OUTDOOR

BY DAVE BECK

The next 30 years

Welcome to the second week of the new Outdoor Tales and Trails._I actually met with the powers that be at The Journal on a Thursday afternoon and finalized an agreement to continue writing my outdoor column._As fate would have it, the very next day I headed to Lake Vermilion in Northern Minnesota to musky fish with Uncle Frank. Talk about timing. _ Sometimes the flowers arrange themselves._Spending time with Uncle Frank always amounts to a wealth of material. The challenge for me is how not to abuse my literary budget.

For the past eight years (I think) I have traveled to Vermilion for a week of musky fishing._It’s sort of like a baseball player competing in Triple A ball all summer long and getting called up to the big leagues at the end of the season. Why is it such an important pilgrimage for me?_ It’s because I can see more 50 inch-plus fish in one week than I can see fishing around here in 10 years._So yes, it feels like fishing in the big leagues.

Uncle Frank didn’t disappoint. _ The first thing he unloaded from his truck at musky camp was a crayfish trap._As odd as that sounds, it was brilliant and totally an Uncle Frank move. Lake Vermilion might be famous for walleyes and muskies but the rusty crawfish infests every inch of the lake. To top it off, he produced a can of tuna and said: “I brought bait too.”_ I don’t want to get too sidetracked on crayfish because this was, after all, a musky fishing trip._ To make a long story shorter, we caught enough crayfish to have a very small appetizer for one supper. We did learn that it takes a lot of crayfish to make a meal.

The opening evening on Lake Vermilion did not disappoint. It didn’t answer our prayers, but it certainly teased us pretty good._Almost right out of the gate Uncle Frank had a monster musky follow his lure to the boat only to slide away at the last minute. We fished a few different spots and ended up closing out the night with Uncle Frank dealing with the four-foot monster._ After giving Uncle Frank a few more whacks in the direction of the fish I turned the boat and fired my bucktail into the same area, hoping for a different result._As I reeled in my lure and got closer to the boat, I could see there was a musky following close behind. I’m not sure if it was the boat or my white dinner plate eyes that flared the monster but it simply faded into the depths of the lake and was gone._ For the next few days all was quiet on the crayfish and musky front until Monday at lunchtime, which was when Uncle Frank was getting ready to head home. I don’t know how or why the cosmic tumblers of the musky universe aligned for me but they did in unbelievable fashion. I was throwing a cast with the intention of getting my lure past the front side of a rock reef. The wind caught my topwater lure and took it behind the reef instead of in front of it._ If a fish hit my lure on that side of the reef it would certainly not end well for me._I started to retrieve it and an explosion happened._My lure was the epicenter of the blast which was, of course, a monster musky hitting my lure. I knew if I let the fish fight me it would take my line into the rocks and three things were likely to happen: The fish would break my line, my lure would stay crimped into the fish’s mouth, and then it would probably die. I heaved back with steady pressure knowing that my only chance was to get the fish to the surface and somehow roll it across the top of the reef._The reef stuck out of the lake by some six inches and the waves that were hitting it and rolling across it in my direction gave me hope that I could pull off this musky fishing miracle.

Well guess what? It worked!!_The 47-inch musky alligator rolled across the reef and splashed back into the lake on my side and the rest of the fight was uneventful._It slipped into the net putting an end to one of the most amazing fish fights I have ever had._ I slipped the monster back into the lake and smiled to no one as it eased its way from the surface and disappeared.

You don’t win very often on Lake Vermilion but on this day, I did._Now if I could just get someone to show me how to catch more crayfish I would be in business.