Thunderstorms on the Fourth of July up here tend to worry me. This year’s storm was nowhere near as devastating as the “Blowdown storm” of 1999, but it had some impact. We lost power on the upper Trail for about six hours and a few trees came down as well. The gusts were strong and the lightning was intense, so my wife and I lit some candles and watched the storm. Mother Nature’s lightning display rivaled the fireworks we saw earlier that evening, and it lasted for a lot longer.
I was guiding on Saganaga earlier that day and the clouds were churning upwards and moving very fast. A combination of heat lightning, which scatters around in the clouds, and large bolts striking the ground somewhere nearby kept us on our toes. I would normally call it a day, but my customers were renting a cabin on the lake so we just stayed close to home and came in whenever it looked bad. The storms moved through quickly and violently. Then everything was calm for a couple of hours. Granted, the walleyes had lockjaw, but the bass were cooperating and we even snuck out to the big lake for some lake trout as well.
On a different note, I have been reading many opinions about the government shut down. I am surprised at how many people are not talking about how this affects our businesses. Resorts, guides, tackle shops, restaurants and many other businesses in Minnesota are affected. Closing the state parks while we are celebrating our nation’s Independence Day seems a little embarrassing to me.
Every group I guided this week was upset that they could not stop at Gooseberry Falls or any other state parks on the ride up. I am sure people are still walking down to the water falls, but they should not have to jump a gate to get to them.
The biggest question people have been asking is whether or not to fish without a license. If it happens to me with any of my customers, I would just explain to them what is going on and what the possible consequences would be. I would encourage them to not keep any fish, but it would be hard to lose the business when people are ready to spend the money but cannot.
Most of my customers are from Minnesota and already have licenses, but there are a lot of places that make a living on out-of-state clientele. Think of the money being lost by not collecting the revenues generated by the licenses. This money is used in part for stocking and management, so I would feel bad if someone was keeping a limit without paying for a license, but they should still be allowed to fish. It is not much different than letting kids under16 fish without a license.
The conservation officers are still on duty, and I would imagine they will be writing tickets to any anglers without licenses, so I am certainly not encouraging anyone to fish illegally. There was plenty of warning for residents to get a license before the shut down, so I do not feel too bad for them. It is the non-residents that I feel sorry for as well as anyone that was going to make money off of them on their Northern Minnesota fishing vacation.
Things like this could discourage people from wanting to visit our state again and I hope it gets resolved quickly. I swore I would never visit Mississippi again because of a bad experience in a gas station. We spend a lot of money to get people up here. We do not need our government scaring them away.
Cory Christianson has worked as a fishing guide on the Gunflint Trail since 2000. If you have any fishing or wildlife reports or stories to share, send an email to: christiansoncory@hotmail.com or call 218- 388-0315. You can also visit Cory’s website at Gunflintfishingguide.com.
Leave a Reply