2nd Fiddle, Tentement on Wheels, Emporium

By Pete Burmeister on

News From The Coffee Shop

May 29, 2012 5:03 PM

My brother is a good fisherman. Regardless of the location, he is usually the one in the boat that catches the first fish, the biggest fish, and the most fish (much like reading the Dr. Sesus book). While that means I usually play 2nd fiddle in the boat, I'm still willing to give it a go, hoping some of his knowledge and ability rubs off on me. This time it did! We fished the Brainerd. MN Lakes area this past weekend with hopes of landing a lunker Walleye or two. After hitting the local Super Walmart (local Walmart- wow that's an oxymoron) at midnight on Friday for a fishing license and a $100 worth of tackle, we got some shuteye before launching the boat at 5:30 AM the next morning. To my surprise, the fishing started out hot. The first cast resulted in a nice 17" Large mouth Bass. Moments later, a decent Northern Pike and a "pig" Bluegill (again, with the oxymoron's). Joe snagged a worthless Rock Bass-- beady red eyes and all! Little did he know at the time that it'd be his last fish of the day. An hour later I netted a 16" Walleye and somehow hooked the same boat rope twice while trolling one of the breaks in Gull Lake. Things went cold after that. The fish quit biting, the wind picked up and the temperature didn't get over 50 degrees the rest of the day. I'm not complaining, because I love to fish. But, the combination of those weather conditions and lack of getting so much as a bite over the next 7 hours made for a damn long day.

We didn't out class anyone with our travel rig. Our camping and fishing equipment was fairly outdated (almost vintage) compared with most of what we saw going down the road and on the various lakes we fished. While the photo above wasn't our exact setup, it does help paint a picture of what we probably looked like as we navigated it through nearly 100 small scenic towns throughout Minnesota over the weekend. We caught a lot of blank stares and eye rolls over three days of traveling. I figure most folks were reminded of Cousin Eddie's Tenement on Wheels in the movie National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. "Don't worry, we're taking it with us when we leave next month"! Nonetheless, it was a cheap way to travel and quite convenient to boot. We did our traveling at night and then woke up each morning right on a new lake ready to fish. You might think an outfit like that would be prone to breakdowns; however, other than a tie-down strap for the camper snapping, our equipment ran like that proverbial ape.  

We ran across a great place to eat on Saturday night, Benson's in Walker, MN. It was by accident that we stumbled into the place. Pizza is their speciality and it was good, but the atmosphere and service was great! Turns out our server was the owner's son and a character at that. My brother Joe is adamant you can tell the locals from the tourists in northern Minnesota simply due to their lack of fashion sense. After studying the staff at Benson's Eating & Drinking Emporium, I'm beginning to think he's on to something. Regardless, we both got a chuckle out of our server's sense of humor and the men's restroom... by only 7 PM the toilet door was ripped off, the flushing lever was lying on the floor and the garbage was overflowing to say the least. Evidently that's common. When I asked our server about it, he said he just usually goes across the street to the BP gas station and uses their facilities. Don't let the restrooms scare you, the place had done over $50,000 in business that day and had the rest of the night yet to go. Here's the web link, http://bensonsemporium.com/ if you're ever in the area it's an experience you don't want to miss.