JULY 16, 2021 – Grandpa had been a fisherman, as I knew from the rods and reels that hung on the back porch of the cabin. There was also the large fishing net that always got snagged on stuff in the green boat box down by the dock. Then there were his stories about canoe trips and fishing on the St. Croix River in the years before WW I. But by the time I’d reached toddler stage, Grandpa fished only occasionally from his 1940 Alumacraft. He’d become mostly an armchair fisherman.
After working all day on a cabin project, Dad and Grandpa repaired to the front yard atop the steep bank overlooking the lake. Grandpa smoked a Roi-Tan and Dad sipped a can of Hamm’s beer, as the two men discussed next steps of their current project.
Grandpa doted on my sisters. They displayed talent for the violin, which had been Grandpa’s own vocation for many years. But he called me, the only boy, “the crown prince.” One of the trappings of my royal position was the privilege of watching Grandpa blow smoke rings purely for my amusement. I became jealous, however, when one day as I rounded the corner of the cabin, I discovered that on the command of my sisters, he blew smoke rings for them, as well.
On the post-project, smoke-and-beer breaks, Grandpa sat in his canvas, camp-style “chaise.” He kept the bugs at bay by swishing a small pine bough, a plastic bag wrapped around the “grip” to avoid getting sap on his hand. During gaps in “project talk,” Grandpa became an armchair fisherman.
Those days predated depth finders and other technological advances for locating fish. You had to rely on knowledge gained by experience. A hundred feet out from shore was a rock bar, and as Grandpa explained to me, you had to know exactly where the bar was and anchor or troll on the far side of it. “That’s where the whoppers hang out,” he explained. When a boat was on the wrong side of the bar, Grandpa told me so. I felt embarrassed for the fishermen who weren’t as smart as Grandpa.
Grandpa was also safety conscious. “Never stand up in a boat,” he told me . . . at least a thousand times. If he saw a fisherman standing, line in the water, Grandpa’d say, “Think what’d happen if a musky grabbed his lure while he’s standing up. The fish’d pull him right outta the boat.”
Grandpa knew the best time to fish too, and it wasn’t at 4:00 on a hot, sunny afternoon. “Those guys out there aren’t gonna catch anything now,” he’d say through the smoke of a Roi-Tan. “Ya gotta fish later in the day when the sun’s lower and the fish are feeding. Or ya gotta get out there at dawn.”
Whenever I see a fisherman today—at high noon, standing in a fancy fishing boat on the wrong side of the bar—I think of Grandpa’s armchair fishing wisdom.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
