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Taking sled dogs to catch lake trout in upper Minnesota

By Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Source: MCT News Service

IN THE BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA, Minn. _ Early one Wednesday a lone skier shuffled onto Moose Lake, pulling a small sled. Otherwise only Stu McEntyre, his 11-year-old son, Spencer, and I were there on a frigid February morning in what has been a succession of frigid February mornings.

Stu brought with him 20 dogs.

Yammering madly, and arranged in teams, the animals strained against their harnesses, eager to scamper up the lake.

Stu's thermometer variably registered a degree shy of, or in excess of, 20 degrees below zero.

Still, it was a good morning. Shining brightly, the rising sun cast shimmering halos at ever higher elevations across the long stretch of ice that lay before us.

Perfect, Stu and I thought, for running the dogs to Knife Lake in the BWCA to fish for lake trout.

"Be careful going down the first hill, hold the dogs back," shouted Stu, who lives just outside of Ely. Then we were off, the chilled air stinging my cheeks and my goggles soon fogging up.

Stu and I first met in the 1970s, when I also lived in Ely and he was racing dogs, traveling in winter with another friend, Don Beland, into Canada and beyond, to Alaska.

In the years since, Stu has never lost his love for cold-weather travel. But on this day, rather than race, he and his wife, Jeanne, own White Wolf Sled Dog Trips of Ely, and he leads winter journeys into the boundary waters.

The attractions of such excursions became evident anew as the dogs settled into their comfortably fast trots, one trailing the other, mouths open, tongues hanging. Like wolves and coyotes, their wilder cousins, these animals were born to run, and at day's end their simply demarcated lives _ run, rest, eat, sleep _ leave them exhausted, but satisfyingly so.

Moose Lake passed beneath us nearly in silence, the only sound that of the whoosh of sled runners skimming atop the snow. Stu was in the lead, Spencer second and I behind.

We'd be on Knife Lake in two hours. The ice there would be some 3 feet thick _ we knew that from previous trips at this time of year _ and we'd auger our fishing holes by hand, dropping jigs tipped with ciscoes into about 60 feet of water.

Then, lines set, on shore we'd put a match to dry wood, ignite a campfire and heat a pot of tea. The lake ice would groan. A raven would squawk overhead, curious about the intrusion. Pine boughs would undulate in the wind.

Otherwise, quiet would prevail, as it did centuries ago when hard-bitten voyageurs paddled these border waters in cumbersome canoes filled with beaver and otter pelts.

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Drilling the holes, one revolution after another, our auger nearly lost itself, the ice was so thick.

We fanned the holes in a broad arc not far from Dorothy Molter's island, on whose shore we set the day's camp.

Freed of their traces, some dogs curled in the snow beneath a bright sun that hinted strongly of the coming spring. Others squatted on their haunches, eyes closed, nodding off.

On a day last winter that was perilously cold and windy, Stu and I traveled to this same lake. We caught no fish, and in an attempt not to repeat that misfortune, this time I brought a depth finder.

Mostly I was curious as to the whereabouts of lake trout in this deep, cold lake, specifically at what depths they suspend themselves in winter.

A mysterious species, and often not easy to catch, lake trout thrive in otherwise inhospitably arctic water. For short periods in spring when the ice goes out, they rise to the surface to feed. But as spring turns to summer they swim ever more deeply, seeking colder and colder environs.

"But in the end it might not matter much whether we drop the baits to the exact depths the fish are at or not," Stu said. "This water is so clear a trout can see a jig or a ciscoe from a long distance, and if they want it, they will come to it."

We drilled five holes, one shy of the two apiece we were allowed. In four we dropped ciscoes threaded onto long-shanked hooks. Loosening the drags on our open-face reels, we set the lines to run free in the event of a strike. Then, using paper clips, we pinched bright orange ribbons onto the lines near the rod tips, and planted the rods into mounded snow and slush near the holes.

These were, in effect, tip-ups, and if a ribbon disappeared down a hole, a fish was on.

Spencer fished. But he also climbed on deadfalls, fed a pair of winged whiskey jacks that marauded our campfire looking for scraps, and wrestled with the dogs.

"What do you want to do when you grow up?" I asked.

"Maybe this, taking these trips with dogs."

"Have you traveled much with your dad this winter?"

"Mostly on weekends. I like overnight trips best. You have a lot of freedom to do what you want."

I tied an airplane jig onto a line and carried a lawn chair onto the ice. Adjusting the depth finder, I "watched" the jig as I lowered it into the water.

The machine reflected no sonar signals indicating fish were present.

In winters now long ago, Dorothy Molter also fished trout here, and I suspect she employed some sort of tip-up. She first came to Knife Lake in 1930 when she was 23 and inherited the island in 1948, spending virtually all of her days there until she died in 1986.

I visited Dorothy on occasion in summertime and slept on the screened porch of her cabin. In the mornings she fried breakfast and liked to talk. She was resilient and in winter put up huge blocks of ice in sod huts that acted as freezers, and coolers, during warm-weather months.

"I live alone, but I'm not lonely," she famously said.

I took a break from fishing and hiked to our campfire. It seemed callous to imagine that Dorothy wasn't somehow around the fire also. Some of the pines that angled above us surely also looked down upon her the first time she set foot on the island.

Airplane jigs are most effective when lifted in long sweeps, with the angler extending an arm nearly straight overhead before lowering it and allowing the jig's "wings" to spiral the lure wildly through the depths.

Fishing again, I repeated this procedure over and over. But in time my intensity faded as I focused instead on the distant shoreline, the blue sky, the snow, the dogs, the wind weaving among the pines.

"There's one!"

A ribbon had disappeared. Slogging through deep snow, Stu soon held the suspect rod in his hand, tightening the reel's drag and delicately lifting the outfit upward to test whether a fish had taken the ciscoe.

Setting the hook, he handed the rod to Spencer.

Soon, a 5-pound trout lay on the ice.

By mid-afternoon, shadows grew long from the pines on Dorothy's island. The sky remained cloudless. But the warmth had gone out of the sun, and we pulled on heavy parkas for the trip back to Moose Lake.

I thought: We should have brought our camping gear and stayed overnight. We could have caught more fish and had more freedom, as Spencer said.

The dogs would have voted otherwise.

Pulling hard now for home, and quiet, they used up this cold country in a hurry.

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(c) 2010, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):

	  SLEDDOGS