Shoepack Lake and a couple of local retired guides were featured in the November-December of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine.

Ed Town and Allen Burchell discussed with Michael A. Kallok, the author of “The Fish That Time Forgot,” earlier years when both men guided for muskie at Shoepack Lake.

Town told The Journal he hasn’t been into the lake, located in the interior of Voyageurs National Park, for a number of years.

As a guide, Town often walked the 3 1/2 miles into Shoepack with parties of two or three men to fish for muskie, he said from his Lake Kabetogama home.

“We fished from shore, but there were canoes in there we could use,” he said. “The fish weren’t that big. We never caught more than a 6 pounder.”

The walk, despite mosquitoes in the morning and evening and black flies during the day, was worth the effort, Town said.

“It was a thrill catching one, watching it jump out of the water,” he said. “They do give a battle, they’re feisty little ones.”

In his younger day, he said it was another place to discover and explore.

The first time Town saw Shoepack was as a 9-year old. “I walked in with my dad partridge hunting,” he said. “It used to be nice with the tote road from the logging days.”

Before the area was included in VNP, Town said Lloyd Boyum hauled a forest tower into the lake so the state and Boise Cascade could watch over their forestry interests.

The lake was once part of a logging camp, and Town said a root house, where loggers stored potatoes, was still present on big Shoepack Lake when he was younger.

“In later years, we hunted a lot of deer, after the fire went through and they opened it for hunting,” he said. “It was a long way to drag out, but we were young and foolish and my dad was right along in there.”

Many times, the only other people at the lake were bush pilots like Frankie Bohman, Town noted.

The area’s history encourages reminiscing on the walk into the lake, Town said. “Everything had to be hauled out to Kabetogama or Namakan, and it’s possible the logs came out on Rainy Lake,” he said.

Talking about the earlier years on the lake with the author for the story at Kabetogama’s Bait ‘N Bite was fun, he said. He joked that his face was covered by a cup of coffee in a photograph published with the story. “I guess that might have been the best one,” he said.

The story about Shoepack was interesting and well written, he said.

Town also noted while the author and photographer, Mike Dvorak, asked what kind of bait the retired guides used, a photo shows them using something else.

He also noted that on Dec. 6, he celebrated his 79th birthday. The story about Shoepack put him at 82, he said laughing.

Town noted that the furthest he’s ever lived from where he was born at Ray is 20 miles. A few years after his birth, his family moved to Kabetogama and his dad worked as a commercial fisherman on Namakan Lake.

Town said he’s happy the story verified that the muskie caught in Shoepack were small, quickly adding that “They’re tough little guys.”

Jeff Eibler, Department of Natural Resources assistant area fisheries supervisor, also said the muskie in Shoepack are small. Shoepack is one of the few natural muskie lakes in the local management area, he said.

The muskie from Shoepack were used in the 1950s as brood stock for other lakes, he said.

“They were stocked all over the place, then we realized that they’re genetically predisposed to be small,” he said. “There is a survival advantage to being small.”

Shoepack also has lots of the small muskie. “It’s an excellent place to go experience high catch rates,” he said. “They’re hungry.”