Above: For the 7th year, the North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum is presenting a Storytelling Dinner. Two speakers will look back at commercial fishing in the ’70s and ’80s, researcher Georgie Dunn and fisherman Clint Maxwell. Dunn is pictured here with Fishing Museum President Virginia Reiner.
The North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum will present its 7th Annual Storytelling Dinner Friday evening, October 21 at Lutsen Resort. This year the museum celebrates its 20th anniversary and two speakers will look back at the still unfolding story of commercial fishing, which has been part of the history of the North Shore for well over a hundred years.
In the 1970s, Georgie Dunn was a psychiatric nurse with three teenage kids when she embarked on a master’s degree in photojournalism. A friend from Hovland suggested she document the decline of commercial fishing brought on by the loss of lake trout to the invader sea lamprey. She met Stanley Sivertson on the ferry to Isle Royale. He believed in her project and introduced her to the fishing families he knew.
Georgie knew nothing about fishing, but the families welcomed her into their lives. She explains: “I would leave for the North Shore after feeding my family dinner and drive during the night. I slept in my car so I would be ready to go out before dawn with the fishermen. Some nights I would lay on top of the car and watch the northern lights. I fell in love with the lake.”
Left: Clint Maxwell, a new fisherman in 1984 when he was interviewed by Dunn.
From 1980-1983, she took hundreds of pictures and recorded hours of tapes with the families. She found fishing fascinating, how each species was caught with different net sizes at different depths.
Of the fishermen she learned: “They loved what they did. It was hard work and they suffered working in the cold water, but they loved it. I admired their work ethic and decided I would do what I could do to get their story. “
She spent about four years on the project. She appreciated reflected, “Although they lived simple lives, the fishermen were very intelligent and so knowledgeable about the lake and the fish.”
The youngest fishermen she interviewed impressed her with his passion and enthusiasm for the life. His name was Clint Maxwell. She described him in Port Cities Magazine in summer 1984 as “A Torchbearer for a Vanishing Breed.”
She quoted Clint on his first year fishing. “Oh man, it was great! The sea gulls shit on me, you know, and the eggs from the fish flew and the water…I was wet and cold and tired. I was part of everything. I was part of the lake…and I was shipping truckloads of fish off every couple of days. I forgot I only made $3 an hour.”
Over 30 years later, Clint is still fishing, out of Beaver Bay after time spent on Isle Royale and in Alaska.
On October 21 Georgie and Clint will resume their friendship and conversation about commercial fishing, how it has changed, what has been lost and what has endured. There will be a lot of stories to feast on.
Call Lutsen Resort for reservations, 218-663-7212, by October 19. Fifty dollars buys you a fantastic Scandinavian dinner and priceless storytelling. For more information, go to www.commercialfishingmuseum.org or call the museum at 218-663-7050.
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