September 1, 2022 at 11:36 a.m.
Fish Like a GIRL: 'North Country Notebook' brings back memories
Fish Like a GIRL: 'North Country Notebook' brings back memories
There is something about finding familiar places within the covers of a paperback book that is just fun to me. I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way.
In the book, Vukelich regales readers with his fishing adventures. It is not only the adventures, and the memories made, that make the book fun to read, but the cast of characters. It seems so many of those characters have fallen by the wayside as time goes on.
Maybe it is that technology has done away with some of the old "tried and true" methods that we used to think would catch fish. Maybe it is that a lot of the superstitions have fallen by the wayside. I am not sure.
In my head I see an old guy sitting on a rocking chair near the corner of an old bait shop with a noisy neon sign blinking on and off. He is whittling wood and maybe even enjoying a sip of moonshine here or there. Stereotypical, for sure, but to me it speaks of days gone by, and of fishing stories that were somehow more "fun" and more "real" than those we hear today.
As a tournament angler and tournament director, I hear a ton of fish stories. But most of them are not about paddling a river somewhere on the outskirts of society that include a (now) funny encounter with a bear, or an old cane pole. Sure, we have stories about the guy who forgot to put the plug in his boat at Nokomis one early morning and, while waiting for take off, realized none to soon the boat was sitting much lower in the water than it should be, but some of the "good old days" stories are still the best.
It seems, in large part, the more challenging or even dangerous the story was at the time it happened, the more fun it is to hear time after time. I have a story of heading out to fish the Brule River once and somehow being daft enough as a dumb kid to wind up between some cubs and a mama bear. At the time, pretty terrifying. But retelling it now? Hilarious! It seems to be that way with a lot of things.
As I was reading through the "North Country Notebook," I was reminded of some of my own adventures, even though many were not quite as funny as the bear story. On the way to the memorial tournament, I barely missed a freshly killed skunk. That brought up a pretty funny story from the Hodag Bassmasters Boom Lake Open years ago.
There was a father and son team, Gary and Dan Slagle, who fished that tournament every year. They now fish the memorial, and I remind them of the story quite often.
Well, as I passed this skunk, it reminded me of the time they were coming to the open and hit a skunk.
"What the h**l is that smell?" I remember Rod's voice booming across the lake as Slagle's pulled in with Gary's old Lowe boat.
"Well, we hit a skunk way back there," the elder Slagle said. "She stinks pretty bad, don't she?" He laughed, saying he hoped the smell would calm down a bit once they got the boat in the water. When they came back for weigh-in at 3 p.m., the smell had indeed dissipated quite a bit.
"About noon or so, she started smelling a lot better," Gary announced as he loaded the boat. But hey, the show must go on, right?
Hitting deer is nothing new to many in the Northwoods, and the same can be said for tournament anglers. I remember Rod having a memorable mishap while headed to a tournament. I don't remember what tournament it was. It had to be a zone or state tournament or something, because he was paired up with a co-angler by random draw.
On the way to the tournament, Rod hit a deer. It took out the grill of his old Dodge and left quite a bit of hair and meat stuck in crevices of the truck here and there. But, there was a tournament to fish and the truck was still running fine, so off to the tournament he went.
At the end of the day, he handed the keys to his truck to his co-angler and asked him to bring down the black Dodge.
"How will I know which one it is?" The co-angler asked him.
"Oh, you should be able to smell it by now," Rod laughed. And yes, that was the case. The guy had no problem finding the truck.
Rod took the truck through the car wash before heading home, at least to get the "big pieces" cleaned out, as he said. It did smell much better, but he never replaced the grill and the horn always sounded pretty sick after that. But it was a memory made, so well worth the "character" it gave the truck.
Looking back, there are a ton of good memories like that, and perhaps I should start writing them down, lest they be forgotten completely someday. I was reminded of several funny times with another friend from the first bass club I was in, Jim Kerchefski. It seemed as though every time the two of us got in a boat together, something ridiculous happened, including Jim hooking himself in catching a 13.5 inch fish he could not even keep to almost sinking his boat because the overflow for the livewell was plugged.
Jim and I have been through quite a few things on the water together. Great memories, to be sure. And it is interesting how things that were even embarrassing at the time are the stories we love to retell the most.
"You're not going to believe what happened once," is how many stories start. And it is true that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Once I even snagged a rod and reel combo, a pretty pricey one at that, that another friend had lost in a tournament five years earlier. It was raining and he set the hook on what he thought was a fish.
The rod slipped and flew out of his hand into the water. He said he and his partner searched for it, losing the better part of an hour of the tournament in the process, but were never able to snag it. I was able to return the pair to him with one perfectly placed cast!
Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].
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