The Upper Mississippi

I have spent most of the last two weeks wading and fishing the Mississippi river well north of the Twin Cities. This is not the wide, slouching, muddy river of the south. Up here, it is fast, with many rapids and exposed boulders. The water is clear and clean. You can eat the fish from it, if you want to.

The river is so low because of severe drought that I could cross in many places. It is that shallow. I caught many smallmouth bass, a few walleyes, even a 34 inch muskie. But, it is the smallmouth that I love so much. When hooked the leap from the water and often spit the hook causing it to sail back over my head. They dig deep into the current. They never give up. The upper river has special regulations protecting smallies. They are now so numerous that while wading they even swim up to get a better look at you in the clear water. Sometimes, because of their feisty nature they swim up to you and flare their gills, flutter their fins wildly as a challenge. They have a lot of character.

One day a pair of mink kittens came tumbling over the bankside trail in play before they noticed me. They stood up, looked at me, and then continued to wrestle. Also, while walking along the bank of another stretch I noticed several freshwater clams (which are quite large and strong) had been split open and the meat slurped out. I then noticed the large tracks of a black bear made the night before.

Each day I fished I noticed expensive drift boats, the sort you see out west on the big trout rivers. They were filled with guides and fly fishermen. I did not see any of the old john boats manned by flannel-shirted river rats. Characters that knew every rock in the river, where the big fish are. Most have simply passed on. They were the personalities of the river. They told the great stories or stories were told about them. Everything was embellished at it should be. These were the sort of personalities that Mark Twain wrote about in Life on the Mississippi. They are also the sort of characters you see in the writings of the North by Jack London, Robert Service, Sigurd Olson, and many others. They were people who loved the river and the land because of its every changing aesthetic beauty. They were not interested in the American Dream--Wife, House, 2.3 kids, car in the garage, dog. They were haunted by waters. They loved the sky reflected in various shades on the river's broad pools, the sound of rapids rapping around boulders, birds like piping plovers beeping and running along the banks, the whistle of wood ducks taking to the air. And there was always the fight of the smallmouth bass. Indians called and later the French fur traders called the Mississippi smallmouth "the fish that struggles."

This is the stretch that consumed the final days of the expedition of Henry Schoolcraft. It was also the river of the French explorers Marquette, Brule, Hennepin, and Nicollet in the 1600's. It also divided the lands of the Chippewa--eastern woodland Indians, and the Dakota (Sioux)--western plains Indians. This stretch was not the waterway of mills in Minneapolis or barge traffic and paddle boats in Saint Paul and further south. This stretch was used by lumbermen who rode great logs of white pine down the river. These men were called River Pigs and specialized in untangling logjams--and not being crushed by the mass of huge logs. These logs were used to build houses and buildings all over the country.

Today all that is gone and that is good and bad. The river is a National Wild & Scenic waterway which prevents development. It is largely in a wilderness state. It is too fast, too shallow, and too rocky for barge navigation. Right now it is only fit for canoe traffic. The water is clear and clean, filled with clams and crayfish, schools of minnows. There are huge hatches of large mayflies, especially Epheron Lukon (White Fly) and the huge Hexagenia Limbatta (the Hex)--a rarity in polluted waters and a fattener of fish. You can often see river otter and beaver, eagles and ospreys. There are plenty of big fish and few fishermen.

It is a good place.