Russ, as always you have great stories. I forwarded this one on to friends and family to enjoy. The wild area are changing so fast in my lifetime. When I was young I looked at projection screen 1930's pictures of my Aunt and Uncle that took their honey moon trip around the road the swings high around and above Lake Superior. HW 17 wasn't built them. They didn't have a boat and just fished off the bridges. They caught probably 10 or 20, 20 and 30 pound pike that they had somehow strung between two trees on a rope. That's probably why there isn' hardly that kind of fishing there today. In the 1960's I took my family to that area in a truck camper and a boat and trailer to see if the great fishing was still there. It wasn't. I put in the boat at this bridge and with the kids we motored up the river never seeing another person and into a huge lake with rock stick up out of the lake the size of cars and big waves. A little scary, and went into a sheltered cove to catch all of those big fish that had to be there. We never had that first strike. I never seen another human around. So what's happened. Acid rain? It couldn't be overfished in this huge lake, but the bridge where there were no fish it seemed when I was there in the 60's, to the same bridge that my aunt and uncle was at in the 30s, a span of 30 years, and easily caught hundreds of pounds of fish, which is terrible, wastefull and I don't condone, and is no doubt one reason for the decline. But the wildness is declining fast.

John