by Bob Jensen

Fishing the Midwest Fishing Team

Through my 40 plus years of working in the fishing industry as a fishing writer, fishing guide, fishing instructor, tournament angler, seminar speaker, radio and television show host, I’ve had the good fortune to fish and hang out with some very memorable people.  Some were well known, some not so much.  Almost all were wonderful people.  It’s my privilege to share some of those memories here on Reel-Times.

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RON LINDNER

I first met Ron Lindner when I lived in Brainerd in the late 70’s. He and Al were just starting The In-Fisherman empire, but it wasn’t an empire at that point. Ron invited me to their offices to see what they did and what they were going to do. They had hired one of their first staff members: Maybe he was the first staffer. Dave Csanda.  I moved away from Brained a few months later and lost touch with Ron.

A few years later Ron and Al bought Camp Fish in Walker Minnesota. I was on the staff there at the time. That’s when I really got to know Ron. In the fall, Camp Fish hosted the Camp Fish Celebrity Jamborees. The Jamborees were three consecutive weekends of hardcore fishing. They were a fund-raiser for Camp. People paid about $400.00 for a weekend of fishing with some of the best fishermen in the Midwest as well as some nationally known anglers. This was what many anglers of that era refer to as the Golden Age of the Fishing Industry.

I usually stayed at Camp in between the Jamborees and just went fishing. Ron would usually come up on Wednesday or Thursday and he and I would head out. We would fish four or five lakes a day. Ron had a book that showed area lakes and the roads and trails that led to them. We would head down roads that sometimes turned into logging trails in search of under-explored lakes, mostly largemouth bass lakes.

Every now and then, as we were heading down an under-traveled trail, Ron would say, “Wait a minute, Mr. Jensen, dis’ ain’t a road. Back up”. I honed my backing-up-with-a-trailer skills on those under-traveled trails. And, every now and then, we found a lake that was under-fished. Wonderful times.

Ron was an outstanding angler. He introduced me to Leech Lake largemouth bass before Leech Lake became a popular largemouth fishery. One day we were fishing the rice and reeds with spinnerbaits, and we were catching good numbers of really nice bass.

Ron declared that “that point up there looks snakish” meaning it looked like a place where a northern pike would live. We hadn’t caught or seen a pike all day, but sure enough, we got to the point and Ron caught a pike right where he said there would be one. I learned that when Ron said something was going to happen, it usually happened. Maybe not exactly the way he thought it would happen, but there would be an occurrence.

A few years later we were on the Rainy River below International Falls. We were going to do a smallmouth bass episode of Fishing the Midwest television. The night before, Ron said that we would “catch one hundred smallmout’ bass tomorrow”.  I was looking forward to that. The next day, after just a few minutes on the river, Ron declared, “Tings have changed. We ain’t gonna’ catch one hundred smallmout’ bass today”. He was right. We caught sixty! I counted.

There are so many other stories of my time in the boat and traveling with Ron that I remember fondly, and some not quite as fondly, but still memorable. Broken rods, improperly opened tackleboxes that resulted in breakage, and the same with multiple electric motors. I have wonderful memories of the bass and the breakage that I had the good fortune to share with Ron Lindner, one of the true pioneers and legends in the world of fishing.

This Look Back originally appeared in the Reel-Times digital newsletter.  To get a free subscription to Reel-Times, go to fishingthemidwest.com and click on the appropriate link.