Ep 189: The Boundary Waters, the Cosmos, and Duck Hunting, with Nathan Jorgenson
Nathan Jorgenson is an author and angler who lives along a lake in northern Minnesota. While the Boundary Waters are his “home water,” he has also spent time fishing around much of the U.S. In this episode, we talk about the Boundary Waters, catching walleyes and lakers on dry flies, writing, the universe, and which is better between ducks over decoys and trout on dry flies.
Website: Nathanjorgenson.com
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 189 with Nathan Jorgenson on the Boundary Waters, the Cosmos, and Duck Hunting. Perfect. Well, I start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got introduced to the outdoors and into fly fishing. So walk me through how you were introduced to the sport in the first place?
Nathan
Well, I was about a senior in high school and my father was a cowboy and he came home one day with, this was about 1969. He had a Ted Williams fly rod. It was about seven and a half feet long fiberglass fly rod that one of the cattlemen gave to him. And he said, I don't know what this thing is, but something's wrong here. So I put a spinning reel on the handle and That didn't work. And then he said, yeah, I think it's a fly rabbit. That's way too hard for us guys. And I thought, well, that was sort of a challenge. And I went and got a $2 herders reel. And back in those days, nobody knew anything here in Minnesota. There weren't many fly fishermen here. So, man, I learned everything the hard way. And it took me forever. I didn't know anybody that could help me. So the learning curve was kind of steep for me, but I had a blast. And that's how I got started.
Katie
And how did you learn? Was it just books and trial and error?
Nathan
Well, they say we learn from our mistakes. I made a lot of them, you know, about everything that you probably did wrong when you were starting too, but I had no one to help. So you start out fishing for sunfish and there are some nice trout streams in southeastern Minnesota. And, you know, I bought a cheap Thompson vice and tied a few flies and they were hideous. But I caught a suicidal, about an eight-inch trout on a woolly bugger. And it was like, bing, you know, the light went on about my head. And, yeah, I mean, it's just a little bit after. And then you start meeting people who know more than you do, and they can help you with your casting or reading the water or all the skills that you need to have.
Katie
Do you remember if there was a day where, I know you said that was like a ding moment for you, but did you have a day where something clicked where you felt what a good cast felt like? Because I remember I was out there flailing around for a while, and then at some point it was like, oh, I feel what it's like to have a rod load. And it's like that feeling kind of switched something in me where it's like now I get it. Now I have that muscle memory. Do you remember having a moment like that, or was it kind of a gradual burn?
Nathan
Well, it was gradual, but you know, when those times when you do get it right, and then you don't know how to get it right again, so you have to just keep paying the price until you can consistently. And occasionally somebody will say, well, you dummy, quit throwing it forward so hard or whatever the clue is. Just learn the hard way.
Katie
I saw in the bio you filled out ahead of time that, you know, you marked that you had started back in the early 70s. And in parentheses you had things were different back then. Is this what you're talking about, like the instructional part? Or were things different back then in another way, like culturally or anything like that?
Nathan
Well, I think there was one fly shop in Minneapolis. And, you know, I didn't do much when I was in college, but then I got to dental school. And then the guy sitting right next to me lived by the boundary waters. So we were there a lot and we started to learn. And back in those days, you know, I think that was still, you could go to the fly shop and the line was rated like G and an H. And it wasn't 1, 2, 3, 4 through 13 like it is now. And the materials were, you know, it was all must-add hooks, and the materials were primitive, at least here in Minnesota. So everything you learned was just a slow, grudging way to find better stuff. But there was no graphite fly rods yet. It was all fiberglass. Occasionally you get an old bamboo rod from a hardware store, and they're kind of fun to use now, But, man, you could just feel the improvements coming with the good fiber. Fenwick was kind of the top of the game then. And then we just got into better stuff in the late 70s and 80s.
Katie
I'd love to hear this both from your perspective back then and as well as today. Because when I think of the big areas in the country for fly fishing, I think of New England. There's a rich history there. I think of the Mountain West and I think of the Pacific Northwest as being kind of the three big cultural bubbles of fly fishing. Minnesota and the upper Midwest doesn't come to mind as much apart from the driftless. I think of it as more of a gear area for pike and walleye and bass and stuff like that. Both back then and now, what is and were the fly fishing cultures like compared to the conventional stuff? Is it a big thing there?
Nathan
Oh, it is now. But, you know, I live in northern Minnesota. I live by Leech Lake, Minnesota, which is still one of the great fisheries in the Midwest. And it's pretty much hardware. It's muskies and pike and walleye. And, you know, there are some fly fishermen around. If you want to fish for bass with a fly rod, you can do that here. But it's mainly hardware, spinning gear. The fly fishermen, there are some trout streams in southern Minnesota, in southeastern Minnesota. One aha moment I had was, you know, I grew up in southern Minnesota and all the rivers are kind of brown because it's farm runoff. And it's bullheads and catch the occasional walleye in there. Well, about 1982, I thought I had cancer and I was going to die. And I rented one of those new things called a video cassette recorder and took it home. And there was a video about fishing the Golden Triangle in Montana. And the guy said, if you only got one more river to fish, go to the Bighorn. So I thought maybe I only had one more to fish. And I drove to the Bighorn. I couldn't believe it. You know, I hired a guide and I stood up in the front of that boat and you could crystal clear water and fish down below. And we caught fish and you could use a fly rod nicely. And there was people there that could show you how to use it better.
And that was kind of an aha moment. Because up until then, the only thing even close was the boundary waters and fishing in the front of a canoe, throwing poppers for smallmouth. So you had to kind of look for your opportunities. There aren't a lot of great rivers here. All the trout streams in Minnesota, for the most part, are pretty small put-and-take rivers. There's some good fish in them, but it's not like Montana. I mean, it's not like the West.
Katie
So do you think that kind of the reason that it's mostly hardware is just the style of water you have in general and the species you have there? Like, it's just it doesn't lend itself as well to fly fishing as some of the more like trout-centric areas? or do you think it's something else that is driving the choice of hardware?
Nathan
Well, there's not a lot of fish on the surface. You can catch bass, smallmouth and largemouth on the surface, and occasionally crappies and sunfish all day. But if you want to catch walleyes, which everybody here, this is kind of walleye country, you can, well, I'm probably the only guy I know who I've ever spoken to. I caught walleyes on dry flies one night. Because usually you've got to go to the bottom, You're using Rapalas and spinning gear and live bait. And I do have a good story for you about walleyes on dry flies.
Katie
Yeah, let's hear it.
Nathan
I was between two little lakes that were connected by a moving river, not a very big one. And I was walking the shoreline and I was casting. It was getting towards dark. And there was like a boat landing there with a light. And it was getting dark. And all of a sudden, I started to hear it sounded like somebody was throwing rocks at me. I looked up and the air was just filled with hex, big yellow hex mayflies. And there was walleyes. I was standing probably between my knees and my ankles in clear water. And I could see a million eyes in the light there. And I didn't have a hex on me because I didn't know it was going to happen. So I ran home and got them for the next night. And I caught walleyes on dry flies for two hours. And I went back the next night and it was the same thing. And that's the only time I've ever been able to do it.
Katie
Huh. So you can see their eyes almost like gator eyes.
Nathan
Yeah. It looked like, yeah, like gators or a raccoon up in a tree. It was bing. So yeah, it can be done. But man, you got to work and search and do your research or just get real lucky. And I guess luck is better, you know.
Katie
I'm also surprised that this hasn't become like a well-known phenomenon because it's so, you know, singular and unusual. you know, hearing some famous story of like, oh, you have to catch the walleye hex hatch that lasts for, you know, a day and a half and travel for it.
Nathan
Well, the hex hatch and these little lakes around here, even up north here, you know, it lasts for middle of June to the end of June, middle of July, and then it's over. And there's a lot of nights when you go to fish the hex hatch on these local rivers, and there are a couple of them up here, and the hatch just doesn't happen. The conditions just it's kind of a fragile thing but man when it happens if you've ever fished it it's kind of gangbusters it's really good
Katie
it kind of feels like a different version of our salmon fly hatch out here yeah yeah comparable I guess
Nathan
yeah except it's dark so you're sure a lot of times you know you're smoking a cigar to keep the mosquitoes off you because that's horrific and you know the hex flies typically are come out of a burrow out of a muddy bottom so you got to walk through a slough and a swamp and sticks, it's tough getting into where they are around here. Nobody can get a boat through these little rivers. So there's big fish in tiny streams. You just got to want to be there and pay the price.
Katie
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know anyone. Well, I have talked to somebody on the show who had caught walleyes on the fly, but even that wasn't dry flies. But even subsurface flies, I don't hear walleyes very often on fly rod, which is kind of unusual, I guess, in a way, at least where I grew up. You know, I grew up catching walleyes on gear, but it wasn't like super deep nighttime stuff. It was like during the day on little like jerkbaits or crankbaits like in the local river. You know, they weren't more than, you know, maybe five to seven feet below the surface. So it could totally be done with like a streamer. But I just don't know anyone who's done that style of fishing really.
Nathan
Well, it's so, a lot of times you don't have room for backcasting. It's just, it's kind of tight on some of those rivers and getting a streamer down there fast enough. And it's just not something that is a big part of the culture here. There's guys like me that are looking for it, but almost everybody that I hang with. I hang around with a couple of guides up here. Well, these guys are all spinning gear and bait and hardware. So it's just a different culture up here. But there are fly fishermen here. Up on the north shore of Lake Superior, there's a couple pretty good steelhead streams, but they're short. There's not much there because right away you hit the granite cliffs. It's hard. This is gear. This is hardware country up here for the most part.
Katie
Do you enjoy that? Like, do you kind of like having a smaller niche and not feeling like you're absolutely swamped by all the other fly anglers around? Or do you wish the fly fishing community would kind of move in a little bit more?
Nathan
Well, I don't think like that. I live on a beautiful little lake in the tall pines at the end of the road. And right out there is my boat. and it's a great crappie lake, great bass lake. I don't mind using spinning gear because it's right here, and when I'm done, I come in and watch the twins at night. So it's my little thing. When I want to use the fly rod, I'll go to Michigan or maybe some of the trout streams nearby, or most of my good buddies live in Montana.
Katie
So you've got places to go and fly fish that aren't home too.
Nathan
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Katie
Gotcha. I also saw that you have caught lakers on the surface, which I also have, so I can join you in that. But I want to hear about your experience because I bet it might be different than mine, so I just want to hear what you experienced.
Nathan
Mine was kind of a surprise. A few years ago, I always wanted to go catch the big brook trout in Labrador. It was kind of a bucket list deal. So my best friend and I flew to Labrador, and we were there early in the season, and there was brook trout in the river, but it was so early and there was still snow on the ground. So the lake trout that lived in the lake had moved up in the river and there were some big lakers in there. So we started fishing for the lake trout. We were using mice, big foam mice patterns. Well, that's about as good as I've ever had. I had steelhead that were better than that, but we were catching 30-inch lake trout on a mouse. And it was a tussle. The guys up there call it the North American taimen. So they're not a real pretty trout, but they're a tussle. And to catch them on the top, yeah.
Katie
What was that take like? Did they just like hammer it? I mean, I assume you have to if you're attacking a mouse. You can't be gentle about it.
Nathan
Took it similar to a pike. I mean, just a smash and they were gone. You know, all the fish up there, you know, summer is kind of short in Labrador. When you see a pork chop go floating by, they go get it. You got to take advantage. The brookies did too. We caught brookies on mice too.
Katie
Really? That's probably one of the only places you can do that, I would assume.
Nathan
Yeah. And boy, there's so many nice rivers in Labrador. I mean, it's just, I'd love to go back there. There's so many great spots to fish. And they had landlocked salmon there too. Now, I didn't happen to catch one, but they were all five, six, eight pounds, kind of a greenish landlocked salmon.
Katie
I would assume that's an Atlantic salmon, right?
Nathan
Yes.
Katie
Okay.
Nathan
And my friend caught one. We just didn't hit it right, but it was electric. I mean, it was a fantastic run. And I'd say that's worth going back for too. But they aren't in every river.
Katie
When you travel into Labrador, are you flying in somewhere super remote? Or is there like a pretty good road network? I kind of don't know a lot about Labrador in terms of its accessibility compared to, Like I hear tons about Alaska, so I feel like I can kind of picture that. I don't really picture what it's like to get into Labrador and fish it.
Nathan
Well, first thing I would tell you is learn how to say where's the toilet in French, stuff like that, and how to read a menu. Because when you fly in there, most of the places we went spoke French. You can drive there to a lot of these places, but then you take a short float plane in where you're going. We flew into Toronto and Montreal, and we flew to Goose Bay. The plane's just getting smaller. and we flew out on a couple of real small planes. So it's pretty much all fly-in float planes, at least where we were. And we got stuck there for two extra days because the wind blew so hard. The planes couldn't leave. So, yeah, it's remote. I know you like the remote business. Labrador would be a good place for you.
Katie
Yeah, that's on the list. I know we were talking beforehand about the boundary waters, but Labrador is also up there. I think I would choose the boundary waters if I could only choose one to experience before I die, but hopefully I don't have to make that decision. But yeah, Labrador is definitely on the list too.
Nathan
You're young, you'll get to both of them. But the Boundary Waters, you know, that you drive to the put out where you launch your boat and you're off. Now, nowadays you have to get a permit, you know, and you go where you're sent. In fact, recently with these forest fires, they evacuated like 2,500 campers. It was dangerous, but that's kind of an anomaly. I've never heard of that before. But you, from what I know of you, you'd be a Boundary Waters person.
Katie
Yeah, tell me more about the logistics of the Boundary Waters. I've talked to several people about it over the years, but I feel like everyone's experience is different there. I'd love to hear about your time there and kind of the logistics of doing a Boundary Waters trip.
Nathan
Well, what everybody around here does, and I think pretty much everywhere, you get to Duluth and you head up to North Shore Drive, and then there are start, they're like the Sawbill Trail and the Gun Flint Trail, and they're trails that lead in, And then they just end. And then you launch your boat or your canoe from that spot. And you're wise to pick out a place. What we always did was pick out a lake and go there. I didn't like making camp every day. I wanted to get in there and set up camp and fish and take the canoe out for a day trip a few different places. So as a dental student, I know I can talk about it now. My parents are dead. I skipped school a couple times, and we drove up all night, got to the boundary waters, and took Thursday and Friday to fish. We cut class, and during lake trout, spawned right at the end of the season. Then we caught lake trout on streamers in about three feet of water, too. But it's just fantastic country. So, yeah, you could, there again, bring your fly rod. You can catch pike in the shallow water. Lake trout is kind of a be there at the right time. LIs, unlikely, but man, the smallmouth fishing out there, poppers, and you can use nymphs and streamers and stuff, but poppers are the most fun.
Katie
This is probably going to be kind of a dumb question, but I was thinking about it when you said, you know, you'd choose a single lake. And when I pictured the Boundary Waters, I almost picture it as like one big sea of water with islands all through it. Is it more land with individual lakes connected by rivers than it is kind of like one big, you know, massive water with land scattered throughout? Is it, I don't know if this is a weird way to think about it, but.
Nathan
Yeah, if you look at an aerial map, it's mostly land with big lakes, small lakes, rivers connecting them. And there's really good maps around to get you through these trails. And there's tons of people that can get you where you want to go. But yeah, you got to know where you want to go. And depending on the water level, some of these portages are miserable. I mean, there's some long portages. It's raining and buggy and can be horrible. But I kind of came off the tracks there. You can find what you want to find. There's some big lakes that are scary big when the wind blows. And there's a lot of small lakes. And you can kind of tailor your trip however you want to do it. What you got to decide ahead of time is just how far you want to carry that canoe.
Katie
Is there a pretty good system of trails for some of the popular areas like that? Or are you pretty much always like bushwhacking when you're carrying a canoe?
Nathan
Every place I've ever been, I'm sure you can bushwhack. But most of them, you know, you walk up, the portages are marked on the map. So you're on Lake Katie and there's a portage here on one end and a portage on the other. And you paddle along and you can't miss it. I mean, some of them are even marked with a little sign, but you'll see a trail up through the woods and it'll tell you on the map this portage is half a mile or 100 yards.
Katie
Okay, I guess that's not what I was picturing. I was kind of assuming that you kind of chose your own adventure where you want to go, but it totally makes sense that there's going to be popular routes that people have taken many times and there's a trail there.
Nathan
It would be really tough to bushwhack up there. I mean, it's tough country and the trails are there because somebody went and figured out the best way to get from one lake to the next. that's difficult enough, I think. Are there some lakes that are, I don't want to say inaccessible,
Katie
like no one can ever get to them, but are there the equivalent of, you know, our lakes up here, our alpine lakes that don't have a trail to them and you do have to kind of bushwhack your way over to them. Are there lakes like that that are kind of not visited unless you really put in a lot of extra effort to get to them?
Nathan
Oh yeah. The longer portage is cut down on who goes in there. And I'm not an expert there. It's been a few, I don't like sleeping on the rocks anymore. So I'm kind of cutting back. I'm getting to be an old guy. It's been a few years for me, but we always pick the places that we thought we'd have the best fishing. And sometimes it's kind of remote. Just north of the boundary waters is Quetico. And that's a Canadian provincial park. And it's kind of the same thing. So there's tons of places to go and tailor what you want. If you go there, you're going to want to go back another time because you're going to think of all the things that you should have brought and should have done.
Katie
Does the fishing really vary between the lakes or is it pretty similar?
Nathan
Well, it's walleyes and pike and a lot of smallmouth bass. Sometimes the rivers between the lakes are the best places to fish. But it's like fishing. You know, it should have been here yesterday. We've had tremendous days up there, and we've had days where we ate oatmeal. You pack in what you want to eat, but you hope there's fish to eat with it because typically shore lunch is sort of a big part of that procedure.
Katie
Yeah, I was just reading an article in a magazine that had mentioned that the best-tasting fish is when you can see where it was caught while you're eating it. Something about that adds a little extra flavor to it.
Nathan
Well, you know, it's funny. When you cook, I'm sure you've done this. You know, you make yourself a cup of coffee in the Boundary Waters or any remote place, and it's got maybe some ashes and a piece of bark and a mosquito in it, and it's really good. If somebody served you a cup like that in a restaurant, you'd stomp out. But if you kind of like to rough it, you have a little smoke in your eyes, and yeah, it's pretty good stuff.
Katie
Well, I put cream in my coffee at home, or milk, I guess, in my coffee at home. But because when we backpack, I don't have milk. I just drink it black. And it's gotten to the point where now when I drink black coffee, if I have to, if we're out of milk or something, it actually tastes good to me. Even though I don't truly love black coffee, but it tastes like camping or backpacking because that's the only time I drink it. And so now I'm like, I've got this positive association with black coffee that I've kind of trained myself to enjoy it because I'm never in a bad mood when I'm drinking black coffee, turns out.
Nathan
There you go. That's a good thing. And the memories that you make there, you bring those home with you. And the little things come back to you. So that's a good one.
Katie
Tell me about some of your other travels. I know you mentioned in the bio Michigan and Montana. You mentioned the Bighorn a little bit earlier, but I'd love to hear about some of the other places you've explored around the U.S.
Nathan
Well, my current favorite place, I'm not going to give anything away here, but when I was in dental school, four of us went to Cross Lake Michigan on a railroad ferry and went fishing on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan. And there was alcohol involved on that one. And it was four college boys, a lot of bad behavior, but we camped in the weeds, camped in the woods, on the snow. And I saw a steelhead but didn't catch any. And we went back, I went back about 40 years later and it's kind of my favorite place now. The river that we fish is the Pier Marquette. It's no secret. That's kind of my favorite. But, you know, you can use your fly rod, and it's pretty much bottom bouncing. I've never caught anything except bouncing the bottom. But, you know, you catch a 12, 10, 12, 14-pound steelhead on a fly in three feet of water, you've got lightning in your hand. And, you know, the tug is the drug. We've had days where we caught, landed 8, 10, 12 fish, And we've had days where we hooked six or eight but didn't land any. And that's kind of remote too. I mean, where we are, it's little cabins. It's just like camping in the boundary waters almost. It's a small, small river. But, you know, the Muskegon, the Au Sable, you know, they're all really good rivers. So I guess a lot of times it gets down to the guide you hire too.
Katie
Do you usually go to the guide there? Are you comfortable enough to do it?
Nathan
Yeah. It would be so hard. I mean, yeah, for about every reason there is, you want a guide. The guides are so good. We'll be floating the river, and our guy, I've had him for a few years, he'll hit the brakes, and, you know, they're right there. And so you're fishing for big steelhead that are maybe 15, 20 feet away, and he saw them first because he kind of thought they might be there. So I would recommend that highly. And all those rivers are really fantastic. They probably are on the Wisconsin side, too. I just have always gone to Michigan.
Katie
And do you make your way back there pretty often?
Nathan
Yeah, it's a religious pilgrimage every year, about the last week in March, first week in April. But as far north as we are, we go around through the bridge, Mackinac Bridge. And, man, that's an adventure every year because we've had to wait for a day because the ice was falling off the bridge and they closed the bridge. So getting back and forth across the bridge is always the cross-your-fingers kind of a deal.
Katie
Yeah, and picturing the signs I see that say like bridge ices before road on some short little thing crossing a little stream. And now I'm imagining that bridge crossing that much water. Like the whole thing's got to be made of ice.
Nathan
Well, and they have, you know, a 500-pound piece of ice fall off the top of the bridge. That's not good for your car or your truck.
Katie
Or the boat underneath.
Nathan
Yeah, yeah.
Katie
Do you typically hire a guide whenever you go somewhere new? Like is it just a way to kind of get good intel in the local water? Or is that just like specific to that location, you know, floating and everything? You think it's a good use of money and time?
Nathan
That would probably be specific to that location because it's just such a difficult river to navigate without a guide. They know where all the stumps and rocks and stuff is. The other places I go anymore, I've been so many times for the most part, I pretty much know where I'm going. I shouldn't have said that, but it's kind of true. You get used to where you're going. You like the places you go. So no, I don't always hire a guide. Probably should, but I don't.
Katie
Yeah, I think for me, the threshold is somewhere between like I, this is the same style of fishing I usually do. I can probably figure this out pretty quickly. And I might figure this out, but it might take me two weeks to figure it out. So I should probably just get somebody to get me up to speed faster. You know, saltwater. Like I'm going to hire a guide every single time I go because it's like, just get me where the fish are. I can't even see them. Whereas I feel like I could catch most trout in the U.S., most non-steelhead trout in the U.S. without a guide.
Nathan
Well, the thing, too, is if you're young and you have a job, you only got so much time. Older guys, like my friends and I, well, we're all retired. So the thing, after you do it for a while, you know, it isn't, sure, the tug is the drug. You want to catch a fish. You want to have a fish on the line. But if you're fishing over rising trout and you don't catch any, that's fine. at least you got a chance you know fishing when you know there's fish there you win it's those days when you don't even think there's a fish in the river you go home kind of discouraged so yeah it's nice to catch them it's nice to know they're there and it's kind of who you go with too the buddies we have a lifetime of good times with well that counts a lot
Katie
yeah do you have a kind of a core group that you do most of your traveling or trips with?
Nathan
A lot of individuals. Yeah, I suppose you could say that. Yeah, my one of my close friends lives on a cabin on a Montana river and he's another crusty old curmudgeon. And yeah, we have a lot of laughs just in being together on the river. You know, crazy stuff happens when you fish. Somebody's got a hole in their wader or it's a hook in their finger or it's just one thing after another. And that's where a lot of the joy comes from. You know, there's a great line, I put this in one of the books by Henry David Thoreau, many men go fishing their whole lives and never realize it's not fish they're after.
Katie
Yeah. I do a lot of solo stuff or stuff with the dog, but all of my favorite trips are with a friend, an older friend or my husband or, you know, just somebody to be there when, And like you said, when the crazy stuff happens, you've got to have somebody turn to and say, like, did you see that?
Nathan
Did you see that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of that stuff.
Katie
You mentioned your writing. How did you get into writing?
Nathan
Well, you know, I never wanted to be. I was a dentist for 42 years. So I just never thought about it. And when my father was dying, I went and sat at his bedside and I thought I'd read to him because I knew it was the end. And then I thought, well, I'm going to read something that I wrote. And I started writing a story, and I put two guys in a duck boat. And my father died when I was on about page 30. So for whatever reason, I don't know. I sat at this desk, and I finished the story. And it took me two years, but two great things happened. I got closure with my dad, and I rediscovered the written word. You know, if you're the storyteller like I am and you probably are too, you sit around a campfire and you have your hands and your eyebrows and your tone of voice and you can tell a story. Well, when you try and tell a story, write it down. All you got is a number two lead pencil or a word processor and you got to like the language. You got to like words. I had a professor in college, my freshman English, bonehead English, who, he had a great line. He said, you know, if you want to be a writer because you have something to say, you'll never make it. But if you want to be a writer, if you want to write because you like words, well, you got a chance. And you have to like to write a story. And it was always a challenge to see if I could write a long story. And for what it's worth, when I finished that story, I thought I was done. I felt like, well, no one's ever going to read this anyway. Well, long story short, it did get published, and it won the 2004 Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction. So then I thought, well, okay, I'm going to write some more. I did use fly fishing, and in that book, I used the outdoors as a vehicle to carry a story, a love story, love, loss, redemption. The next one I wrote came about because one of my buddies around a campfire said, well, Nate, anybody can write one book. Can you do another one? So I wrote about the 50-year-old man who hates his wife and hates his life and hates his job. And he made all his choices in life to please someone else. So he decides to take a mulligan, you know, a second chance. And he winds up, long story short, as a guide in Montana. So I used fly fishing as a vehicle to carry a much bigger story. I mean, it's in the same way that a river runs through it. Well, that isn't about fly fishing. That's about a whole tender, touching, love story. It's just fly fishing as a vehicle to carry that story. So many writers want to write, you know, a how-to, and that's one thing. But using something like fly fishing as a vehicle, then you got a chance to get some pretty interesting stuff woven through it.
Katie
Yeah. When I talked to Tom Rosenbauer, we talked about this, and both of us are not super big into specifically fly fishing writing with a handful of exceptions. I think John Gierach, anyone I've ever talked to, he knows how to turn a relatively insignificant moment in fly fishing into something a lot bigger. He had a knack for doing that. But I think a lot of people, they write about fly fishing. They're just kind of writing about what happens when you go fly fishing, which if you're not there, it's usually not that exciting to hear it described. And like I said, John had a way of turning it into something much bigger and funnier than it actually was.
Nathan
He could bring you into the story. He could make you appeal to your senses. You want to bring the reader in. When you get done with one of Gierach's books, with any good book, You turn that last page and you think, oh, I'm going to miss these people. Now what? And another good one was Gordon McQuarrie.
Katie
Oh, I haven't read any of him.
Nathan
He's died in 1957, but he was one of the first conservation of sports writers. And if you like to read, McQuarrie's stuff is kind of like Norman Rockwell's painting in print. It's just charming, touching stuff, but it was written during the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. It's similar to Gierach in that it's engaging stories that make you feel good when you're done. Gierach makes you laugh and make you go, oh, yeah, I know about that. I know what that feels like.
Katie
Yeah, he has a way of making you feel somehow better and worse about yourself at the same time. Yeah. Because he's got that kind of self-deprecating manner as well. Tom McGuane's another one. And Ted Leeson. Those are the three that I can think of that I've read that I've been like, you can write specifically about fly fishing and I'm enjoying what I'm reading. Whereas most people I feel like, or most fly fishing writing needs to have something else. Like you said, like a river runs through it. Where it's not, fly fishing is there, but it's not, here's what happened when I went fly fishing. So I think apart from those three, most of the good stories I've read that have involved fly fishing are kind of, it's a part of a much bigger story.
Nathan
Always. It has to be. Yep.
Katie
So tell me about your latest book. Does that have any ties to fishing?
Nathan
Well, that's probably the biggest tie to fishing yet. And, you know, in this one, I have a Catholic priest in it who's kind of one of the protagonists of the story. And I covered a lot of ground in this one. But basically, it's for people who wonder about the cosmos and the history that we lived through that we maybe didn't recognize what was going on. And I used one particular incident on Easter Sunday where a priest is talking to a woman doctor, and they're kind of arguing about sometimes he says to her, you think you understand what you're looking at? She says, well, yeah. And they begin to talk about an insect hatch, in the case of Hendrickson hatch. And she just has this moment where he explains to her that, well, okay, what's going on right now is the air is full of Hendrickson. Did you see him a minute ago? Didn't notice. But all of a sudden, there's fish rising. The point of that little story is that she wasn't aware of what was right in front of her because she'd never been told about it. The next thing that he gets into, and this is kind of the cornerstone for the story, this guy is a fly fisherman. And he starts telling her they're dealing with a little bad activity with demons. And he says, okay, think of a trout stream, the surface of a trout stream, as the barrier between two worlds, between two dimensions, if you will. You can go to the edge of the trout stream and look in there, but you can't go there and live. And you can do things on the surface of the trout stream to make a fish come up and maybe even kill that fish. and you can do some harm by reaching, but you can't go there. The fish can see you, but they know you're here, but they can't come here. And I use that as an analogy to cover a much bigger thing about heaven, hell, life, death, near-death experiences. I'm not going to give away too much here, but it's a much bigger story about this life, the next life, heaven, hell, other dimensions, quantum physics. but this priest lays it out there on a trout stream. I don't know if I did a real good job of laying that out for you, but it's a long story, but the trout fishing keeps coming back and coming back and coming back as the barrier between dimensions.
Katie
Where do you get ideas like this?
Nathan
I don't know. I must have had a head injury at some point because this stuff just comes. You know, I like history, and I look at moments in history, and this is what I did with Otto's Portal. You know, I had moments like the Kennedy assassination, you name it, UFO incidents where it's like, I'm going to try and connect these dots with my own imagination, my own spin. And I had fun with them. I did a lot of research on this life, the next life, physics, stuff like this. I'm going to go super nerdy on you here for a second. In 1687, Isaac Newton published his book, Principles of Mathematics and Natural History. And his work on gravity is still a cornerstone in physics. It's right on to money. 1915, Albert Einstein came along and published his work on general relativity. And his work on gravity and the structure of the cosmos is right on to money. It's a cornerstone still. They're both right, but they both prove each other wrong, which is kind of a problem. So along comes the thing called string physics about the middle of the last century, and that is where your weird-shit-o-meter starts clanging because it's weird stuff. But there were physicists at the time that said, well, string theory is going to reconcile Einstein and Isaac Newton and will even reconcile science and the Bible. Well, it hasn't yet, but that's kind of what I did in the whole story that I'm kind of dancing around the edge of right now.
Katie
You may be the first writer I've had on who is writing about both fly fishing and string theory. I think that might be a first.
Nathan
Well, yeah. I think I made that bridge okay on there. But both of those also are just vehicles to carry the struggle between good and evil.
Katie
I have to ask because you mentioned your first book that you had read for your father to read. Are you a duck hunter? Is that where you got the duck hunting from? Tell me about that. What's that like up in Minnesota?
Nathan
Well, the flyway has kind of shifted. You really got to work now where we are. In the old days, it was ducks over decoys, and we liked the northern flight coming in when the weather was howling terrible. But the flyway has kind of shifted. much of the pond water is gone and it moved over to the Dakotas now because it's still a lot of potholes out there. But when I was a kid in southern Minnesota, man, we could hunt in cornfields. There was water everywhere, potholes everywhere. Now it's all been drained. So it's really changed. But duck hunting is one of those things. It's much like fly fishing. In fact, we've had this great philosophical debate for years around a campfire. Which is better, ducks over decoys or trout on dry flies.
Katie
I'm going to vote ducks.
Nathan
Oh, you're the only girl I ever heard say that, but you know, you know, the answer to that is written on a bottle of scotch somewhere way down in the bottom because we've talked, the other thing is a white tail buck at about 10 yards with a bow. That comes into the play too, but man, the two ducks over decoys and trout on dry flies, that's a fun discussion around a campfire.
Katie
I'll have to survey, well, I don't have a ton duck hunters in my life, but I'll just survey the handful I do. The reason I'm voting for that partially is because I'm newer to duck hunting than I am to fly fishing, partially because I have no trouble catching fish on dry flies. I have a lot of trouble getting ducks to come into my decoys. And finally, I can catch trout a whole bunch of other ways. I could give up dry fly fishing if it meant that I got ducks into my decoys all the time and didn't have to find other ways to hunt them.
Nathan
That's a great, you know, I mentioned Gordon McQuarrie earlier. There's a series of books that's right up, if you can see them right up here, Stories of the Old Duck Hunters. It's a compilation of Gordon McQuarrie's work over like 30 years. It was put together after he died, but it's stories about duck hunting in Wisconsin in the 1930s, 40s, 50s. Gordon McQuarrie, you check him out and let me know how you like him. You can find it, I'm sure you can find it on Amazon. Otherwise, it's going to be in an antique bookstore somewhere. But stories of the old duck hunters, more stories of the old duck hunters, and last stories of the old duck hunters. It's great stuff.
Katie
I'll have to check those out because a year or two ago, it wouldn't have been last year, we had a baby this past winter, so I didn't get to get out for any duck hunting. So two years ago, I was on the hunt for some reading material about duck hunting, And I didn't find a ton that I enjoyed, or I didn't find a ton in general. But the handful I did find, it was like duck hunting plus a lot of like upland and stuff like that. And I'm not as into upland hunting, nothing against it, but we don't have a lot around here. So I don't care as much about reading about pheasants and things like that. So I'll have to check those out if those are specific to duck hunting.
Nathan
It'd be great if John Gierach would write about duck hunting.
Katie
That would be good.
Nathan
Yeah.
Katie
I don't know if he duck hunted. I know he elk hunted. That's come up in a couple of his works, but I don't know if he was a duck hunter.
Nathan
Don't know.
Katie
Well, just to wrap up, remind people where they can find you if they want to find you online or any of your books, names of your books if you want to plug them, whatever you want.
Nathan
Well, you can find me online, nathanjorgenson.com. Go to Amazon, read reviews. The books, Waiting for White Horses, A Crooked Number, The Mulligan, Contrapasso, and now Otto's Portal. There's stories of the human condition, love, loss, redemption. Like I say, I used vehicles like duck hunting or trout fishing or like that, but only to carry bigger stories, a broken heart and lost love and life.
Katie
Awesome. Well, Nathan, thank you for joining me today. It was great to learn more about your part of the country. Like I said, it's not something that comes up a ton here because it doesn't have as big of a fly fishing bubble, but it's a place that's definitely on my list to check out, And it's just great to hear from people who live up there what their experiences are like. So thank you for joining me.
Nathan
Thank you. Come and see me sometime. I'll show you where the crappies are.
Katie
Sounds great. Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan
Thank you.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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