Best of Friends
by William Llilly (continued from page 1)

The Pike team started to pass us, digging into the water with all their might. As they passed us we heard them singing/mouthing the music from Hawaii 5-0. Dah dah dah dah dah dah......dah dah dah dah dah.

I could picture the beginning scenes of the TV show with the people paddling through the oceon waves.

Being competitive ourselves we dug in too. Team Bass against team Pike! The race was on! We had forgotten about Team Walleye. This was the canoe with the two older guys of our group. The experienced ones who knew where they were going. After getting through the "wind tunnel" we had to wait for them to catch up. We had no clue where we were going!

Hey,.... while we wait..... let's fish.

We may be young and stupid but we found a chance to fish. We caught about 6 smallies per canoe. We put them on the stringer for dinner later. We outsmarted the old timers!

Turns out that dragging 6 fish behind a canoe is like having a parachute in the water. The older, more experienced, guys were leaving us behind on the last leg of the trip. Laughing all the way!

We made it to our last portage of the day when we made it to the Little Knife Portage. This is an easy portage compared to "Monumental Portage". It is about 3:00 pm now. Our experienced guides, wisely, decided we had gone far enough and we began our search for a campsite.

We chose the campsite at the point on the southern side of the lake, right by the Amoeber portage. This was to be our "base camp" for the rest of the week. This wasn't the original plan but it worked out very well.

After hearing the rest of us cry about crossing the Monument Portage and the fact that we were close to ice for our cooler the experienced ones decided this was our site for the week. We could venture out to other lakes from here on "day trips".

After setting up the tents camp chores were assigned. This was done willingly. I chose wood stocking. Kirk, my canoe partner, was camp cook. Kirk is a very good cook! After stocking the wood with help from the rest of the "young guys" we sat down to a steak dinner. The fresh potatoes that weighed a ton over the portage were now very welcome.

The "older" guys had, again, thought ahead. They had set up a make shift livewell for our fish made out of plastic snow fence that they had rolled up in the bottom of the canoe. They secured it to shore and set it in the lake water. It is about 7 feet around. So that's what that is for! I remember carrying that over the mountain. I'm glad I didn't throw it into the woods, like I had thought about earlier.

I had my doubts about the set-up but it was very welI secured to shore and the lake water seemed to work fine without any aeration. The old guys win again! I wanted fish for dinner the first night but the "livewell" worked great. We had the steaks from the cooler. We didn't know how long the ice in the streams would last. We had fish the next night.

After doing the dishes in the dark we all sat around the fire and thanked Mother Nature for being on our side thus far. This is where lifetime friendships are born.

Campfires are a great place for forming lifetime bonds. Our group discussed what we would do if we were ever stranded in the wilds. We talked about how we had formed a community with everyone having a part. It was great! We were all a team! We all had our jobs and we performed them without any flaws.

Tomorrow would be the time to play and have fun. We would explore and fish. We would meet at the end of the afternoon and, again, form our team. We would survive.... together! Each one of us would depend on the other one to perform their chores.

This would be the best week of my life!

We caught lots of fish. I tasted lake trout for the first time in my life. We had plenty of ice to keep the cooler filled. We even had enough ice to bring fish home and have a cookout together after we all got back.

We all brought our spouses to the fish fry and I think we all agreed that the spouses did not understand what we had been through together, how we had "survived" together.

It felt strange!

There is something about this trip that made us all feel like brothers.