From unbearable heat to frost warnings, things are looking pretty normal up here. Thebig winds have been keeping us off of the best fishing spots lately, so I have not been playing on the water much this week. It is a great time of the year to get some projects done and my list just keeps growing. Thecool weather is very pleasant to work in and the bugs have disappeared.
Labor Day weekend has always been a popular three-day holiday that marks the beginning of the end of summer. Many cabin owners are hauling brush piles to the dumpsites and preparing their homes for the annual winter shutdown.
The wind was not perfect, but I have worked in a lot worse. The weekend slowly crawled into pleasant days on Sunday and Monday and I was actually able to knock off a lot of lingering projects.
The siding on our house is dangerously close to being complete and stocking firewood will be done soon as well. We have learned to tackle the yearly chores as soon as possible, otherwise you waste too many nice days working on the house when you should be enjoying the woods and water.
I feel sorry for the people who only come up here enough to maintain their cabins. Trees seem to always fall, siding needs staining and roofs get leaky. If you only make it up the Trail for a few weekends a year, the work seems to pile up quickly. Vacation time turns into work detail and you never seem to accomplish as much as you want to.
I work on a lot of cabins up here and it is the same story at all of them. Even my wife’s family got a lot of work done at their cabin on the Canadian side of Saganaga. It is even harder to get things done on an island since everything is brought in by boat.
Most of the cabins that were rebuilt after the Ham Lake fire are reaching the “finishing touch” stage and they really look nice. The first two years are spent building the cabin and the third year is for landscaping the yard. It is nice to drive down Saganaga Lake now and see all of the new cabins. I was really worried that the lake would never be the same, and it will not, but the forest will bounce back just like the cabin owners did.
I hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend and managed to accomplish a little rest and relaxation while working on the cabin.
Cory Christianson, a graduate
of the University of Iowa, has
worked as a fishing guide on
the Gunflint Trail since 2000.
If you have any fishing reports
or stories to share, send an
email to: christiansoncory@
hotmail.com or call 218-388-
0315.
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