Sturgeon Rodeo!

Behold the noble sturgeon, largest fish to be found in the waters of Wisconsin.

This picture is of a gigantic specimen.  But recently I was involved in a research trip with the Department of Natural Resources that aimed to study these prehistoric armour plated fishies.  And, no, we did not come across any that were that size.  (The state record was 212 pounds and 7 feet long).

We were studying the return of sturgeon to a small river where a dam had been taken out, allowing them to come back to waters they had not seen in nearly a century.

So how do you run down large, uncooperative fish in rapidly moving water?

One method involves spotting them in the shallows, setting a net and driving them into it.

This does not look like ideal canoe safety, but life vests were worn by all hands and the water was not deep.  Plus, hey, Science.

The fish were not behaving, which is only to be expected.  On a day of intermittent cloud cover we lacked the proper light conditions to visually track them and nudge them netwards.  Also, frustratingly we had three big ones just barge right through the nets.  Back up plan?

Line fishing the deep holes where sturgeon hang out.  Three Angling Adepts, and myself, attempting to catch a specific and very suspicious species.

Of course much fun was had catching all sorts of other things.  Given the bottom fishing tactics employed this was "Trash Fishing for Science".

This I'm told is a Golden Redhorse.  One of an assortment of similar fish generically referred to as suckers.  Granted, it looks dim witted but they are a marker for clean water quality.  Along with a half dozen other species we encountered all the weights and lengths were recorded for future study.

How ironic that with this level of fishing expertise on display the only sturgeon actually brought in that day was by yours truly, a retired duffer who many years does not even wet a line.

By sturgeon standards this is a small scrawny adolescent.  We saw multiple fish three times this size but were unable to corral them.  Still for research purposes this is first rate.  You want to radio tag them young.  Female sturgeon can live up to 150 years so in theory this one will be studied long, long after this crew of Science Fishermen has gone around that final bend in the river.

A Cave at Cave Lake?

I am a fan of frivolous side trips.  You just never know what you'll find.  When planning a Boundary Waters trip I scrutinize the map.  Will it be colder on Frost Lake?  Are the bugs worse on the Louse River?  What demands will be made on me at Extortion Creek?  (For the record the answers are:  No, maybe, and none I could determine).

So when I saw a Cave Lake not far from our main camping site I just had to go there.  To see if there was a cave there of course.

The nice thing about day trips is you can pack very light.  Pretty much just the canoe. And these new Kevlar babies don't weigh much.

Tuscarora is the outfitter we worked with.  Nice folks.  I assume they are the Official Outfitter of Blue Man Group.

Cave Lake is a picturesque place.

A panoramic view from a rocky hillside.

Thick, luxuriant moss.  Too bad there is no campsite here, it would be delightful to sleep on.

But where's the cave?  

Caves are not common in the hard rock geology of this part of the world.  So I figured at most we might find some tumbled down pile of stones with a niche among them.  But no, not even that.

Until right at the portage one of our party noticed this!

Yes, it does look like a cave but inspect closely.  See that leaf at the cave entry?  This "cave" is about five inches tall and probably home to some sort of grumpy rodent.

Forty Seven Years in the Boundary Waters

When I got an invite to tag along on a Boundary Waters Canoe Area trip recently they did have the common sense to ask if I had ever been there before.  Well, yes I had.  In fact my first trip there was before all but one of the other members of our party had even been born.

Forty seven years ago.....1971.

I was a Boy Scout, member of Troop 8 on the north side of Minneapolis.  The Scouts at that time had their own canoe base near Ely, and going on one of these jaunts was kind of a big deal.  You needed a certain number to make up an ideal party so a couple of us that were on the young side got tapped to go.   

The BWCA* was a wilder place then.  No Kevlar canoes, they were aluminum and while indestructible they were darned heavy.  Each canoe had a crew of three.  One paddler front and aft and a "duffer" who sat in the middle.  We younger scouts mostly got this duty.

Portages between lakes were naturally done in one operation.  One carried the canoe, one carried a pack with food and gear, one carried a pack with personal stuff - clothes, sleeping bags etc - for three.  On our recent trip we did not come anywhere close to this enviable level of efficiency.

I suppose I've been to the Boundary Waters a dozen times.  But no trip rivaled this one for sheer ambition.  We went way, way up into the Canadian side of the wilderness.  Up so far that you still saw crumbling remains of early logging camps.  Up so far that our final destination was on a little lake where there was a container with a message book.  It was labeled, for no reason I can recall, MOBBS.  And the prior entry to ours was several months back.

Looking over the photo brings back memories.  I of course am the good looking kid in the front row right side.  Our guide was a fellow named Bill Bebee from Texas.  The adult who came along on the trip was Mr. Day.  I remember him being a WW II vet who worked as a butcher at the local market.  His two sons came along (one seems to not be in the picture).  Their names are long forgotten, I think they were just known as Big Day and Little Day.  Also on the trip were Big Riemer and Little Riemer, Garry Kowalski - who I remember considering the funniest person ever to walk the face of the earth - and a few others with less distinct pictures.  Rob, who I stayed in touch with for a number of years. He developed a drinking problem.  The big tall guy who more than anything resembles a Garry Larson cartoon of a boy scout.  I think his name was England.

The Boundary Waters experience has changed a lot in nearly a half century.  My recollection is that on the Scout trip we had canvas tents.  Probably US Army surplus but modified so that you could use your canoe paddles as tent poles.  The diet was monotonous.  Lots of oatmeal.  Every night we cooked a concoction called "bannock" for lunch the next day.  We paddled every day, all day apart from a half day rest up at our final destination, the enigmatic MOBBS lake.**

In the 21st century the equipment has gotten much lighter and generally better.  But there seems to be a need to carry a lot more "comforts of home" along.  Many of the other travelers we saw - and there were a lot more than in 1971 - were older folks moving at a leisurely pace with heavily laden canoes.  This is neither good nor bad, just different.  Although I can point to a few things that are great upgrades.  Despite having more padding than I did at 14 the ground has become a very unpleasant thing to sleep on.  The new "Thermarest" mattresses are very comfortable and don't go flat after a day or two like the old ones.  Much recommended.

As to other changes I can report that I am able to portage a lot more now than I could then.  Mostly my more stubborn adult nature I suspect.

It's not as if there have been any other substantive changes over the years....

-------
* It did not formally become the BWCA until 1978.  I think it was just the Superior National Forest in 1971.

** Possibly Bent Pine Lake.

Pregnant Trees?

While tramping about looking for the CCC camp at Gooseberry Falls I was distracted by several odd looking trees..

Weird, no?  Of course it is some kind of pine tree malady, but it really looked to me as if the trees were pregnant.

And because my brain works this way it got me thinking about Tolkien.

Tolkien created many fantastic creatures but none more exotic than the Ents.  Big sentient ambulatory trees.  You probably remember them from the movies.

Tolkien was always tossing in little details that made Middle Earth such a believable world.  One conversation with Treebeard the Ent mentions in passing that the Entwives - female Ents - have all wandered off and not been seen for a long time.


Well, while not being sure what the gestation period for an Ent actually is, perhaps the Entwives have good reason to not return home.

Just some Saturday morning musings regards tramping around in the woods....

CCC Camp Gooseberry Falls Minnesota

On any trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area the classic stopping off point is Gooseberry Falls State Park.  Rustic paths, a nice visitor center and naturally some picturesque water falls.

On our recent voyage north we did stop off there, and I discovered something that I really should have already known....it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and there was a sizable CCC camp at the site.  

The CCC built a lot of things out of cement and stone....starting with the supports of the park entry sign.

The biggest project was a retaining wall designed to look like a castle.  This picture does not do it justice, it is 300 feet long.

Some of the old CCC built structures are gone, others remain.  Here is an ice house.

Of course I had to poke about and find evidence of the actual camp, not just the park structures that the CCC boys were there to build.  It takes a little doing, but once you adjust your eye the main streets of the camp are visible as areas with less in the way of mature trees.  Then you just start looking for traces...

A sizable foundation with a ramp.

A smaller, more subtle foundation.

This looks like some kind of boiler or hot water heater.  The CCC camp was in operation from 1934 until 1941.  The next year most of the camp buildings were intentionally burned down.  This might be a newer relic.  

Some sort of drain, a ceramic pipe heading down into the ground.

Remarkably the CCC era is now far enough in the past to qualify as archaeology.  This 2008 article describes excavations of the CCC structures by members of a modern revival of CCC, the Minnesota Conservation Corps.  Given the mere 66 year gap from abandonment to excavation it is quite possible that a few elderly gents might have wandered by and told the kids they were digging in the wrong places!

A nice map of the park highlighting the CCC built structures can be found HERE.

Boundless Ambitions

I'm just back from a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, that vast wilderness along the Minnesota-Canada border.  No motor craft, no roads, you travel with what you can carry across rocky portages.

It was my first trip there since my kids were young.  

Great weather and company.  

More on this over the next couple of posts, but carrying a wet, heavy pack and a canoe at my age did get me thinking about ambitions.

I am not as ambitious as this guy:

About the size and weight of the lure he hit on - managing to get all three hooks - he would be an unimpressive entrant for Chub Fest.  ( btw, no Chub Fest '18 due to schedule conflicts.)

Perhaps on a good day I could manage the ambition levels of these entrepreneurs in a town near the entry to the Wilderness.

Live Minnows, Leeches and Ciscos.  Maps, Ice and all other outdoor necessities.  Small town family industry with a giant walleyed pike on the roof.

Shuffling Through the Halls of Academe

On retirement I had plans of going back to school on a part time basis.  And I have, albeit a bit more part time than I'd imagined.  Each of the last two falls I took a class or two at the local Tech College.  I learned things....but its not as if a bit of dabbling will ever make me into a machinist or a welder.

This fall I'm planning something a bit different.  At my current level of antiquity tuition is free both at Tech College and at the University.  With some restrictions of course.  Consider it Bucky Badger's thank you for 33 years of paying taxes.

I've decided to go back to Uni this fall.  

I'm keeping my ambitions manageable, the goal after all is not to get another degree, or to do this full time.  Just to learn a few useful things.

So I'm going to take German classes.

Now I did take a year of German in high school, and either a semester or a year - can't recall which - in college.  This plus some measure of aptitude from having Germanic, kraut infused DNA has given me what I consider "travel proficiency".  By which I mean being able to ask basic questions, acquire food and drink, know in a general sense what is going on around me.

But I'd like to up the game a bit.

It would be nice to attain conversational level.  I anticipate a few challenges of course.  My hearing is not as great as it once was.  Perhaps a side effect of that machining hobby.  And most Germans have English skills that they are always willing to deploy when I struggle.

But still, one can always improve.  I had to take a test evaluating my current level of proficiency.  It was interesting....they confiscate your phone before parking you in a little testing alcove.  Much of it was reading dense paragraphs and answering questions on them.  One was about whales beaching themselves in the North Sea.  Another was about a novel that eerily predicted a lot of details of the subsequent Titanic disaster. Nautical jargon is oddly comprehensible to me....

(Disturbing update.  I scored well enough to warrant placement in German 201. Not sure I want to go that route. Should have thrown the test I suppose....)

On a side note, I think college has changed a lot since I was last a student in the 1970s.  I may need a new posting category for this.....