their day’s energy to the demands of the wilderness.

Stats—> Portages: 0 | Fish caught: 6 pike | Lakes: Grandpa