Remembering the guides of yesteryear

Remembering the guides of yesteryear

Throughout this fine north Wisconsin country of ours, there were famed fishing guides who plied their trade in days gone by, and then there are the guides of today.

I like to say 99 percent of fishing guides today, though tremendously accomplished, will never be remembered as some of the old-time fishing guides of yore whose exploits are woven tightly into the fabric of the area’s history. Maybe that’s true, maybe not.

Perhaps the most famous of all the old-time fishing guides was “Barefoot” Porter Dean of Boulder Junction, a native, however, of St. Germain.

Porter was the character of all characters, and I’d guess there are thousands of stories that were told by his clients of their adventures with him during his 50 years or so of guiding.

Nowadays, you go into any sports shop, salon, gas station, or eatery, and you will still see signs of and hear talk of legendary guides of the area.

There was Pop Dean, perhaps the only guide who told more stories and had more stories told of him than there were of Porter, though maybe not quite as hilarious as those of Porter.

I wasn’t around in the 30s and 40s when summer fishing guides were captains of not only their rowboats but of the tourist industry — but I treasure the stories about them I have heard.

I do go back to days of personally knowing fishing guides who were legends, guides like Mike and Joe Froelich of Sayner, Marv Heeler of St. Germain, Tony Rizzo of Star Lake, Marv Elliott of Eagle River, Buckshot Anderson of St. Germain (still kicking), and many others from Land O’ Lakes to Winchester to Arbor Vitae who were highly regarded as top guides to hire.

I highly value what those guides accomplished in those olden days of manning oars, using a weight on a rope to check the depth of a fishing spot, and using three trees along opposite shorelines to perfectly triangulate the edge of a favored walleye bar or musky weed bed.

There was no such thing in their heydays as forward looking sonar — or whatever the heck it is called today — as well as thermometers to check lake temperatures, astrological booklets to tell them when the best moon phase is, and all other such stuff I, as a stubborn old-timer, don’t need to fish from a 10-foot kayak, an oar or paddle propelled Old Town square-stern or a 14-foot tub of an old aluminum rowboat propelled — in a nod to age and worn-out muscles and creaky bones — with a 30-pound thrust electric motor.

Guides were a different breed in the way-back days. They lacked all the electronic gizmos, new age rods and reels, computers that print out the top fishing minutes and hours each day, and so on and so forth.

They fished by their wits and what they had learned over decades of experience. They knew when the bass would be on or off their beds. When the walleyes would be deep in summertime hideouts. When muskies would be found over weed beds or deep-down bars.

They caught fish because they knew that 10, 20, 30, or more years of experience had taught them when and where the fish were most likely to be hanging out and hungry.

There was no motor trolling in north Wisconsin during their years on the water. They trolled, if that was the preferred method on any given day, by using their strong arms and backs, though, as it is in my case today, weak arms and a weak back.

There is one big difference between the old-timers and the present-day guides that is not a bad thing at all. It’s called catch and release.

The guides back in the 30s, especially during the days of the Great Depression, kept darn near every fish that was caught on any given outing. It might have been 25 slab crappies, a gunny sack full of northern pike, or as many walleyes as the law allowed, and probably truth be known, perhaps an extra two or three or so.

Why, for the most part, were lots of fish kept back in those days? They were kept because both guides and clients, in days when jobs were scarce, needed fish to feed their families.

In our present times, the pendulum has changed. Many clients of guides these days are fishing purely for sport, and most likely for the bragging rights among their friends over who caught and released the most and largest trophies of the day.

I fish a lot, much of the time alone, because I can always fish where and when and how hard I wish to fish when I’m alone, and because I stand a much better chance of not being guffawed at by fishing partners who fish better and catch more than I catch.

That said, I do fish each summer several times with friends, old and new. Each trip is an adventure. Sometimes it is filled with laughter over tangled lines or fish lost at the boat due to an inefficient use of a net.

Sometimes it ends after a good day of fishing that provides a fish fry’s worth of fish in the cooler.

Always, always for me, a day of fishing ends with gratitude that I was on the water, was fishing, and was surrounded by the best nature could provide in sound, sights, and adventure.