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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Coping with rotten luck

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The end of a fishing trip is supposed to be a big celebration. You come home with dirt in your finger nails and pounds of fish to fry, and embellish on heroic tales while drinking leftover beers throughout the night.

You enjoy yourself and your fishing companions so much that waking up the next morning is worse than unsnagging your most prized lure stuck in a web of its own fishing line high up in a tree.

The exhaustion and inevitable hangover that ensue the next morning provide the necessary closure in the age-old ritual, and will be included in the trip’s re-telling throughout the years to come.

A couple weeks ago, I went on a four-day fishing excursion on the north shore rivers of Lake Superior in Ontario with my dad and younger brother and was really looking forward to such a night. We had the best intentions to return home and cover ourselves in fish grime one last time before parting ways, but it never happened. We left Ontario empty-handed.

When Sunday night rolled around and we pulled into my dad’s driveway in Duluth, we cleaned out the boat, stored our waders in the garage for next spring and ate fish-less dinners at our own respective houses. It was less than satisfactory, and without the proper closure of a long night of tales and river food, it was as if the trip had never happened.

The next day, I returned to work at the Timberjay and had nothing much to say. After all, the point is to amplify your exploits, but I couldn’t turn the half-dead spawning salmon we caught into a staunch, flush fish. That’s a lie, not an exaggeration.

And if there was nothing to brag about – no stories to tell – there was no trip. That’s how it works.

So, what am I doing writing about the very thing I said is not worth telling? To add closure, not just for myself, but for all those fishermen and hunters out there who haven’t been able to enjoy a night of celebration.

We can’t go on like it never happened. Not only is it bad luck, but it’s unhealthy to live in denial. It’s time to face the harsh truth.

The distress from a luckless fishing or hunting expedition can really change a person.

Half way through our Ontario trip, I already started to notice the ailments of misfortune surfacing within us.
My dad handled the adversity by regressing in his mind to more fortunate times of fishing in Ontario … 25 years ago. As for me, I put on a hopeful face to cover my actual despair.

But my brother Nick suffered the worst.

Nick is an avid fisherman, and every time I visit him in Duluth, there are salmon and trout chilling in his fridge. Fishing is where his competitive nature and obsessive urges take over. He’ll fish five different streams in a day if he has to, but he won’t accept defeat.

As you can imagine, the fruitlessness of our trip took its toll on him. After almost three days of bush-wacking through the remote north shore, wading through fast-flowing rivers over slime-covered rocks and executing a deserving amount of perfect casts into swirling eddies, Nick was fish-less. Not even a bite.

It was killing him. Darkness would start to settle in and the wind would blow stronger, yet he wouldn’t put down his pole. He wanted to fish almost every river and stream we passed in the car, and his talk in the cabin at nights revolved solely around prospective fish. 

All I wanted was for him to get his wish. And he finally did.

At the very end of our third day, my dad and I were taking a break to warm-up from the cold wind on the mighty Nipigon River. Nick walked up the shore to a rock that jutted out into the water and started throwing his pink spawn bag.

Soon enough, we heard a yell. Nick came running toward us, holding what at first appeared to be a small log. As he neared, it grew fins and a tail.

It was a half-dead king salmon. By the size of its now-shrunken body, it was clear the fish was once a beauty, just not anymore. Its eyes bulged out of its head and dark green scales turned gray where silver and pink once shined.

Every fall, king salmon swim up the rivers to spawn and then die a few days later. Most fishermen leave their ebbing bodies for the birds.

So, of course, we didn’t eat the king. Nevertheless, Nick was as ecstatic as a puppy with a tennis ball. He even said landing that fish made him feel like a man again.

I was happy for him and even felt a bit of the joy for myself, but inside, I knew how low we had fallen. Desperately low. In that moment, it was like nothing could be worse, yet nothing could be more perfect. It was both the climax and the downfall.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but catching that mangey fish was the closure we needed. My brother was on the scoreboard, my dad had a new story to remind him things could be worse, and we all had something to laugh about in the cabin that night.

Although a dying fish wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, it was what nature had to give us. And for that, I am thankful.



Aloysia Power, fish, Nipigon