In Search of Wild Rice and Cranberries

Today is Saturday and we decide to take a day off from our grueling book editing (me) and trout fishing (Jack) and do a little sightseeing and souvenir hunting. Two quintessential Wisconsin products are wild rice and cranberries, and I want to purchase some healthy souvenirs to take back home with us. We haven’t been seeing any “Wild Rice for Sale” signs here, like we did further north up by Lake Superior. When I asked some of the folks around here where I might purchase some local wild rice, everybody told me to go up to “Mole Lake” and ask around up there, on the Chippewa reservation. So that’s one destination for our outing today. I also searched on the internet for nearby cranberry marshes that might be harvesting their cranberries, and found one north of Mole Lake, near a town called Eagle River, so that becomes our Saturday itinerary.

But first things first. We get up early and Jack puts his waders on and goes bravely back out on the misty Wolf River to see if he can catch his elusive trout. He’s caught several other fish here on various flies, but no trout yet. We think maybe the trout have all flown south for the winter. Again, no trout this morning, sigh. (He’s still going to check this river off his list since he did catch fish from it on his fly rod.)

Next we walk across the street to the local bar/diner for breakfast of eggs and pancakes. This place has a lot of neon and beer signs on the outside, and a very small, very weatherbeaten handpainted sign behind some overgrown shrubbery that says “FINE FOOD.” Several people are already sitting at the bar drinking. Folks, it’s 9:30 am… REALLY?? However, the cook is good and the pancakes are delicious. We pass on the morning beer.

On the road about 10 am, heading toward Mole Lake, on a quest for wild rice. We know we’re on the Chippewa reservation when we see the spiffy casino and hotel. We stop at the casino and I go in and ask the nice lady behind the money desk if she can tell me where to find some local wild rice to purchase. She sends me another half mile down the road to a convenience store/gas station that she assures me will be able to hook us up with a wild rice dealer (!). 

At the gas station (where we buy gas at the cheapest price we’ve seen yet in Wisconsin, $3.39), I ask the two guys behind the cash register if they have any local wild rice to sell. They tell me that they don’t have any right now, but they immediately start working the phones. Unfortunately, they can’t get any of their rice contacts on the phone—must be all out on the lake. We start to leave, disappointed, but then the big guy comes after us—“Wait—these guys have some rice to sell!” pointing at the two older fellows who just pulled up to the pump in their pickup. They were Edmund and Emmanuel, and they had been harvesting wild rice the day before, getting ready to go out again today. They had two LARGE bags in the truck with them, but it’s not cleaned up and separated into pound bags yet. So we follow them to Edmund’s house down the road, where they had the rice nicely cleaned and bagged, in pound bags. I bought 5 pounds. Feels kind of like a drug deal, but this is some nutritious stuff we’re buying, and not illegal (at least not as far as we know…they did seem a little nervous when Jack took their photo!)

Me, Emmanuel, and Edmund

As it turns out, this lake (which is next to Mole Lake and named, appropriately, Rice Lake) is one of the few spots in Wisconsin where wild rice has been harvested by the Chippewa continuously in the traditional way for hundreds of years, so our souvenir purchase feels kind of special.

Rice Lake

We continue on back roads towards Eagle River, now on Quest, Part 2, for cranberries. I really want to see a cranberry marsh with red berries floating on it, like the commercial on TV with the guys standing in the cranberry water. I love cranberries and they’re one of the highest-level antioxidant fruits, so I plan to stock up, if we can find the cranberry marsh. I got an address off the internet for the cranberry farm nearest to us, Lake Nokomis Cranberries, but for some reason the GPS won’t take the address. Fooey. Oh well, we figure we’ll just ask someone when we get to Eagle River.

The scenery is getting more and more beautiful as we drive—it seems that the fall foliage is turning brighter and more colorful right before our eyes. There are lots of orange and red maples here, as well as the beautiful yellow aspens, mixed with evergreens—lake and rivers everywhere—a feast for the eyes!

We get to Eagle River and stop at a convenience store. The lady behind the counter is clueless about cranberries. She starts to send us to another town where “maybe there might be a marsh.” We move on to a sporting/fishing store, thinking maybe they’ll know something. No such luck. But we do end up buying some nice sunglasses that I’ve been trying to find (after the salesman in the store tells us they don’t have them—fortunately Jack kept looking on the rack and spotted them!). This guy is clueless about cranberries as well as sunglasses, but he does give us directions to the town center so we head there. Fortunately, we drive past the town Visitor’s Center and I run in. The young girl manning the counter is very knowledgeable and fixes us up with maps and directions to Nokomis Cranberry Farms, about 10 miles away, down more scenic roads.

When we finally get there, a little before 2 pm, we find that the last tour has already gone and they’re getting ready to close their gift shop at 2. So we hurriedly make our souvenir selections—lots of interesting stuff out for sampling, which helps in our decision-making: cranberry wine, salsa, jelly, lotion, chutney, chocolate-covered cranberries, plus a 3-pound bag of fresh cranberries ($1/pound). I was worried that we might not get to see floating cranberries since we missed the tour, but the gift shop lady was gracious and told us to drive the van down the dirt road and we could see the flooded cranberry beds with the floating berries. She also gave me a brief rundown on how cranberry farming works. Too cool! So we had our own private self-guided tour and got up close and personal with the berries… it was a real thrill.

Cranberries waiting to be harvested

Floating berries!

The basics: cranberries grow on low vines in lowered beds (in dirt, not in water, see pic at top). When ready for harvest in September (how convenient) the farmer goes through the beds with a long rake on a tractor and loosens the berries from the vines. Then the beds are flooded with irrigation water. The berries have air chambers in them so they all float to the surface of the water. Then a big machine with a pump and hose comes around and sucks the berries into big rolling bins. After some cleaning, they are pumped into a big semi truck and hauled off to the receiving plant. OceanSpray is one of the biggest customers for Lake Nokomis cranberries.

The big pumping machine that sucks the cranberries out of the marsh and into rolling bins.

A really fun and interesting day! We ate a late lunch/early supper at a restaurant in Eagle River and then made our way home, in the rain. Looks like our perfect sunny weather has disappeared for the time being…

Fishing Days

Lots of fishing by me and lots of editing by Carol since our last blog entry. We stayed another day at the campground Carol mentioned in our last blog. On Tuesday morning we got up early (5:15 am) to drive back to Brule to meet a steelhead fishing guide (at 7:00 am) so I could try to catch one of these huge rainbow trout that spend most of their time in Lake Superior. These trout are called steelhead because they lose most of their rainbow colors when they go to sea. But wait, I thought they lost their colors because they went to sea in saltwater. How come they also lose their colors in a freshwater sea? One of life's mysteries...

My steelhead guide was Tim Pearson. A pleasant young man who is also an artist. Tim had a special way he rigged my line for steelhead fishing. First he took off my monofilament tapered leader and rigged up a knotted leader. Then he tied on a wet fly and then about three feet down he threaded on a pink colored glass bead and then a bare hook. The pink colored bead is a salmon egg imitation that steelhead love. He moved the bead up the leader about three inches and jammed in a toothpick to hold it in place. Why such a crazy rig? I ask. Tim explains that egg patterns made with yarn tied to a hook have a tendency to catch steelhead in the gills. Not so good for the steelhead since that is where they get oxygen from the water and we intend to release any steelhead I might catch. I find it very interesting that I often fish for rainbow trout that can't go to sea using one of these pink yarn "salmon egg" patterns. Eating anything that looks like a salmon egg must be programmed into the genes of rainbow trout, even if they've never seen a salmon.

Tim carefully explains to me that if I get a strike, I must set the hook by moving my rod downstream. I know this is going to be hard to remember because I'm programmed to set the hook by lifting my rod straight up. Nevertheless, I tell myself to remember this. Of course about five casts later I get an amazing strike that nearly jerks the rod out of my hands. I lift my rod straight up by instinct and I got the steelhead hooked. I see him in the water moving so fast that he looks like a meteor trail. Then my line goes slack and he's gone. I had him for about 3 seconds. Should have listened better to my guide. Talk about your long distance releases.

I fished for another 5 or 6 hours with no more giant strikes. I did catch a young steelhead about 8 inches long, but I was hoping to land one 26 inches long. This makes three steelhead that I had on and never landed. The closest I came to landing one was on the Sacramento River in California. I fought a steelhead for 15 minutes and had him floating on his side when my guide reached out to net him. He wanted nothing to do with the net and with one last lunge, broke off my 6 pound test leader and was gone. One of these days I'm going to touch one of these monsters.

We stayed one more night at Brule River Classics and then drove to the Wolf River in Langlade County the next day. The drive was beautiful as we passed through so many lakes that we lost count--definitely a "Land O' Lakes" up here. We arrived in the village of Langlade, got a motel on the Wolf River with a gorgeous view, and we're still here. Carol's editing and I'm fishing.

View from our Motel Patio

Morning Wolf River Mist - Photo taken from our motel room patio.

I fished and fished this river but have not caught any trout. Today I caught a number of small fish on dry flies and a small bass on a streamer, but no trout. The Wolf is a big flat river filled with large boulders (called erratics) left over from the Ice Ages. It's lovely and we've had great weather. I have to keep reminding myself that this sport is called "fishing" not "catching".

Daytime Fishing

Evening Fishing

Going “to Sea”

On Saturday (September 21) we moved south along the coast to a little fishing village called Bayfield. I decided to take the weekend off from my book editing, and arranged for us to partake of a traditional Wisconsin “fish boil”—whitefish chunks cooked in an iron cauldron over an open fire, along with whole onions and red potatoes, served with coleslaw and local fruit pie. Booked a night’s stay at an old inn (in business as an inn since the 1860s), that also houses the restaurant that offers the outdoor fish boil dinners. Bayfield is the main access town for the Apostle Islands national park; it’s a sleepy old fishing village turned touristy—now has lots of shops and cafes where once there were just fishing camps and fish processing (and logging) operations. 

The Bayfield docks with the beautiful town in background.

This area has a LONG history! First the Chippewa/Ojibwe tribes, who are still here. We drove through part of the reservation of the Red Cliff Band of the Chippewa—they have a new casino and it looked pretty busy when we drove by. Then the French fur traders and Jesuit missionaries showed up in the 1600s. The missionaries gave the islands the name that we use today—they couldn’t see all 22 of them, but there is one spot where you can see 12 islands, hence the Apostles… Then as the fur trade died off, and the British and then the Americans took over up here, fishing and logging became the main industries. Wisconsin’s primeval forests were pretty much logged off by the 1950s, including most of these islands. However, a couple of the farthest out islands were not logged and still have virgin forest with huge trees. The rest have not been logged since the 1950s and are all covered with trees again, just not the great big ones.

We strolled around the little town and the docks on Saturday afternoon, and booked a boat tour of the islands for Sunday.

Booking our Sunday morning cruise.

The season is winding down—we’re hitting the tail end of it, as “the gales of November come early” around here. But luckily we’re having beautiful sunny, fall weather right now. We go back and check into our room—the Cowboy Room, complete with a real Western saddle on a stand in the corner! It’s old and rustic (furnishings are reminiscent of Olde Surber Station) but has a very comfy bed and a half bath, with shower down the hall shared by several rooms. About 6 pm we go out to watch the fish boil operation—nice setup for a campfire—the fire feels good as the evening turns nippy. The food is delicious—I don’t think I’ve had fresh whitefish before, only smoked. It’s very mild and meaty, not fishy at all. The apple crisp with ice cream is the perfect ending touch.

Whitefish, red potatoes and onions boiling away while I'm sipping wine and staying warm by the fire.

We almost had a good night’s sleep but were rudely awakened about 2:30 am by a couple in the room next door (sounded very young) slamming their door and apparently continuing an argument they had been involved in, in full loud voice. We could hear every word. This can be a problem with staying in these old inns and B&Bs, we’ve found—the walls and doors are thin and it’s the luck of the draw who else is staying there, and sometimes you end up with some very rude people, as in this case. Fortunately they apparently exhausted themselves after about an hour and we were able to get back to sleep.

Had a delicious Eggs Benedict breakfast and coffee downstairs in the restaurant and headed out to catch our tour boat. The tour of the islands was about 3.5 hours; the boat captain and tour narrator (doing double duty!) was a woman who had grown up in Bayfield. She had lots of local color stories to tell, in addition to the history of the area and the park. Great and scenic tour. There was lots to see: bald eagles and an eagle’s nest, ruins of fish camps on the shores, amazing wind and water carved sea caves in the red limestone cliffs of some of the islands, beautiful old lighthouses from the 1800s. The national park was formed around 1970, and now the islands are preserved for all to use. Anyone can take a boat out to any of the islands and hike, camp, kayak, explore, whatever—truly public resources. 

Devil Island lighthouse and sandstone caves.

Raspberry Island lighthouse and dock

Lake Superior is known for its shipwrecks and there are a bunch of them in the area, several being historic old ships. In fact, the tour company offers another tour of the shipwrecks in a glass-bottom boat. Saved for another time…

We had lunch at our inn (more chicken and wild rice soup). Wild rice is a very big deal up here. It’s a nutritious annual grass that grows in lakes in Wisconsin and Minnesota and is harvested about this time. Bags of it are being sold at seemingly every service station and small grocery. The local tribes harvest a lot of it in their tribal waters. The harvest is regulated by the state and only Wisconsin residents can harvest it, in a small boat less than 17 ft long and powered only by “muscular power” using paddles or poles. Wooden flails are used to bend the grass stalks over the boats and gently tap them so the seeds fall, some into the boat and some into the water to reseed for next year. How totally cool. Will bring some home for souvenirs. Let us know if you’d like some wild rice.

First Street Inn and Greunke's Restaurant

Another long and fascinating day. This place has a lot going for it. Now we’re ensconced in a campground on the outskirts of Bayfield and I’m buckling back down to my book editing work—got a schedule to keep!

By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee

“By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the shining Big Sea Water…” 

Thanks to Longfellow for his Song of Hiawatha, which I memorized a small part of as a child, I have very romantic childhood memories of playing Indian princess, bride to Hiawatha, in my wigwam by this big lake. I’m enthralled by Lake Superior—this is the first time either one of us has actually seen it. Wow. Big Sea Water, indeed. It holds about 10% of all the surface freshwater on the planet, and Wikipedia says that its water could flood the entire continents of North America AND South America to a depth of 1 foot (and you know the internet doesn’t lie!). 

It really feels like we’re by the ocean, except for no saltwater smell in the air. Jack got his great day of flyfishing in on Thursday (see previous blog) so yesterday (Friday 9/20/13) was my turn to schedule some exploring and birdwatching. We drove down to the town of Superior, which is still in WI but right on the border with MN. Superior and Duluth together, called the Twin Ports, form the largest freshwater port in the world. We saw miles of docks, huge cargo ships, and tall storage and loading facilities all along the lake shore. 

First we were heading for a birding event on the beach called the Jaegerfest, held annually by the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology at this time. Jaegers are arctic ocean birds that migrate to this area around this time. They make their living parasitically by pestering seagulls to make them disgorge food (reminds me of some people I know…). We found our way to the beach, where a line of birders was set up with their scopes and long camera lenses. 

Beach birders on beautiful Lake Superior watching for the Jaegers.

This was a friendly group and they filled us in on what to look for. A large group of ringbilled gulls was sitting on the beach nearby and in a just a few minutes, we heard a shout from a birder “Jaeger!” Suddenly all the gulls, hundreds of them, flew up, as the dark jaeger flew among them, seemingly crashing into them at times. The gulls obviously hate these jaegers! This one was a parasitic jaeger, as we were told by the birders, and we watched it for a few minutes. Finally the gulls settled down again, and soon the jaeger cry went up again. This time it was a long-tailed jaeger, with long tail feathers; it had the same effect on the gulls as before. Interesting birdwatching! These birders are REALLY into their hobby…  The two jaegers were “lifer” birds to add to our list. An added bonus to our time on the beach was a bald eagle that flew overhead, checking in to see what all the fuss was about, I guess.

Parasitic Jaeger

Next we drove into Duluth to the maritime museum in Canal Park, which is right below their aerial lift bridge. This interesting bridge is located at the entrance to their harbor and it has an elevating section that is raised to allow ships to go under it. The museum tells all about Great Lakes shipping; you can listen to the radio traffic and watch the ships and boats go in and out of the harbor through the narrow canal under the bridge. Great museum; learned a lot. We had lunch in a restaurant next to the museum (whitefish cakes and wild rice soup—two local delicacies, both yummy), and hung around the museum for several hours waiting for one of the giant cargo ships to come under the bridge. Finally did---very impressive. A special type of cargo ship has evolved for the Great Lakes called “lakers.” They are up to 1000 feet long and carry enormous loads of iron ore pellets, grain, cement and other bulk goods very efficiently. It was a thrill to see one of these monsters up close, navigating the narrow canal. Worth the wait.

Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth MN. Raises 135 feet.

Great Lakes ship loaded with 37,000 tons of corn passes under bridge. Ship is 750 feet long. Some are 1000 feet long.

After our ship encounter, we headed up on the ridge overlooking the city to a spot called Hawk Ridge, to see if we could spot some of the migrating hawks or eagles. It was a little too late in the day; we saw a few birds but no hawks or eagles. Beautiful spot though. Supposedly the ridge is on the shore rim of the ancient, larger glacial lake that formed when the last ice sheet melted.

View from Hawk Ridge with Lake Superior in background. No charge for the rainbow.

A fascinating and satisfying day up here in the north lands!

On the Road Again

We've been very lax on keeping the blog going since we departed for Wisconsin on Monday 16 Sept. Carol has been busy with her editing jobs and so have I with my forthcoming book. On top of it all we keep forgetting to get out our mini iPads and take pictures. OK, so much for the excuses.

The main purpose of this approx. three-weeker road trip is for me to fish two Top 100 trout streams in northern Wisconsin. I have already fished ALL of the top 100 trout streams east of the Mississippi River, except the Bois Brule (French for burnt woods - Bois as in woods and Brule as in Creme Brule--burnt cream I guess) and Wolf rivers. It took us two and half days to get here. We drove through West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. And we saw lots, and lots of cornfields along the way.

Cornfields everywhere.

We stayed in a very nice log cabin at the Brule River Classics (http://bruleriverclassics.com) right next to the Bois Brule (or just Brule, pronounced "Brul" as they say it around here). Here's a photo of Carol and our cabin.

Carol outside "Ginger Quill" (the common name of a mayfly)

This is really beautiful country. The glaciers of the last ice age (10,000 years ago) covered two-thirds of this state and created the great lakes. Other glacial signs are everywhere. There is even a National Scenic Ice Age Trail supported by the National Park Service and the State of Wisconsin. The brochure they publish makes for some very informative reading about "global warming" which so many "scientists" and non-scientists today claim is being caused by man. According to this brochure, there have been many ice ages and global warming cycles over the past 100,000 years. (So given that mankind back then had no means to pollute the air with cars and burning coal, it makes me wonder if our present global warming scare is nothing more than just an extension of the global warming that started 10,000 years ago. So I say to that person who was almost president and his followers, how's that for "inconvenient truth"? Perhaps the time spent by present global warming scientists would be better spent on planning what our northern states and cities will do during the next ice age?

Yesterday, I took a canoe fishing trip down the north-flowing Brule River with guide Cordell Manz. Carol helped with the car shuttle and saw us off. Like me, she too forgot her mini iPad so no photos. Carol did take photos with Cordell's phone but I don't have these as of this writing. Here's one Carol took when we were scouting the river and looking at campsites.

The fabled Bois Brule River about 10 miles downstream of RT 2 bridge.

Cordell is a very easy going and friendly guide who knows this spring-fed river well. He grew up here and his mother owns Brule River Classics. He explained that the early French settlers used this river to access the Mississippi River from Lake Superior. They did this by following the Brule upstream to a one mile portage area to the St Croix River, which flows into the Mississippi. (We found it amazing that the Mississippi headwaters are all the way up here in Wisconsin.)

The sky was grey but the temperature was near 70. Nevertheless I brought my rain gear just in case. We travelled only about 100 yards downstream before I caught my first trout, a 7 or 8 inch brook trout that put up quite a fight. All I need to check off a river is one trout, so I thought to myself, I can relax now. Another hundred yards produced the largest trout of the day, a 12-inch brook trout that really put up a fight. As the float trip progressed, the weather changed frequently. A mist appeared on the river many times and at another time it rained very hard. Fortunately, when it started to rain hard we were passing under a walking bridge at the famous Cedar Island where five US presidents from Grant to Eisenhower stayed and fished this fabled water. Cordell and I ate lunch under the bridge in the rain while two women in kayaks joined us to get out of the rain. Unlike Cordell and I who had on rain gear and waders, these two had on short-sleeve shirts and short pants. Fortunately both women had on life jackets and were carrying plenty of excess weight, which may have kept them from getting hypothermia.

During the eight-hour trip I managed to catch a total of eight trout. Two I caught on dry flies and at least one on every artificial fly Cordell put on my line. I caught one rainbow trout, one brown trout and the rest were brook trout. Cordel said I won the "triple crown" (meaning I caught all three species of trout in the river). There was no monetary reward or public recognition for this feat, my only and most important reward was that warm glow that follows a perfect fishing day on a beautiful trout stream.

By the way the trip up here was about 1,100 miles.

Standby for Carol's entry coming up tomorrow.

Best wishes to all,
Jack