By Drew YoungeDyke (Originally published in the October 2020 issue of Woods-N-Water News)
The topography looks just right. A slight knoll just inside the treeline at the edge of marsh, creating a natural funnel between the two. I kneel at the base of a tree on the opposite side of the knoll, about 35 yards away, so that just my head can see above it and I can rest against the tree. A short while later, a four-point walks through the funnel followed by a six-point. I carefully raise my bow, set the 35-yard pin on the six-point’s vitals, take a breath, and release an arrow. It sails underneath: too short. They both bolted. This is still hunting, I think. After that miss, while hunting public land on Beaver Island out of a backpack camp, I wondered if I’d ever find success still hunting deer. Was it madness to commit myself to a method with a lower chance of success? Why couldn’t I just do the tree stand/trailcam/food plot thing like seemingly everybody else? The answer was more complex than the success rate of the method, though. Still hunting is a simple concept that is hard to accomplish. It is hunting by moving slowly and silently through a landscape suspected to hold deer. In practice that means taking careful steps and stopping often – being still – while being observant for the slightest sign of deer, while paying close attention to wind, sound, your scent, and your surroundings. It can be done with any tool legal for deer hunting, increasing in difficulty in inverse relationship to the range of the firearm or bow. And it can take years to find success with each progression of difficulty. Or, luck can strike immediately. In truth, every encounter with deer while still-hunting feels a little lucky but it takes an almost perfect execution of the craft to kill a deer with the method. Rather than a deterrent, this is what hooked me on still hunting as my primary method for deer hunting. While some deer hunters find satisfaction in progressing maybe from smaller bucks to larger bucks, or from many deer to mature deer, I find it in seeking – and most often failing – the perfection of the woodcraft needed to successfully harvest any deer by still hunting. It’s also about the adventure of what might be in the field of view opened up by the next careful step. It could be a deer itself or funnel you’ve never seen with just the right cover at just the right distance that you have to sit for a few hours. It’s the freedom of being able to move to the next field of view at any time coupled with the discipline to stay and acquiring the experience of knowing when to do which. It’s the craft of moving silently – when I move at all – through a wooded landscape with the leaves changing in October or on a soft snow in November. It’s using the same method my dad taught me and my grandpa taught him. Most of all, though, it’s channeling the hunting instinct and feeling as purely human as I’ve experienced. On the Michigan archery opener after that miss on Beaver Island, I hunted along a deer trail in the Pigeon River Country. I often use deer trails as my travel routes when still-hunting because there is less vegetation to brush against and make noise. However, I do this only in wild public land, not where treelines on ag fields create funnels, for instance, where I might spook out mature bucks. In the country I hunt, deer trails are abundant and go in every direction. I determine the direction I want to take by the wind, the cover, and the contours of the land, and use the criss-crossing deer trails to piece together my route through the section I’m hunting. On that day, along that trail, I saw the movement of two does on a trail perpendicular to the one I was on. Ground vegetation was high so I dropped to a knee with my compound. I waited silently for the front doe to present a shot, drew when its head was down and facing away, and released the arrow. It ran twenty yards and dropped, its heart stopping while mine raced. I waited several minutes and then walked to it, discovering that it was a button buck, not a doe. Not my intention, but it would make good eating. I tagged it and carried it back to my backpack camp over my shoulder. Still hunting isn’t always moving; it often requires long periods of uncomfortable stillness without the comforts set up in a blind or a tree stand. The next year, I spent four days still hunting out of a backpack camp in the same part of the Pigeon River Country surrounded by bugling elk. By the last day, I had seen and blown stalks or otherwise spooked a dozen deer and missed one, the arrow deflected by vegetation I’d not noticed. Almost defeated, I glassed a valley from a ridge and saw a doe moving slowly though it. I crawled to the edge of the ridge and partway down it to set up behind some old timber slash. If the doe kept going the same direction, it would pass below me within bow range. Instead, it bedded down. I held my position laid back against the hillside behind the short slash pile, carefully raising my binoculars every now and then to look where it bedded. Well-hidden, I began do doubt myself, wondering if I missed it walking away at some point. Finally, it got up and walked right where I originally hoped it might. I drew my compound under the cover of the slash pile, but then the doe started walking up the trail toward me. I held my draw for about 45 seconds before I thought I might be able to get away with raising the bow without spooking the doe. I raised the bow, the doe looked toward me, and I released the arrow into front-quartering vitals at a distance of 35 yards. It dropped on the spot and I gutted it while two bull elk sparred less than a football field away. That was the last deer I’ve taken still-hunting with a bow; the next year I switched to a recurve and the 35-yard shots I might have taken with a compound have just been the starting point for a stalk with the recurve. Two years ago, I hunted along a ridge near an old logging two-track heading downhill with forest on my left and open upland on my right. I saw three does in the valley below and crawled downhill along the tracks to behind a small fallen log, each movement carefully planned while watching the does to avoid alerting them. I was still about 50 yards away, though, well beyond my 20-yard recurve range. Finally, I thought the coast was clear as trees blocked their view of me to leave the blowdown. I closed the distance maybe ten or fifteen yards when one of the does detected me, blew, and they all ran away while my heart pounded. In all my hunting experience, I don’t think I’ve ever been more infused with our natural human hunting instinct than on that stalk. As the September wind hints at the October to come, it stirs that instinct within me. And come October, there will come a moment when I engage it again, walking along a deer path, spotting some portion of a buck or doe, nocking an arrow to my recurve, and putting on a stalk. I don’t know if I’ll be successful or have another empty freezer, but I know I’ll be chasing perfection, on public land ground, in an intimate dance with a deer, without a tree stand in sight. I’ll be a still hunter once again. And in that perfect moment, that is all I will be. By Drew YoungeDyke (Originally published as "Why you should try new outdoor sports" in the September 2020 issue of Woods-N-Water News)
Lake Michigan was colder than recent days but I warmed up quickly. Sitting on my 10-foot foamie surfboard as the waves rolled toward the beach in Frankfort, I looked back for the wave I wanted, or rather, that my instructor wanted for me. “This is it,” she said, “start paddling.” I felt the wave lift the back of the board under me. I pushed up, brought my left knee to my chest, stood up in an athletic position, and coasted toward shore somehow able to find my balance after dozens of wipeouts. I saw Jordan Browne on the pier – we had been filming a scene for an upcoming documentary – and threw him two “hang loose” signs. It was the highlight of the session, which I followed with a series of spills, faceplants, and flying boards. It was enough to hook me on a new way to appreciate our state’s natural resources, though, and that’s something we could use more of these days. As outdoor recreationists, we often fall into a rut of doing the same activities season after season, year after year. There’s definitely something to be said for picking a certain way to hunt, or species to fish, and specializing in it to improve your craft and success. When I hunt deer, for instance, I almost always still hunt and have since I first started deer hunting. And I have a hard time picking up a spinning rod when I’ve been practicing my fly cast and tying flies all year, even when the situation calls for it. However, that focus can lead to stagnation. By regularly trying new outdoor sports, we can continually grow our knowledge and appreciation of the outdoors and, importantly, have fun doing it. There are endless ways to participate in Michigan’s out-of-doors, and while I certainly can’t do all of them – and especially do all of them well – I want to continue to expand the range of activities I participate in. Call it “cross-training” for the outdoors. CrossFit describes “regularly learn and play new sports” as part of its definition of fitness because it forces your body to learn different ways of moving and learning different physical skills. The same could be applied to becoming a complete outdoorsman or outdoorswoman. Surfing on the Great Lakes had been at the back of my mind since I’d taken a surf lesson on vacation a couple years ago in Kauai and spent the week falling off a rented board. This summer, Jordan Browne of Michigan Out-of-Doors TV and I were filming a scene with Ella Skrocki of Sleeping Bear Surf & Kayak for an upcoming documentary from the National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center on Asian carp, both their impacts in southern waters and potential impacts here in the Great Lakes on our fisheries, outdoor recreation, tourism, and businesses like hers. Since we were there, though, I asked Ella to bring a beginner board for me. When we were done filming, she gave me some pointers for staying upright, which I was able to do a couple times. Mostly I fell off in spectacular and comical ways, but even that was more fun than almost anything else I’ve done in the outdoors. I was so stoked after that session that I bought the board, a used 10-foot SurfTech Learn2Surf model that had been through a season of their lessons. While most surfboards are shorter and made of fiberglass with a foam core, this larger foam-topped board is more buoyant for beginners like me, though not as thick and buoyant as a stand-up paddle board. To become even minimally okay at surfing, though, I’ll have to dramatically improve my core strength, balance, and agility, which will also serve me well in other outdoor pursuits as I get older. Picking up a new outdoor sport doesn’t come without some trade-offs, though. To make up for buying the surfboard, I sold a shotgun I’d won in a raffle the year before. Which is okay, because I’ll have less time to hunt since Great Lakes waves tend to start picking up in October. I’m going to have to give up a couple weekends of hunting in the fall if I’m going to take my board up the Lake Michigan coast for a few days of trying to surf. I’ll need to buy a wetsuit for those colder waters, and that comes out of the same budget I use for hunting and fishing gear. I’m willing to make that trade-off, though, because it’s just that fun. It also gives me another motivation for keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes; as hard as it is to stay upright on a surfboard, it would be almost impossible with 30-pound silver carp launching out of the waves. It will probably take me a long time to feel comfortable on a surfboard riding Great Lakes waves, just as it took me a long time to get close to deer while still hunting or a long time to occasionally catch fish on a fly line. I wouldn’t have derived the joy that I get from those pursuits if I was afraid to fail at something new, though, so I’m not afraid to look comically inept while surfing for a while. As my dad always says, “when in doubt, go for it.” Whatever you’re already doing in the outdoors, don’t be afraid to fail at something new. Hunt turkeys if you only hunt deer. Hunt deer if you only hunt ducks. Fish for pike if you only fish for bass. Use a spinning rod if you only fly fish. Go for a trail run if you only hike. Fish from a kayak or paddle board or on the ice if you only fish from a boat. Go backpacking if you’ve only camped in an RV, or in the winter if you’ve only camped in the summer. Try rock-climbing, backpacking, surfing, birding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, or mountain biking, if you never have before. And if you have, teach someone new. You’re probably going to be terrible at it when you start, but so what? Everyone was a beginner at some point and outdoor recreation is fun whether you’re an expert or a beginner; it just gets even more fun as you improve. We have an unparalleled natural playground in Michigan encompassing four Great Lakes, two peninsulas, and over 10,000 inland lakes, and I’m going to get outside and enjoy them in every imaginable way that I can, even if it means faceplanting into three-foot Lake Michigan chop. Especially if it means that. By Drew YoungeDyke (Originally published in the August 2020 issue of Woods-n-Waters News)
It’s fortunate that some of the simplest fish to catch are also some of the most fun and accessible: panfish on public land lakes. Public land lakes are open to everyone and fish like bluegills, pumpkinseeds, and crappies are fun for everyone from the beginner to the expert to catch due to their abundance, appetite, fight, and mild flavor when kept and cooked. And as more people are venturing outdoors to paddle and fish to maintain social distance, Congress is advancing bipartisan legislation to provide greater public access to fishable waters to catch them. Earlier this summer, I packed a deflated fishing float tube in a backpack and hiked just under a mile from a parking area along a trail to a lake within the Bald Mountain Recreation Area in northern Oakland County. The trail runs along a grassy water control structure for the little warmwater lake where I’ve had success in past years fly fishing for bluegills and largemouth bass from shore. With a float tube and a couple boxes of flies I tied this year, though, I wanted to fish the whole lake and catch some largemouth bass or northern pike. While inflating my float tube and assembling my fly rod, though, I could see bluegills and pumpkinseeds on their gravel beds near shore where I planned to launch, so I tied on a little foam hopper I tied up this spring. I cast it just past the bluegills and stripped it lightly over top of them so the foam lip could pop the water like a little bass popper. Curious bluegills swam up to it and nibbled until one took a confident bite and I set the hook. Immediately the bluegill exploded, darting every which way underwater trying to free the hook. I played it lightly since I’d only brought my 9-weight rod for casting larger bass bugs and pike streamers, but it was still fun even on that heavy line. The six-inch bluegill was my first on a fly I’d tied, to which I quickly added six- and seven-inch pumpkinseeds and a crappie. Content with my shoreline panfish catch, I launched my float tube and fished the weed edges, structure, and shaded pockets along the shoreline. A green bass popper was too big for the dozens of panfish that nibbled at it, but I finally connected with a topwater largemouth bass that fought with everything it had, burying itself in weeds before I scooped it out with my net. What fun! I passed a pair of anglers in a green canoe on the way back to the launch and we chatted briefly at a distance. Mike and Megan Schumer, father and daughter, lived nearby and showed me the full catch of crappies they’d already reeled in from the lake for a panfish dinner. That’s what it’s all about, I thought. I returned for a few hours for the next three days and caught 29 total fish, mostly bluegills and pumpkinseeds, a few largemouth bass, and a pair of crappies, including one which took the 2/0 red and white Clouser Minnow I tied for northern pike! One of those days I kept five bluegills and pumpkinseeds over six inches, filleted them and pan-fried them for a fish taco lunch the next day, all courtesy of our public lands. The Bald Mountain Recreation Area is state-owned public land acquired in large part by a $197,000 grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) approved in 1966 just after the fund was created by Congress in 1965. The LWCF operates on the same principle as the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, created a decade later. It uses the royalties from offshore gas and oil development – not taxes - to acquire and develop outdoor recreation opportunities for everything from public land, trails, and boat launches to baseball fields and park pavilions. Last year, the LWCF was permanently authorized through the John D. Dingell Conservation, Management and Recreation Act, a welcome example of bipartisanship for our public lands. However, only twice in its 55-year history has Congress ever actually appropriated the full amount authorized to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Which means that every dollar less than that full amount has been money intended for the LWCF but siphoned to other uses. That could finally change thanks bipartisan legislation moving through Congress as of this writing. The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) will permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund to its full authorized amount of $900 million each year, as well as fund a backlog of maintenance projects at federal national parks and other public lands. The National Wildlife Federation and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation worked to ensure that federal public lands open to hunting like Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Forest Service lands were included. The GAOA recently passed the U.S. Senate, considered its biggest hurdle, and as of this writing is expected to be soon considered by the U.S. House of Representatives. In Michigan, though, one of the biggest beneficiaries of Land and Water Conservation Fund grants has been anglers, as much of it has been used to acquire and develop boat launches and the acquisition of public lands containing fishable water like Bald Mountain Recreation Area (which also received LWCF funding to develop its shooting range). The passage of the Great American Outdoors Act will ensure that even more investments in public water access and public lands can be made in more places, providing future generations with places to fish. I returned down that same trail to that same public land lake on Father’s Day. Instead of a float tube, though, I had my 16-month-old son Noah in a backpack carrier and my 5-weight fly rod in hand. Along the way, I passed or was passed by hikers, mountain bikers, and trail runners, all of us keeping a safe distance. And while I may have tried not to notice it before, they appeared to represent multiple different races and ethnicities. We smiled and greeted each other. They wished me Happy Father’s Day, and I thanked them and wished the same, and I hoped that I was as welcoming to everyone else on the trail as they were to me. Everyone belongs outdoors, and our public lands belong to all of us. With my son on my back, I tied the same foam popper to my fly line and cast it into the near shore waters, in the pockets between the lily pads and weeds where bluegills and pumpkinseeds swam. It took a few casts until I felt that tug, the furious rush, and I played the six-inch bluegill back to shore, the first that Noah and I caught together. I held it up for him to see and he looked at it curiously, not sure what to make of it. That’s alright, I thought. He’ll be more excited in a couple years when he feels that tug for himself. We caught a few more on foam hoppers, Chernobyl ants, and a foam bass popper I tried to catch a largemouth with, but which enthused a pumpkinseed more. While we fished, people passing on the trail nearby asked questions about what I was fishing for, and with what, and I answered. Maybe they were part of the new influx of people discovering or re-discovering the outdoors as a way to social distance during this COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe now they’ll try out a worm on a hook on the old spinning rod or baitcasting reel in the garage they never used or they’ll buy a new one, and now they know a spot. I’m happy to share, because these panfish and public lands are for all. This will always be the place where my son and I caught our first fish together. Maybe we’ll come back more as he grows up and we’ll fish it often like Mike and Megan Schumer do, enjoying parent-child bonding time long after he’s a child. Maybe one of those hikers will pick up a fishing rod and catch her first fish in that same spot and feel that tug that hooks her for life. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? By Drew YoungeDyke (Originally published in the July 2020 issue of Wood-N-Water News)
The three of us loaded our fly-fishing gear into my loaner Toyota Land Cruiser and set out from the hotel in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota, stopped for gas, packable lunches, and fishing licenses with trout stamps, and followed a maze of two-lane and country dirt roads to a public access trout stream through private property in the Driftless Area. The Driftless Area encompasses parts of western Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, and northeastern Iowa, deriving its name from its limestone geography and lack of glacial deposits – “drift” – left by ice age glaciers which covered the region just north of the Driftless Area. Coldwater streams fed by groundwater filter up through the limestone and flow down through a hilly, pastoral landscape of forests and farms. While most of these streams flow through private property, Minnesota boasts 221 miles of trout stream easements in the region which allow public fishing access. My fishing partners were Scott Mackenthum, an outdoor writer and Minnesota fisheries biologist, and Buddy Seiner, host of Fish Stories, a web-based audio chronicle of fishing tales. Both are more accomplished anglers than me and I looked forward to learning from them. We were staying in LaCrosse last September for the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers conference, and we all had the same inspired idea to skip the range day to fish the Driftless for secret public trout. Scott knew just the spot but the location is classified (I’d like to be invited back). However, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) publishes maps of all the public access trout streams in southeastern Minnesota through a print booklet available locally and digitally online. We unloaded our gear from the Land Cruiser and discussed our strategy while assembling our rods. We’d enter the stream near the road crossing and fish upstream through the private property parcel which had granted easement access for anglers, staying within the stream corridor permitted by the easement and all practicing catch and release. Buddy caught the first few fish, little brown trout from a shallow pool at a bend using a hopper-dropper. They weren’t giants but it was good to be on the board. He landed them in his net and released them quickly. I had never fished with a dropper before, so Scott showed me how to tie on a beadhead nymph from the hook of my foam hopper. He had fished the stream before and wanted to get further upstream where the brook trout were more likely to hold, so he moved quickly ahead of us to skip the browns and get to the brookies. Like northern Michigan, the Drifltess Area of Minnesota holds brook, brown, and rainbow trout. Brookies are the only natives. Brown trout are non-native but wild and reproduce naturally, and rainbow trout are stocked by the Minnesota DNR in areas with high angling pressure. This stream held browns and brookies. Buddy went ahead of me and I fished slowly to give him time to get some space. For what seemed like most of the morning, I had no strikes, no luck, no catches. Par for the course; trout fishing with a fly rod for me is often a wade through the stream in a beautiful setting with the occasional practice cast while spooking fish and snagging flies in the tree branches on the back cast. While usually I am perfectly content in spending time in the setting, I’d been practicing my cast more than usual in the prior months and really wanted to catch a few Driftless trout while I was there. The setting was worth it almost on its own, though. The small stream was cool and clear, winding downhill through a sunlit forest, riffling over rocks and forming relatively deep pools at the bends. It was hard to believe that this was publicly accessible even though it was private land; the stream was much too small to be deemed navigable. The Minnesota DNR purchases public angler easements like this, marked on the roadside with a tan sign, through multiple funding sources including trout stamp revenue. The easement allows the public to fish the trout stream within set corridor boundaries on each side of the streambank. The easement is permanent and attaches to the land even if it is later sold to another owner, similar to a conservation easement. The Minnesota DNR can also conduct fisheries habitat projects on the stream and prioritizes publicly accessible streams for stocking. While the public can fish the stream, that is all they can do: no hunting, no camping, and no dogs. Packing out any trash either brought in or found goes without saying. I lost my dropper nymph somewhere along the way and switched to a dry fly. I caught up with Buddy and he had caught a few more since we separated. We decided to fish together and try to find Scott to make sure we made it back to the conference in time to shower and change before the Awards in Craft ceremony, where I was giving out the National Wildlife Federation’s Asian Carp Writing Contest Awards and all of us had submissions in different categories. Buddy spotted a promising pool at a bend of the stream but told me to fish it. “I’ve already caught a few, let’s get you a fish,” he told me. He handed me his St. Croix rod with a hopper dropper already tied and instructed me where to cast it and where to mend to drift the dropper in the deep channel of the pool. I felt the tug within a few casts, set the hook and guided the brown trout into Buddy’s net. It was beautiful, maybe 12 inches, golden brown with black spots and a perfect mottling of red dots outlined in white. I caught three more, then Buddy caught a couple, and then we moved on. It seemed like we waded, fished, and hiked forever without running into Scott, and we all lacked cell reception, but our search was fast forgotten when we came upon a sandy stretch with dozens of brown trout visible holding in the current. Buddy tried one cast and they scattered but regrouped. They never left the stretch, but darted with every cast and never betrayed an inkling of taking our flies. We settled for watching and marveling at them. As time was getting late it dawned on us that we may have missed Scott if he went back to the Land Cruiser along a streambank trail within the easement while we were in the river; the riparian vegetation was thick enough, especially with stinging nettle, which Scott warned us about since were all wet-wading in shorts and wading boots. We turned back, hoping we were right, and along the way my shins and calves began to sting from exposure to the invasive weed when the fine hairs covering it stuck into my skin as I must have brushed against it. As Scott warned, I didn’t itch it, but instead got back in the stream and let the water soothe it. Scott was waiting for us back at the Land Cruiser. He’d hiked back over an hour earlier after the sole of his wading boot blew out, but not before catching a few brown trout of his own, though not the brookies he was after, which eluded all of us. No matter; we all had a fine day of fly-fishing for trout in the Driftless Area, catching and releasing a few beautiful brown trout in an idyllic setting on a sunny mid-September day. To top it off, we made it back to the awards ceremony and each placed in the categories we entered. We couldn’t have had such a day without Minnesota’s angler easement program which allowed us access to that private stream to catch secret public trout. By Drew YoungeDyke This Michigan Outside column was originally published in the January 2020 issue of Woods'N'Water News. The cliché is that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but can you get to know a fisherman by his tackle box? The concept has been on my mind since I brought my great-grandpa’s tackle box home from my parents’ house a couple months ago on the way back from the Upper Peninsula cottage where it had rested since he died in 1981, the year after I was born. While I have a few pictures of him holding me as a baby, I never had the chance to fish with him. I hoped, though, that I could learn more about him as a fisherman by examining the contents of his tackle box. Some background on my great-grandpa helped get me started. His name was William Lantta, “Grandpa Bill,” and he lived in Ironwood, Michigan, as an electrician in and later underground foreman of the Geneva iron mine. He bought the family cottage on Chaney Lake – the one I write about so often lately – in 1959, but he also used to fish Island Lake in Wisconsin, where his siblings had a cottage. Chaney Lake has been a northern pike lake for as long as my family has been fishing it: the first cottage log entry is post scripted as “Grandpa Bill caught a beautiful 24 ½” northern.” A quick Google search for Island Lake tells me it holds muskies, northern pike, panfish, smallmouth bass, and walleyes. And family photos of him from the 1910’s and 1960’s are adorned with stringers of northerns. Grandpa Bill’s tackle box is green and metal with a leather-wrapped handle. It’s dinged and dented and well used, resembling the condition of the old aluminum rowboat at the cottage and the color of its oars. Even without knowing the specifics of the lures in his tackle box, a quick glance at the five and six-inch painted wood lures in the top tray tell you that it belonged to a mid-century pursuer of big toothy predator fish. The most distinctive lure is a six-inch wooden Mud Puppy made by the C.C. Roberts Bait Company. It was invented in 1920 by Constance Roberts of Mosinee, Wisconisin, and was a widely-used muskie lure in the mid-twentieth century. Its short revolving tail provided enticing action to muskies and northerns, and its glass eyes indicate it was made before WWII, when the glass eyes imported from Germany became unavailable, according to a detailed history of the lure written by Dan Basore in Midwest Outdoors. Another distinctive wooden lure in the box is a Heddon Basser, with “head-on Basser” scripted in a metal plate across the open smiling mouth that would provide a topwater splashing action for smallmouth or, more likely, hungry northerns. In place of the treble hook on its tail, though, a lead sinker was wired to the eyelet, maybe for use in jigging the last time it was fished. A five-inch jointed wooden minnow reminded me of the articulated streamer I used to catch my first northern with a fly rod earlier this fall. At first I thought it was a Creek Chub Pikey Minnow, but the hardware looked different. The metal lip and cup rig for the hook looked more like photos I’ve seen of old Isle Royale lures, which were made in Jackson, Michigan. The purpose would be the same: enticing northern pike to strike. Classic lures fill out the tackle box, including a wooden South Bend Bass Oreno, a Creek Chub mouse lure, and a Johnson’s Silver Minnow in its box which looks more like a 1930’s box than a mid-century one. There is also a weedless spinner, a fish-shaped painted metal Phleuger lure, and two spoons, one stamped as the “Spindare” from B & E Bait Co of St. Paul, Minnesota. Additional tackle includes a wire trolling leaders with flashers, cork and wood bobbers, sinkers, chicken bouillon cubes, treble hooks, swivels, a spool of 18-pound test “All Silk” casting line, and a spool of 15-lb. test “Best-O-Luck” braided nylon casting-trolling line from South Bend. He likely cast these from a South Bend No. 1000 Anti-Backlash Reel, as indicated by the empty box for just such a baitcasting reel. A1952 Michigan Legal Fish Rule from Merschel Hardware in East Tawas, Michigan, ensured the fish he kept were legal to keep. What does all this tell me about the fisherman who fished these lures, though? I already knew he fished for northern pike and musky, and the lures confirmed it. The bass plugs are also effective topwater lures for northern pike, but he might have also used them for smallmouth. He used both casting and trolling line, and had a metal trolling leader rigged with flashers, as well as a Heddon Basser rigged for jigging, so he probably used all three methods. And the fish rule tells me he made sure to follow the size limits set by the Michigan Conservation Commission, later the Natural Resources Commission. That’s just the fisherman he was on the surface, though. Below the surface, his tackle box tells me even more. It wasn’t filled with multitudes of lures and baits for any given situation; it had just a handful of well-worn classics that could have probably been found in the tackle boxes of most freshwater predator anglers of the region and time. And most of the lures ranged from the Depression through the 1950s. And yet, Grandpa Bill lived until 1981. So it suggests that he was a fisherman who took care of his equipment. He fished a handful of lures he trusted for decades, and the chipped paint and tooth marks indicate that they were well-used as he enjoyed the woods and waters of the western Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin on days off and later retirement from subsurface toil in the iron mine to provide for his family. There was one more object in the tackle box, though, from which no firm conclusions can be drawn. It’s a folded advertisement and order form for Flatfish lures from Helin Tackle Company of Detroit, Michigan. With no Flatfish in the tackle box, I’m left to wonder if he had a notion of ordering one but never did, or if it came with one that maybe broke off one day while reeling in a beautiful northern on Chaney Lake. Maybe one day when I jump in Chaney Lake after taking a sauna at the cottage I’ll find a long-lost Flatfish lure on the lake bed. Or maybe I never will and the purpose of that ad will always remain a mystery. The nature of my great-grandpa as a fisherman is just a little bit less of a mystery to me, though. Tackle boxes like his adorn shelves and back corners of garages and sheds throughout the upper Midwest, and lures like his fill pages of eBay auctions. My great-grandpa’s tackle box gave me just a little more insight into who he was as an angler and a man, though, and that’s much more valuable than what his lures could fetch in an online auction. Those lures are going to stay in that tackle box for future generations of my family to rediscover. POSTSCRIPT: I received an message from my mom's cousin Gretchen, who used to fish with him as a child and teenager, after she read the article. She wrote, "I recognized some of the baits, especially the yellow one (Mud Puppy). I remember the ones we (he) used most often were a red and white metal bait called a daredevil... We fished a lot with him. He was very quiet and would go out in ALL sorts of weather... sit for ever and ever. There was no joking around. He was very good at cleaning fish and did so on a narrow slab of wood on stick like legs on the hillside in front of the cottage. There were so many fish when we were young that he had made a homemade smoker (made from an old refrigerator and wood burning stove)... we had crappies for breakfast! Ina (his second wife) was a very good fish cook. I think he mostly smoked the northerns." That's sisu in so many ways. |
AUTHORDrew YoungeDyke is an award-winning freelance outdoor writer and a Director of Conservation Partnerships for the National Wildlife Federation, a board member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and a member of the Association of Great Lakes Outdoor Writers and the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association.
All posts at Michigan Outside are independent and do not necessarily reflect the views of NWF, Surfrider, OWAA, AGLOW, MOWA, the or any other entity. ARCHIVES
June 2022
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