Other Waters

By Mike Yurk

The places we fish and people we are with takes us on new adventures in Mike Yurk’s latest book, Other Waters. Follow Mike as he takes you from Costa Rico to catch marlin, to Mexico for sailfish and big bass to Canada’s Northwest Territories fishing for giant lake trout. In between are other waters; streams, rivers, ponds and lakes both big and small forming memorable fishing with unforgettable companions. There are two trout streams in northern Wisconsin from Mike’s youth to years later two other steams in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. Rivers such as Wisconsin’s Wolf and Fox Rivers fishing in his early years with his father and grandfather brings us to the Mississippi River today fishing with buddies near his home in northwestern Wisconsin. Another river in Missouri takes us on legendary float fishing one of Ozarks premier waters. Go trout fishing in a military training area in Germany where the weather is always challenging. Two small ponds in Alabama as well as a large impoundment lake teaches Mike about bass fishing. Join Mike during the winter when he fishes through the ice on several Wisconsin lakes. Another Wisconsin lake never disappoints with both muskies and bass. There are other waters close to his home, fishing for smallmouth bass in Lake Superior, walleyes in northern Minnesota and largemouth bass and panfish at a lake known simply as Lake X to protect its identity. Exploring other waters bring both successes and disappointments along with new sights and sounds. As important as the waters Mike fishes are those who join him on these travels and ventures along with the people he meets while fishing other waters. Other Waters is book of people and places and adventures and fishing, making a lifetime of memories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665554732

Mike Yurk

Mike Yurk has been writing about the outdoors for over half a century., He has written for several newspapers and published over a thousand magazine articles in regional and national publications. This is his tenth book with AuthorHouse. After a twenty year career with the United States Army, taking him around Europe and the Middle East as well the Unites States, he returned to his home state of Wisconsin. He lives there with his angler wife Becky, and is working on his next book.

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© 2022 Mike Yurk. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/05/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5467-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5473-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Middle Aged Men And The Sea (With Apologies To Papa)

Woods Creek Revisited

Lake X

The Walleye Run: A Story Of Two Rivers

Remembering Little Lake Butte Des Morts

My End Of The Lake

The Lake That Never Disappoints

The Horse Farm

Mazatlan: Part One - Sailfish On The Pacific

Mazatlan: Part Two - El Salto

A Pond Passed By

I’ll Always Have Lake Winnebago

Other Waters

Cut Foot Sioux

Floating The Gasconade

Watauga River

Return To Lake X

Spring On The Mississippi River

Fall On The Mississippi River

Chequamegon Bay

Holmes Creek

The New River

Ice Fishing Adventures On Lake Of The Woods

The Weiss Lake Dams

An Island In The Lake

Fishing At Graf

Boundary Waters: The Crown Jewel Of The Midwest

The Adventure Of A Lifetime At Great Slave Lake

About the Author

Dedicated To

Marty and Diane Halvorsen

Dick and Debbie Hayhurst

George and Shelia Hentges

James Houston

Dawn Halvorsen Inserra

Cal and Barbara Judson

Jim and Judith Kinney

Judge Dennis Murphy

Ron and Pat Stager

Steve and Connie Timmerman

And my fellow Military Policeman and

writer, Robert Gunnarsson

MIDDLE AGED MEN

AND THE SEA (WITH

APOLOGIES TO PAPA)

Although this story ends in Costa Rica, it began over fifty years ago in my boyhood bedroom in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. That was where I found Ernest Hemingway. Through reading his stories I discovered the thrill of marlin fishing. In the winter evenings, as winds whined around the corners of my parent’s home, snow drifted in the driveway and iced branches rattled in the trees next to the house, I was in my bedroom reading Ernest Hemingway.

I read all his stories about fishing. The stores about trout fishing in Michigan I could easily identify with since I trout fished in northern Wisconsin. But the stories which captured my imagination were the tales of fishing the deep sea for marlin.

Marlin fishing and tropical seas was a far reach from the bedroom in my parent’s home and the harsh cold realities of those winter nights. To catch fish in the winter in the far north, one had to chop a hole through the ice. But on the sea, you had warm winds, the mysteries of the ocean and big fish eager, young teenage boys only dream of. I longed to travel to exotic lands and to fish for fish different from the ones I knew.

Watching fishing shows on television during winter weekends further fueled my dream. On the best outdoor television show during my youth, American Sportsman, I saw fishermen catching huge fish in the ocean. While I was bundled up with only my face protruding from the layers of winter clothing I wore while shoveling snow off the driveway, they were on television, wearing shorts in a boat, on the ocean and catching fish the size of a car.

My imagination was fired up and I said one day I too, the tall, skinny redhead kid from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was going to write stories and catch a marlin.

The days of those idyllic, long-ago days of boyhood would take the twists and turns of life as buffeted by the real world and growing up.

I got married, graduated from college, had kids, worked for a newspaper and then one day joined the Army. I stayed with the Army for over twenty years and traveled a good chunk of the world. I loved the Army and stayed with it for the fun, travel and adventure. I saw the castles of Germany, walked up the Eifel Tower to see the top of Paris, looked across the sands of Saudi Arabia to gaze out across the Persian Gulf, strolled through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, trekked through the mysteries of Pompeii and floated on the canals of Venice. Because I fish, I caught trout in Germany, bass in Spain and mackerel in the North Sea off the Netherlands. I fished peacock bass in Panama, barracuda in Mexico, big amberjack off Key West and large northern pike in Canada.

I was lucky and I knew it. I had the fun, travel and adventure I craved while dreaming in my bedroom, those cold winter nights as a boy. But I still had not caught the marlin.

As the years go on some dreams die or are lost or simply forgotten and yet others are tempered by the daily realities of life. I passed the half century mark in age. I retired from the Army and after joining the Army to see the world I return to Wisconsin where for the first time in my life bought a house. The children grew up and left home. Our oldest daughter was married and several months later told us she is expecting our first grandchild.

I have been writing magazine articles since my newspaper reporting days and published about four hundred of them. Most of them are about fishing. Since retiring from the Army I wrote four books. The first is published, the second is soon to be published and the other two are floating around the publishing world. Three of them are fiction stories and one is non-fiction. A fifth book is in progress. Some of my dreams came true.

The marlin still waits for me. My wife, Becky and I take a week every winter, to escape the snow and ice and go south; where it is warm. We generally go in the first week of March. In early winter I am having a casual conversation with another fisherman and he tells me Costa Rica has some of the best marlin fishing in the world. I suddenly become very interested. He provides me with more information and even faxes me the names of places to fish in Costa Rica. I come home and it is snowing, a good time to talk about going someplace warm. Becky and I talk about it over drinks that evening. I have the fever. The dream is coming back.

Becky gets on the internet and does some exploring. She talked to a travel agent and it is all tentatively set up. Shall we go? She asks. I don’t even ask how much it is going to cost. Yes. I tell her.

It is cold and dark with a biting wind, the first Saturday morning in March as we head to the airport. We get on the plane and it is still dark and cold when we lift off from the runway. Five hours later the plane begins to descend. We step off the plane in Liberia, Costa Rica. The wind is hot and it’s bright and sunny. We find the bus to our resort on the ocean. Sitting next to us is a couple and he tells me they own a meat processing plant in Taylor Falls, Minnesota. I tell him we live in Hudson, not far from him.

A couple hours later I am standing in the sand looking out over the Pacific Ocean. I am immersed in the hot wind, smelling the odors of tropical plants and listening to waves wash up on the beach. It is paradise and somewhere out there, in the ocean, is my marlin.

The next morning, I begin asking about fishing. Oh yes, it is very good here in Costa Rica. I am told it is best to book with a couple of other fishermen to reduce the cost of the charter. I check around some more. I get the names of a couple charter captains and some other guests who have asked about fishing. We spend the first day sitting at the swimming pool, enjoying the hot winds off the ocean, the warmth of the pool, the unrelenting sun and cloudless skies. We drink tropical drinks tasting like fruit, masking the rum in them and read a book and are lazy.

We run into the couple we met on the bus. Their bungalow is right across the street from ours and we sit on our porch having a drink with them. They also want to go fishing. He caught a marlin a couple years ago in Mexico and now wants to catch a sailfish. Their names are John and Connie. We’re about the same age and both couples like to fish; a perfect match. We share drinks and life experiences and fish stories and travel adventures as the evening descended on paradise. They already booked a charter and are looking for someone else to join them. It’ll be the last day before we go home, back to reality. We agree to join them and the fishing trip is set. My marlin and John’s sailfish are getting closer.

There is a commonality to fishing experiences, regardless if the fishing trip is in Costa Rica or Wisconsin and Minnesota. The real excitement begins the night before the fishing trip. Becky gets things organized. We pack a bag with sweatshirts (which we never needed), sunglasses, sunscreen, camera, extra film, water bottles and snacks. We talk again with John and Connie and everything is set.

It has been a restless night of sleeping by the time the alarm clock goes off. It is still dark outside. How many fishing trips start with the alarm clock going off before dawn? We meet John and Connie and walk to the restaurant for breakfast. Breakfast before dawn, another typical fishing tradition. This one, however, has a decidedly south of the boarder flair to it. We have rice and beans with our eggs. Then there is the ride to Flamingo Beach, the fishing village on the Pacific where we find our boat.

By now the sun is up and it is starting to get warm. A gentle breeze blows off the ocean. Our marlin and sailfish are out there. Our boat, a thirty-one-footer, is operated by Captain Gene. We introduce ourselves and he helps us board, introducing us to his mate Noah. Gene points to the coolers in front of the boat and tells us there is beer and water in one and sandwiches in the other. He tells us the menu consists of grilled tuna (which were caught yesterday) and ham sandwiches his wife made fresh that morning.

Ropes are pulled, the motor rumbles to life and the boat pulls away from the dock. We are going fishing. We slowly pull out of the bay and pass a commercial fishing boat coming in as we are going out. Once we pass the point opening out into the ocean the boat takes on speed and we watch as the town of Flamingo Beach drops behind. In front of us is nothing but blue. The sea is a darker shade of royal blue and where it meets the horizon it turns lighter as the sky becomes robin egg blue. There are no clouds. Behind us the mountains are brown and each row of mountains behind it are increasingly lighter shades of gray until they disappear from sight.

As I look around, it is easy to feel truly insignificant. We are just a small boat and six people in the middle of nowhere, and everywhere. On the ocean we see a white seagull standing on something. As we get closer, I see the seagull is standing of the back of a sea turtle.

Noah starts to drop lines overboard. Rods look like pool cues and reels are the size of one pound coffee cans. They are loaded with thick, one-hundred-pound monofilament line. The technique Gene uses is unique. The baits he’s using as teasers look like large, colorful tube jigs. The tube jigs I use bass fishing are three or four inches long. These teasers Gene is using are about a foot and a half in length with no hooks. Once the teasers raise the fish, they are pulled away which essentially gets the fish more upset. Noah will then flip out a hook with a bait fish. The theory is once enraged at losing the first bait, the fish will just be mad enough to hit anything they put in front of it with the second bait.

As we first get out on the ocean and begin talking to Captain Gene, we find he too, has followed his dream to Costa Rica. He originally operated a charter fishing business in Hawaii but sold it and moved to Montana to raise beef cattle. It wasn’t any fun and he didn’t like it. Finally, his wife told him he wasn’t a rancher, he was a fisherman so go fishing. With that he moved to Costa Rica and went back to fishing.

A couple hours went by. We are trolling the teasers. We sit in the sun, apply more sunscreen, drink water and talk and laugh. Suddenly Noah bounces back to the stern and Gene yells down from the upper deck. Noah frantically is yanking line and feeding out another line with a bait on it. It is a sailfish. Noah rears back on the rod to set the hook and then does it again. He holds the rod with one hand and motions for John. Handing the rod to John, he gets out of the way. Wedging himself against the stern of the boat, John begins to crank on the reel. The fish rockets out of the water. The entire fish clears the water, arching its back and swinging its head. Noah clears everything out of the way so nothing will interfere with John and the fish.

The thick salt water rod is doubled over and the line on the reel peels off against the drag. John turns the fish and starts cranking on the reel. The fish races off and the drag whines again. But each time the fish takes off, it pulls off less line and John is recovering more line than he is losing. The fish is getting closer and again it vaults out of the water. Its back is arched and the head and tail swing back and forth.

John keeps cranking on the reel, rod bent double. The fish dives, taking out line and then races for the surface while John frantically cranks on the reel getting the fish close to the boat. Noah pulls on a pair of leather gloves and waits as he watches for the fish. It is alongside the boat and Noah grabs the leader with one hand and the long bill of the fish with the other. With a pliers he twists the hook out.

John asks for a photo and Noah drags the fish over the side of the boat by the bill across John’s lap. He lifts up on the sail and we take photos. It is a beautiful fish. The extended sail covers almost all of John’s body with his face over it, beaming with a smile. Noah slides the fish back into the water, holds it for a minute and then releases it. The fish disappears back into the ocean with a swirl. John and I exchange high fives. Gene yells down his congratulations and Connie gives John a kiss.

John reaches into the ice chest for a beer. I stick with water. My marlin is out there and I want to be ready. The morning continues on. There is more excitement. A fish hits one of the baits. It is hooked and the rod is handed to me. It is a short but spectacular fight. I fight the fish standing up, knees wedged against the back of the boat. But it is not a marlin. It is a dorado. Noah gaffs the fish, pulling it into the boat. John comes by and nudges me. That’s not your fish, he tells me. Yours is still coming.

At one point a school of dolphins comes alongside. The boat is a plaything to them. They roll and dart alongside. I try to get a photo of them but never seem to get them at the right time. They are fascinating to watch. They crisscross in front of the bow. They seem to be having so much fun. Becky asks Gene if they ever hit the baits and Gene tells her no. They are too smart for that, he says. Then as suddenly as there were there, they disappear into the depth of the dark blue sea.

It is lunchtime and we dig into the ice chests. The grilled tuna sandwiches are a tremendous hit. They are on fresh bread with mayonnaise and are the best I have ever had. Tuna fish at a deli will never be the same.

I am starting to get worried. Maybe today will not be my day. The marlin may still elude me. The afternoon continues on. It is warm and we are loving it, knowing there is snow on the ground back home. The rocking of the boat lulls us into complacency. Even if there is no marlin, it has been a great day. Any day you can be on the water is a good day and, in our case, rolling around the Pacific Ocean beats shoveling snow.

Marli! Marli! Marli! Noah yells. We can’t see the big fish but Noah and Gene do. Hurriedly Noah brings in the teaser and pays out the line with the bait on it. He is holding the rod in his hands, seemingly forever. My heart is racing. Could this be it. Noah pulls on the rod and then sets the hook again.

I find myself stepping to the back of the boat. Noah hands me the rod and I pull back. There is a power I have never felt before. Gene yells down to Noah to fit me with a rod harness. I feel Noah pull it around my waist and I set the rod butt into the socket. I wedge my legs against the back of the boat. The fish is running and I am trying to hold on.

The fish comes to the surface and erupts out of the water with an explosion of spray. It like someone air dropped a Volkswagen into the sea. I try to crank the reel but the line is still racing out.

Gene yells for Noah to put me in the chair. With one quick sweeping motion the pile of teasers, hooks, pliers and knives are pulled off the seat.

Noah and John guide me backwards until I feel the chair against the back of my legs. Noah pulls off the rod harness and I sit down, sticking the rod butt into the socket on the chair. I pull back again and feel the power of the fish.

John grabs the back of the chair. I will turn you anyway you need to go, he yells to me. If you need to rest just lean back. I feel his chest against my back. I crank on the reel as hard as I can but nothing seems to happen. The fish is still running. Suddenly the fish stops and I hear someone yell for me to reel, I start cranking on the reel.

I lean forward, cranking as much as I can and then stop. I bend forward and then pull back, arms straining against the pull of the fish. I gain perhaps three feet and then drop the rod tip while cranking on the reel to gain line. I do it again and again and again. But what progress I gain, I lose as the fish races away, line pulling smoothly off the drag. The fish stops and I begin cranking the reel again, bending forward to gain line, pulling back to bring the fish closer, dropping the rod again while furiously cranking on the reel to get more line back.

The fish surges away again and this time I just hold on, trying to rest my shoulders, back and arms. I feel the power of the fish, as it seems to move away effortlessly. The fish stops and once again I crank the real as I bend over and pull back. I feel the fish grudgingly coming my way. The fish is getting closer to the boat and I feel I am winning. I see a shadow close to the boat. It is far enough below the surface that I can just barely see it, almost sensing it more than seeing it.

Darting to the side, the fish tangles the line on something at the back of the boat. Noah races to the stern and lifts the line off the snag. I feel John wrench the seat to the side the fish is now moving and I hear Noah and Gene yell back and forth to each other. The boat begins to turn as the fish remains off the back of the boat so John pulls me around so I am facing the back again too. I remember what Noah said earlier that marlin go crazy when they get close to a boat. The fish dives.

I feel nothing. Oh no! I lost the fish! This can’t happen. Not now. I feel a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I crank on the reel as hard as I can This can’t be, not now, not with victory so close.

It seemed like an eternity but it was only a few seconds and then I feel weight. A great weight. The fish is diving but I still have it. Somehow, when the fish switched directions there must have been slack in the line and luckily it is still on.

The fish continues to dive and I hold on trying not to do anything while letting my back rest. I feel the fish surging away. It stops and again I lean forward, cranking on the reel to gain line. Then pulling back to pull the fish up. John is yelling instructions to me. Pull up. Reel. Reel. Reel. Hold On. I am aware of what he is saying and am following his instructions as best I can. He is coaching. I feel hot, my mouth is dry and arms, shoulders and back are all screaming in pain. John asks if I want water and I nod my head. Someone squirts water in my mouth and dumps it across my back. I am only vaguely aware of the cool wetness on my skin.

There reaches a point where I am lost. Trance-like, I hear voices around me and feel people around me. But it is now me and the fish. I pullback, dropping the rod and furiously crank on the reel, pulling back again. My back strains, my arms feel weak and I hold on to catch my breath and get some strength back into my arms. I drop the rod again, cranking on the reel then pulling back. I lose track of time. Later I am told it took twenty minutes to get the fish to the boat the first time and about twenty-five minutes the second time.

I am beginning to realize how desperately I want this fish. All the years I dreamed of this. The stories I read and all the winter nights laying in my boyhood bedroom thinking to myself one day I too would catch a marlin. And all that time between then and now. A dream for so many years seemed too far away and now I am so close. I have this nagging dread something will come along to ruin this yet.

The fish is getting closer. My back and arms ache. I pull back, drop the rod again while cranking the reel and then pull back. The fish must be getting close and I feel a sense of urgency in the people around me. I see the fish now. At first it is just a shadow deep in the water but now it is closer. As this fish gets next to the boat and Noah reaches out with a gloved hard to grab the leader, we see a problem

Somehow when the fish switched directions and dove, putting the slack in the line, when I got it close