Big Fish in the Quetico

My dad took my brothers and me to the Quetico for a canoe trip in 1976. We paddled the canoes on lakes and rivers. We portaged the canoes on trails. We camped on islands and river banks. We dipped our cups into the lakes and drank the water. The scenery was beautiful and memorable.

We also fished in the lakes and rivers. My dad brought fishing poles and his tackle box. He brought a net to bring the fish into the canoe. He remembered a fish that got away when he was canoeing in the Boundary Waters as a young man. It was a big fish, too big for a net. He reeled in the fish all the way to the side of his canoe. His friend tried to scoop up the fish with a net. But as soon as the net touched its tail, the fish started thrashing and got away. My dad did not want that to happen again, so he brought a big gaff hook. This time if a big fish came along, he would hook it with the gaff hook instead of using a net.

We were camping on an island, and my brother Paul was fishing from the shore. He hooked a big one and reeled it in to shore. It was too big to fit in the net. My dad was ready. He got out the gaff hook and hooked the fish under the jaw. Paul held the fish up for our brother Pete to take a picture. It was a northern pike. We measured it and weighed it. It weighed 11½ pounds and was 39 inches long. My dad was a scientist, so he recorded it in metric units also—99 cm, 5.22 kg. He kept trying to imagine a way that we could eat that whole fish before it spoiled, or before our canoe trip would end, but he eventually decided we couldn't do it. So Paul put it back in the lake. At first it was motionless in the shallow water where he put it. Was it dead from being out of the water such a long time? Then we could see the lake surface rippling from the water the fish was breathing through its gills. Finally it flicked its tail and disappeared into the lake.