Stephen Dahl is a philosopher and poet with a very scenic office – a herring skiff on Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors. He likes to fish and can be found out on the lake pretty much every day when it’s free of ice. In the winter he untangles herring nets and makes folk harps. He has a book out called Knife Island:
Circling a Year in a
Herring Skiff,
in which he journals about herring, the moods of Lake Superior, a waterlogged yellow-rumped warbler, Norwegian economics, North Shore logging, mining, and shipping, colorful locals, and even sweaters from the Shetland Islands. He makes his money selling fish. Some know him as a commercial fisherman.
For the past 24 years, Dahl has been fishing Lake Superior and is one of 25 licensed commercial fishermen between Duluth and Grand Portage. “Knife River was a commercial fishing town,” he writes one April day with 700 pounds of herring in his skiff. “Knife River still is a commercial fishing town. Later today folks will be making fish cake batter, canning and smoking herring, and probably having their first meal of the season of fresh herring. I’m tired and happy as I tie up to the dock and fill their coolers and boxes up with fresh herring.”
One stormy spring day, Dahl’s is the only boat on the water. “Wind is howling. Sailboat rigging clanging. Boat covers flapping. Herring gulls play on the updraft off the beach. And the heavy pounding of sea. …Time to go have coffee at Lawrence and Ole’s.” Lawrence and Ole are brothers, and they are rich with fishing tales for Dahl, such as the one about two fishermen in a rowboat who held onto their anchored nets all day to keep from being swept out to sea, refusing to ask for a tow from the owner of a nearby fisherman with a newfangled gas boat.
Obstacles like cold, wind, and ice don’t seem to bother Dahl; in fact, he really doesn’t like the “warm” midsummer weather out on the lake. When the wind turns into a gale, however, he is sure it’s out to get him. His wife tells him the universe is not personal, but he insists, “It doesn’t care about anyone else in all of northeastern Minnesota – it’s just after me!”
Dahl tells a story about a fisherman named Nels, whose nets had been twisted by strong currents. He was found standing in his boat shaking his fists in the air. When asked why by the fisherman who came to see if he needed help, he said, “I was yelling at God to come down and fight like a man!”
“Commercial fishing is sometimes compared to farming,” Dahl writes. “Fishermen and farmers both have to deal with the vagaries of the weather. But farmers don’t wake up one morning and see that their 80 acres of corn has moved to the next county.”
Dahl talks about enjoying the ride up and down the waves in bad weather. He knows the dangers, though. One day he must decide whether to take his 600 pounds of herring home or try for one more net in a fourfoot sea. “A voice in my head says: ‘I need the money,’” he writes. “And another voice says: ‘Pushing too hard is what kills fishermen.’”
Dahl’s book offers insight into the life of a fisherman. “Commercial fishing is patience, patience:” he writes, “waiting for a gale force wind to die down, waiting for the herring to move in, struggling to save enough money for a new net.”
A lot of tidbits of interesting information show up in the pages of Dahl’s book: Each year up to a dozen pelicans show up where he fishes. Wind and air pressure can cause the lake level to go down 18 inches in a day – a phenomenon called “seiche.” Old-growth white pine that has been lying underwater for years is thought to make highly resonant musical instruments.
Dahl grew up in northwest Wisconsin, but he felt the call of Lake Superior at a young age. “Just out of college,” he writes, “I camped on the beach east of the mouth of Knife River. When I crawled out of my tent the next morning and felt the northeast wind and watched the herring gulls soar and listened to the silence deep within the lake, I knew, ‘Thisis where I belong.’”
For some time, Dahl felt an urge to journey to other parts of the world. “But then one morning,” he said, “as I headed to my nets, I was astonished to discover that the urge had vanished, the wanderlust had slipped from my consciousness. I said to myself, ‘I’m here!’”
Dahl’s life has included many adventures and pursuits, from researching handmade musical instruments in Norway and studying for a year in Denmark to commercial salmon fishing in Alaska and graduate studies in Scandinavian literature and languages at the University of Minnesota.
Knife Island: Circling a Year in a Herring Skiff
is distributed through Adventure Publications and can be ordered by phone (800) 678-7006) or online (www.adventurepublications.net).
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