Some sixty years ago, on a hot July day, I took my old steel Pflueger rod and reel, put on my old cutoffs and tennis shoes and went fishing in the Crow Wing River north of Staples. It was about a five-mile bike ride north of town; on a day when the sun was baking everything in sight. I got out there early and the plan was to walk down the river and fish until I got to the Golf Course Bridge and then walk back on a trail along the river to get my bike and ride home. It was maybe a trip of two miles or so.
I fished this way often because it was cool walking in the river and I had access to many deep holes and drop offs where the fish hung out. For the most part the river was waist deep and nothing but sand. As a parent today, think of your fifteen year old kid, five miles from home and all alone in the middle of a river. Not a house in sight and no way to call for assistance. No way to know if the weather was going to go bad or not-- or if someone was going to give me any trouble. I admit, that although that happening was unlikely, we didn’t give it much thought in those days. I had nothing worthwhile to steal except my bike that I had hid in the woods.
Maybe about half way along my trip down the river, I had caught a few skinny pike and some rock bass on the old silver spoon I had brought along. I had a stringer tied around my waist and my plan was to keep a couple of fish and put the rest back. My mom was always appreciative of the fish, as we were a poor family. I think I saw the pike before he saw me, lying in about three feet of water. The river was running clear and slow. The only time that river got muddy was after a big rain. The fish finally spooked and ran for the far bank of the river where the water was deeper.
My cast was perfect, right in front of him and he took the spoon and ran for the deep hole. With my antiquated fishing gear I couldn’t hold him back and I found myself half swimming, half running down the river and being pulled into the deep hole, with the fish until I was forced to swim and give up my fishing gear. I probably weighed 90 pounds at this time in my life. I swam around the deepest part of the hole, which was full of dead trees and then came up on a sandbar and there was the fish still pulling my rod and reel along in about a foot of water. I ran and jumped on top of the fish and wrestled it up in the sand and held it until it quieted down. I was able to get it on a stringer and several times the fish would run and knock me off my feet, on my trip to the bridge but I made it to the bridge, tied the fish to a tree in the water and went and retrieved my bike. Then I went back and retrieved my fish.
My bike was an old Schwinn with the double bars on it and I tied the fish between the bars and about half of him hung over the front fender. When I got home I took the fish uptown to the butcher shop and they weighed it in at nineteen pounds. I know I’m a fiction author but this isn’t fiction. I have read Papa Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” and I’m not Santiago and the Crow Wing River is a long way from the Gulf Stream but for one summer afternoon I too fought a big fish, in my own back yard and won. This is my story, I haven’t been drinking and I’m sticking to it.
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