July 17, 1909] 
forest and stream. 
99 
A Morning on Webb Lake. 
Longingly, now, arc the eyes of the angler 
turned toward the charming fishing grounds of 
the Noith country, and ere long there will be 
, many fishermen casting their lines on the pleas¬ 
ant waters of Minnesota and Wisconsin. I my¬ 
self will spend ten days in the Rainy River 
woods southwest of Duluth at the earliest pos¬ 
sible moment. I have been in that region every 
summer for the past several years and it is the 
grandest wild land I know of. And the bass 
fishing well, it cannot be beaten in any State 
of the Union. 
Vividly do I recall my trip there in the early 
summer of 1904, with the late Judge Ogden 
and Wilbur Fawcett. Our first day out was a 
1 memorable one. Noon found us all pretty well 
fagged with the hard work and continuous ex- 
. citement that had been our eager lot from the 
very moment we had cast anchor on the bass 
grounds at the head of the outlet. 
We were on Webb Lake, and from 8 o’clock 
to 12 we caught over 100 black bass, not one 
of them under three pounds in weight, and it 
was with hearty acquiescence that we all fell in 
wiih the guide’s proposition to go and have 
,dinner. We were just off Black Bear point and 
;the scenery was pretty much the same as it was 
along the ragged shores up the lake. Dark 
ranks of fir, cedars and birch close along the 
water’s edge threw their shadows acros^ the 
'itfle inlet until we seemed floating over their 
ransverse tops. In every direction dead pines 
md hemlocks thrust up their pallid, rough rag¬ 
ged 11 ess, some dripping with gray moss, with 
icre and there the huge nest of eagle or fish- 
lawk. 
“ihis would be a lonesome enough place even 
>11 a blight day if you were here alone,” said 
vapp, the guide, as he pulled his canoe well 
ipon the sandy shore, “but company’s every- 
hing. Look there! If it is lonesome for men 
t isn’t for deer,” and he pointed to a little plot 
f sand that had been recently cut up by the 
harp feet of one of these beautiful creatures. 
I The Judge, Wilbur and I bent curiously over 
ie sharply defined imprints and we were all 
lied with disappointment, when Kapp re- 
Jarked that the tracks were not more than an 
pur or so old. It had evidently come out of 
nearby copse of hopple to drink or browse 
F'ong the lilypads, but on catching sight of 
r ,r boats on the lake had left hurriedly, as we 
mild see by a mighty bound it had made when 
started. 
Let her go,” exclaimed Kapp, as we were 
•dined to linger on the deer’s trail. “We may 
■e one yet before the sun goes down. They 
i e tolerable thick anywhere round about this 
id of the lake. Let’s get our bass disposed of 
,id then for dinner.” 
Kapp tossed four big, fat beauties up on 
e grass, and after making a smudge he set 
•out cleaning the bass and arranging things 
r our meal. The smudge was grateful, 
r t * le mosquitoes and midges were abroad in 
II force. The Judge and Wilbur, reclining 
'on the grass, pulled their handkerchiefs over 
Lir faces and sought to snatch a fragment of 
■■ep, but that was impossible; the pests were 
tj mu< P for them. I comforted myself philo- 
■ diically with the reflection, while I was kept 
lsy fighting insects, that the terrible black fly, 
which draws blood with every sting, was not 
also marauding. The golden days of June are 
1 mined with his horrors, but it was well on to 
Joy ticn, and July’s sun generally gives him 
is quietus, although he does not entirely dis¬ 
appear until the other winged pests of the forest 
vanish. 
. 1 ve found the little devils,” replied the guide 
m response to my question, “once or twice up 
ere a ong as late as September with the other 
flies, but that is not generally the case.” 
Where do all these creatures come from 
anyway, Kapp; they did not bother us out on 
the lake?” I inquired. 
These gray flies—deer flies, they are—hatch 
in the moving waters among the yellow lilies 
and the dock; the mitchets in the evergreen 
trees and the mosquitoes any place where it is 
damp and low. But no one knows what they 
THE TYRO AND THE ENGINEER. 
were made for, and Kapp proceeded with his 
preparations for dinner. 
I sat on an old log and watched him. A few 
hacks of his big hatchet brought down a birch 
from which he detached the limbs and divided 
the trunk into suitable sticks, splitting them for 
the fire, which with the aid of the inflammable 
bark and a handful of dry sticks strewed around 
was soon merrily blazing. The coffee was in 
the pot all ready for the boiling, thanks to good 
Mrs. Blake’s foresight, and it was quickly go¬ 
ing, filling the air with an aroma which, mingled 
with that of the wild woods, made a perfume 
hard to beat. Mrs. Blake kept the little log 
cabin hostelry where we were stopping. In the 
lunch basket were onions and pickles, bread and 
butter, potatoes and the inevitable pie, which 
I spread out on the white cloth myself, then 
turned and watched Kapp again, eager to test 
his cooking. A bass, split down the back and 
opened, was skewered with slips of red willow, 
well salted and peppered and then inserted in 
a cleft stick fastened with a spruce root or a 
withe of alder and stuck in the ground before 
the glowing coals of the birch fire and broiled 
without any basting but its own fat. If he 
had it, Kapp said, he would have skewered 
a piece of bacon to the upper part of the fish, 
as some people preferred it that way, but as 
for himself, he liked it better as he was serv¬ 
ing it. 
I he flavor of the delicate snowy flesh of a 
black bass, as Kapp served them under that 
radiant roof of tangled sun mesh and shadow, 
would be hard to define. Of course, we ate 
enough to kill ourselves—rich black coffee, baked 
potatoes, fluffy bread and grass butter, onions 
and wild strawberries. After our meal a good 
cigar and a chat, and how could you beat it? 
Had there been no such things as flies and 
midges one could have reclined and gazed on 
and on forever at sky and wave and wood. 
Spread over the shallows along the thorough¬ 
fare next to our little rendezvous was a broad 
floor of lilypads, glistening green with white and 
yellow blossoms. The dark red Ottawa-tassel 
and the scarlet berried Solomon’s seal gleamed 
upon the banks and on their slender shafts, 
tufted in the water. 
Sport at the foot of Webb Lake a few years 
ago was not limited to bass fishing, for then 
there were winged hordes from the north, the 
wolf was abroad, the deer plentiful and moose 
not an infrequent sight. Hot and mosquito- 
ridden as it was, the spring’s warming winds 
had left woodduck and mallard behind to breed 
instead of following the main army off toward 
Baffin’s Bay. And when the tender blue of the 
iris began to fade the old ducks, just as we had 
seen one a moment before, led out some little 
scraps of yellow down that floated on the water 
as softly as the shadows of the summer clouds. 
While the old one sought safety on high on the 
approach of eagle or hawk or other danger, the 
little ones would go under in a flash. 
Rising, I shaded my hands and I could plainly 
see the golden line the old mother woodduck 
and her babies made in the water among the 
splatterdock, and the stream of fine bubbles 
from their course. Often I would see them 
kick lustily out behind with their little feet and 
note the marvelous time they made, rising for 
a moment to catch breath and then darting 
quickly under until they vanished around a 
jutting point. Huge pike furrowed the waters 
in these lazy shallows, often throwing them¬ 
selves bodily out of the lake in the rush for 
some venturesome fly or miller skimming over 
the surface. 
From the margins of the long stretch of low 
waters, everywdrere threaded with lilies, willows 
and pickerel weed, came the incessant mono¬ 
tone of the hyla, and from the capes and islets, 
where the yellow spike of the golden lance and 
the bright red of the polygonum illumined the 
shades, the saucy pine squirrel scampered and 
chattered. 
“Those loons are up to something out of the 
ordinary,” observed Kapp, and he rose and look¬ 
ed off down the bay as a long, tremulous whoop 
ending with a laugh like a maniac came from 
the distant specks on the water. 
“There is going to be a storm, sure! They 
never fail,” continued the guide, as he emptied 
the grounds from the coffee pot and packed it 
with the rest of our utensils in the basket. 
“There he goes again, woo-hoop-ah-hooo-oo- 
hoo-oo he! ho! Hain’t that a sassy critter? 
Yes, siree, there’s a storm brewin’ for the mor¬ 
row. See the gulls off yonder over the p’int 
below my home!” Sandy Griswold. 
