Anderson: On the Minnesota-Ontario border, Crane Lake gives up its walleyes — and its memories

CRANE LAKE, MINN. – Walleyes are one reason I come to this lake.

Another is the memory of my old pal, Betty Lessard.

Betty’s grandfather and his family traveled into this country in the late 1800s, having boarded a steamer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, headed for Duluth.

Paddling birch bark canoes across Lake Vermilion, they angled down the Vermilion River to Crane Lake, and from there pointed their double-enders toward Sand Point and Namakan lakes, and eventually to Lake Kabetogama, where they settled.

By the time I met Betty in the 1980s, she was living alone on an island on Namakan, a shotgun with double-aught buck always by the door, and Magnum, a big black dog that lived to age 14, at her side.

On Saturday morning, when Minnesota’s fishing season opened anew, I thought of Betty as Steve Vilks, Joe Hermes and I putted away from the dock at Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake.

The morning air was fresh, with a temperature in the mid-30s. A single loon, voiceless in the gathering light, bobbed in the chilled lake, while on shore a belted kingfisher called dibs on its territory.

“Let’s try the Gorge,” Steve said.

Our bunch has opened the fishing season previously on Crane Lake. The last time we were here, a few years back, we found plenty of small, male walleyes at the mouth of the Vermilion River — also known as the Gorge — with no shortage of big females farther out in the lake.

Running alongside us, in another boat, were John and Jodi Weyrauch of Stillwater. In another boat still were Mark Strelnieks of Victoria and Terry Arnesen of Stillwater.

Greeting us at the Gorge were maybe 20 boats, some Lunds, others Alumacrafts, Crestliners and Rangers. Confidence is everything in fishing, and though we saw no nets going over the gunwales of any of these outfits, we knew only minutes would pass before we had a few walleyes in our boat.

“Remember the big ones we caught the last time we were here?” I said.

Steve, a Minnesota native who now lives in Naples, Fla., acknowledged he did, as did Joe, of Minneapolis.

But this morning we would learn, as minutes turned into a half-hour, and the half-hour became an hour, it was different. When we finally left the Gorge and leveled our boat in the direction of King Williams Narrows, we had just one keeper walleye in our live well.

Jerry Pohlman, who with his wife Brenda owns Nelson’s Resort, had told us the ice had gone out on Crane last Sunday, about a week later than average.

“On April 15, I was ice fishing for crappies not far from the resort, and I still had the extension on my auger, and needed every inch of it to get through the ice,” he said. “We had only about average snow this winter. But we had a lot of ice.”

Given that news, we had thought Crane’s water temperature on Saturday would be in the high 40s. Instead it was in the high 50s, and as we arrived in King Williams Narrows and settled the boat along shore, Steve, Joe and I puzzled over just how water that was frozen a week ago could be so warm now.

In the Narrows, we found the usual assortment of Minnesotans doing what they do after a long winter. Perched in snappy looking watercraft, some of them dragged jigs dressed up with rainbow chubs, while others cast their minnow-impaled lures toward shore.

Bib overalls were the fashion choice of some of these sportsmen and sportswomen, while others seemed quite happy to have shown up in mismatched stripes, plaids, even paisleys.

The good news was that these brothers of the angle were catching fish, and soon Steve, Joe and I were joining in the fun.

Crane’s walleyes are governed by an 18- to 26-inch protected slot, and the first one of these fish Steve caught measured about 20 inches. So it was released. Then Joe caught one that fell just below the 18-inch mark, and within minutes I was on the board, too.

By then it was around 11 a.m., and the air temperature had inched past 50 on its way to the mid-60s. Above, the sky shimmered a hazy blue, and the vibe was distinctly summer-like.

Soon, John and Jodi were nearby, and Terry and Mark arrived, too, and together we formed a sort of walleye-catching conga line about 20 feet from shore.

Bracketing us on both sides of the Narrows were towering red and white pines, some of which no doubt were standing a half-century ago when Betty Lessard made occasional trips to the town of Crane Lake for supplies.

Perhaps some of these pines were also standing in July 1955, when Betty’s husband, Leon, was hauling a load of hay from Crane Lake to Namakan.

Betty was a trapper. She ran a dog team in winter. She could fly a floatplane. And she was a mink farmer, which is why she needed the hay.

But on the way to Namakan, the hay shifted and Leon didn’t make it.

They had only been married a year.

During Betty’s days, I don’t know what the walleye limit was on Crane. But these days it’s four apiece. Soon enough, Steve, Joe and I had our 12, and John and Jodi, and Terry and Mark, had their limits, too.

Crane Lake is a haven for walleyes, and always has been.

It’s also a vessel for the passages of time, and of people.

Saturday we were here again, and as evening set over the big lake, we fried fish and potatoes, and laughed, and knew we would return.