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My old friend and fishing buddy, Chris Nolt, arrived at our house last week. Chris moved out to Montana with his folks and sisters when he was 15 and he hasn’t looked back too often since. The mountains and seemingly endless western skies, not to mention incredible trout fishing and elk hunting, grabbed hold of Chris from the start and Montana continues to keep a tight grip on him. Over the years, I’ve made some trips out there and Chris has been back here a few times himself. Although, a couple of his visits were an hour or two here and there at the St. Paul/Mpls. International Airport to look at photo albums and drink coffee between business flight connections.

Chris brought his son, Michael, along with him on this particular trip. The last time my wife and I saw Michael nine years ago, he was a two-year-old. He’s 11 and it didn’t take long for Michael and my son, Anders, to get along as though they’d been old chums from the start.

In three days, my family and I kept the boys from Montana pretty busy. Chris and I took a day-long float trip down the Namekagon in a Hyde drift boat for smallmouth bass the morning after he and Michael arrived, and the next day Michael was introduced to my in-laws’ private, top, top secret lake for sunnies and largemouth bass.

I’ve been fishing this lake now for some years, and June has always proven to be the prime month for sight casting to bluegills and pumpkinseeds during the pre-spawn and spawning periods.

By the way, I believe I held the record for the largest bluegill to come out of that lake. A couple of weeks ago, I caught what I believed to be an unbeatable gill that went 10-plus inches long with a girth of 11-inches.

Well, I couldn’t be happier to report that a freaky-big bluegill was caught last Friday that shattered that record, and plenty of folks were around that day to see this behemoth sunfish. We picked up a bluegill on a 4-weight fly rod that went 11-1/2 inches and 13-inches around. I’m guessing that it took at least three minutes to get that fish into the boat. Keep in mind now, I’m talking about a bluegill––a sunfish––a three-minute tug-of-war to land a sunfish.

As the sunlight began to fade, Chris and I started to paddle back to the shoreline to gather up the kids, fishing equipment and the sunnies we kept for a fish fry around the fire pit that evening. As our canoe slipped through the calm water, we watched Michael and Anders for a while as they swam and whooped it up, their laughter drifting over the lake. Chris laid the paddle across his lap and said, “You see that? Boy, it’s neat to see our boys together like that.” I couldn’t help but grin as a thousand childhood memories of Chris and me flooded my head and replied,“Yep. It reminds me of a couple of kids I used to know.”

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankies Bait and Marine in Chisago City and St. Croix Outdoors in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

Dan Brown is a director at the Chisago Lakes Achievement Center in Chisago City. In addition, Brown is a fly casting instructor and trout fishing guide at Seven Pines Lodge in Lewis, WI. Recently Brown was featured on Ron Schara’s Minnesota Bound and ESPN II’s Backroads with Ron and Raven, as well as KSTP channel 5’s Eyewitness News Morning Show. He is a Taylors Falls resident and can often be found on the area lakes, trout streams and the St. Croix River.

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