Up the Blackfoot with Chief Kawbawgam's Great-Great Grandson

“Again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.”
-- William Wordsworth, 1798

Rounding the point on the approach to the Blackfoot, it’s hard to imagine the J. H. Gillet once operated the largest sandstone quarry north of Marquette on this bay. Since that was around 1910 and now is now, all we could see were the remnants of the once bustling old stone dock. But our purpose wasn’t a historical sight seeing expedition, it was, rather a preliminary scouting out of the river in anticipation of Billy Little Chief’s serious fishing excursion up the Blackfoot. While I’m no Marlowe, and we never did see a Kurtz, unless you count the Club Smokies we had to circumvent in our voyage upstream, I will here try to recount the details of our Salmonic sojourn. I use the word “Salmonic” here in the generic sense, since it was really trout we were after, which are after all, members of the Salmonoid family, biologically speaking. Since I was a rookie chomping at the bit to experience what I had only heretofore heard about, going up the Blackfoot, Billy was more than happy to have me as lead tag alderman at the front of a camouflaged leaky skiff that most civilized gentlemen would never set foot in. But since I hardly qualify as a man of that kind by any standard, Billy found me more than able to assume the bow of this intrepid little engine (I know, I’m mixing my metaphors here) that could.

And so it was we awoke at the crack of noon, purchased some not so lively nightcrawlers, grabbed an old coffee can for bailing, fastened up our Mepps #10 spinners and pushed off. One of the harder things to tackle (I’ll be using lots of fishing terms in a punning way from here on in, so get used to it) from the perspective of not only nature writing but descriptive narrative in general, is how to paint a picture of earth, sea, and sky in words. The weather was gorgeous as we turned The Musti north and headed around the sandstone cape of Thunder Bay, beyond which lies Granite Bay and the mouth of the Blackfoot.

Before I talk about the lure of the river, allow a short meditation on the majesty of Lake Superior. Again, the problem with paying due homage to the lake lies in its resistance to description. It is so awesome in its immensity that words fail, or perhaps better lose their meaning. Without getting too deep, which is impossible in describing the lake, the philosophical difference between the beautiful and the sublime bears mentioning. It was during the Enlightenment (18th century) that the philosopher Immanuel Kant made this distinction, But his discourse is so, almost, intellectually impenetrable that I’ll try to sum it up in brief. Beholding a scene that can’t be wholly perceived, that outstrips perception, puts us in the realm of the sublime. The beautiful, on the other hand, is something the imagination can take in, or encompass, in a way that the articulation of aesthetic judgment is possible. One might describe, or paint, the Yellow Dog Falls much easier than one might represent Niagara Falls. While photography has changed this paradigm somewhat, it still makes sense that some natural phenomenon defies description. In many ways, Lake Superior falls into this category. I mean I can say that it holds 10% of the world’s fresh-water, or that the Empire state building would not be visible if lowered into its greatest depth, but this doesn’t really tell you how awesome it is. And so as I look at it now, even as I write this, I can’t really convey how beautiful it is. The sands we pushed off from were wind-scalloped in such a way as to outstrip the symmetry of the artistic. The symmetry of nature can only be once removed from the real when it is humanely rendered. The seamlessness of water and sky as two blues that are at once delineated and inseparable present an oxymoronic imagery that can only be seen and not described.

Enough of that, the lake was beautiful as we headed for Granite Bay. Running along the eastern point as we headed in I could see the giant eagle’s nest that’s been at the river’s mouth as long as I can remember, and, low and behold, two eagles: a younger one still awaiting the white head feathers that give it its name, and an older one bearing the distinctive appearance that denotes the Bald Eagle. Whether they knew Bill was so reverent of the natural world as to be one of their brethren, or because they thought us as such a laughable pair of human specimens as to be harmless, they perched in stately silence, heedless of our arrival in the foot deep sand over which we pulled our old dinghy as we entered the mouth of the river. The pines, the dunes, the sunny high sky, and gentle breeze sweetly recommending itself to our senses; the eagles and beaver swimming under our boat, and friendly bug buzz of the north woods as we gained the necessary draft to slowly motor up river are more than words can convey. But try I must, and try I shall.

So now we were in the river, and it was time to fish. I should say here that in the past 3 years the Blackfoot has been designated as a natural preserve for the brook trout (coasters) that spend their time in the rivers and big lake. As such, where once one could take their limit in trout over 7 inches, now only one trout can be taken, and it must exceed 18 inches. Of course we had no intention of keeping any fish, and I, being less of a Luddite than Billy, had my trusty digital camera, which is really the only way that God’s creatures should be hunted; although Billy, who loves real fishing and real hunting, likes nothing better than stalking deer and occasionally taking a trophy buck or succulent bambi. Billy considers big lake angling as meat fishing, and hunting from a blind as a lazy kind of wanton, non-sporting decadence he’s compared to raping babies.

At times in what follows I will quote other writers, far more skilled than I, as a way of supporting my humble ramblings. So here is what Roderick Haig-Brown, an Englishman who came west in search of the perfect river, has to say about rivers: “A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the blood returns to the heart….Lakes and the sea have great secret depths quite hidden from man and often almost barren of life. A river too may have its deep and secret places, may be so large that one can never know it properly; but most rivers that give sport are comparatively small, and one feels that it is within the range of the mind to know them intimately as to their changes through the season, as to the shifts and quirks of current, the sharp runs, the slow glides, the eddies and bars and crossing places, the very rocks of the bottom. And in knowing a river intimately is a very large part of the joy of fishing”(A River Never Sleeps, 1944).

I knew Billy knew this river intimately when we came to section of the stream where the water seemed to disappear. The tag alder formed such a dense canopy of vegetation as to give the illusion that we could go no further. This wasn’t a river runs through it as much as a river runs under it. Bill’s technique, which his sainted father, Kish-kit-a-wa-ge (Man with an Ear Cut Off), had long ago passed on to him, was to have me pull us along by the alder branches, while at the same time fighting them off so as not to leave us eyeless in Gaza. My sunglasses lasted about 30 seconds, and are still there to be found by the next intrepid interloper who braves the Blackfoot. Be warned though, it’ll soon have to be done on foot, since a giant pine tree lists over the river like the sword of Damocles right at the narrowest point of entry just above the mouth of the river. Since Billy had fished this noble stream for 60 years, he felt it his duty to wax poetic on the perils of fishing the bank, and while this was certainly informative, the majority of the time I spent untangling lines, lures, and rod from the infernal alders spoke volumes in confirming his ancient wisdom. Thrice I had to flip the bale and remove the spool as a way of beginning the long intervals of untying various Gordian knots. As more of an academic than practical fisherman, as is my wont, I will, once again, refer to the literature of angling. Confirming Billy’s best wisdom, Robert Traver writes (And don’t disagree with them lest you find yourself bleeding to death on the floor of the Lumberjack Tavern): “The tall lure catching tag alders on my side discourage any normal bank approach consistent with retaining one’s sanity. (Hacking down the tag alders would not only be a chore, but would at once spoil the natural beauty of the place and erect a billboard proclaiming: BIG TROUT RESIDE HERE!)”(Trout Madness, 1960). Once we reached a favorite hole, which was usually in the densest thicket available, Billy would have me tie us to a tag alder and commence with the impossible task of presenting line, lure, and worm into a black hole of submerged roots and logs.

At first, the small chubs and trout gladly assumed the task of devouring our worms, which got me wondering if even the best fishermen, like the Bystroms, Dagenais, and Trewhellas, didn’t sometimes return to shore skunked. While that didn’t happen, I did consult the literature on this once back to the camp. Here’s what Henry Van Dyke had to say about this over 200 years ago: “The attraction of angling for all the ages of man, from the cradle to the grave, lies in its uncertainty. ‘Tis an affair of luck….There is no combination of stars in the firmament by which you can forecast the piscatorial future. When you go a-fishing, you must take your chances; you offer yourself as a candidate for anything that may be going; you try your luck”(The Armchair Angler, 1986).

After a bit, and a modest repast of peanut butter sandwiches and beer, we caught some fish. Billy, ever the gracious host, and having those natural Kawbawgam Indian guide instincts in his blood, patiently steered us into positions where I would have the best chance of securing a fish. And so it was a 16-inch beauty flashed from under the bank and grabbed my offering, but I have my own theory about why I caught ‘em. After much painstaking research I found some literary backing for why I caught this, what represented for me, Moby Brookie. According to noted fishing expert, Ed Zern, “the reason a fish thinks the way he does is that his brain is very tiny in relation to his body. So the tinier the fisherman’s brain the easier it is for him to think like a fish, and catch trout right and left”(To Hell with Fishing, 1945).

After pushing a ways further up the Blackfoot, we came to a confluence of small tributaries that caused Billy to announce we were at the end of the line, and while there was no station manager to greet us, I played the ambiguous Marlowe and asked where in the heck this river went. Before answering the question directly, Billy described fishing these near invisible rivulets, and how the various holes where the fish lurked presented a veritable nightmare slog that only natural born fish hunters could, or would, tolerate. Since Billy didn’t have a name for these slivers of stream, here I will take poetic license and name them. Let’s pick three and call them The Scunthorpe, The Ginger-Nut, and The Nippers.

After fishing a bit from the boat while Billy performed his what I assume to be obligatory ritual of stalking a few holes in the brush we turned and headed back. What struck me most about our trip was the depth of Bill’s love of nature, and, for him, what symbolizes the very essence of nature’s beauty, the river. I thought of Bill later when I came across another quote by Roderick Haig-Brown: “A river is never quite silent, it can never, of its very nature, be quite still; it is never quite the same from one day to the next. It has its own life and its own beauty, and the creatures it nourishes are alive and beautiful also”(A River Never Sleeps, 1944).

It was on our return across the pristine bay that is Thunder Bay when Bill answered my question about where the river went. After the tributaries flow back together upstream, the river’s headwaters, on the Yellow Dog plains, are fed by various freshwater sources that provide the Blackfoot as well as the Yellow Dog with their origins. Bill further informed me that these same plains are where Kennebunkport Mining will extract platinum and palladium from the earth, which sent me to one last quote by Nick Lyons about rivers, and about guys like Billy B.: “When such rivers die, as so many have, so too dies an irretrievable part of the soul of each of the thousands of anglers who in their waters find deep, enduring life”(Bright Rivers, 1977).

Best - Randy

Photos uploaded and placed by the beautiful B, who hopes you enjoy them.