When he wanted to start a fishing business somewhere in Minnesota, Jeff Sundin and his wife picked a location methodically. “We drew 50-mile-radius circles on the map to see where the most lakes were,” he said. Deer River came out on top, with something like 100 lakes in that circle. So 25 years ago, Sundin and his wife, Jane, moved north from the Twin Cities.
Now, Sundin has been guiding anglers for 25 years and making his Jigs ’n’ Rigs line of tackle for even longer. He guides 150 days a year, taking off only for his daughter’s birthday and fishing with his mom on Mother’s Day. “The good news is, I can stay booked,” says Sundin, 53. “The bad news is I have to stay booked. He was on the water again on this windy Saturday in late July with his friend Chad Haatvedt of Grand Rapids, Minn., and me. We were after a few walleyes.
Sundin had thought about fishing the submerged bars on Lake Winnibigoshish, but he knew it would be difficult in 20-mph winds. So we sought the relative protection of the adjacent Cut Foot Sioux Lake and began jigging some of Sundin’s 1/16th-ounce Sneaky Pete jigs tipped with night crawlers. Even early in the day, the wind was a factor, causing Sundin’s 20-foot Lund Alaskan to drift too fast over the pods of fish he saw on his fish finder. We used a large drift sock tied off the bow of the boat to slow down our drift.
Sundin prefers using the light jigs and working them just off the bottom rather than towing Lindy rigs, which tend to snag up in weeds more often. He uses 4-pound-test line on these light jigs, wiggling his rod tip constantly rather than lifting and dropping the jig. “Mostly, they’re floating in suspended limbo-land,” Sundin says. “You’re counting on the fish being active enough to come and get ’em.”
Some were. Sundin had promised us that, with recent unsettled weather, the bite would be mostly for smaller walleyes. Fishing them nearly every day, he has come to know them almost by year-class. The 13-inchers. The 15-inchers. The 18s and 22s.
Sundin took the first fish of the day, a 13-incher that he hooked after feeding it a lot of line. He tossed it into a cooler of ice. Sundin had proclaimed we would have a shore lunch, and we would need a few more of those guys.
Cut Foot, like neighboring Big Winnie, has a 17- to 26-inch protected slot limit, so we would keep only fish under 17 inches. Sundin likes what slot limits have done for lakes in the area.
“There are 10 slot lakes in our area, and they’re the best lakes we have because the fish are still in ’em,” he says. “We’ve gotten so good at catching fish.”
Haatvedt fooled a 22-inch walleye, which we dutifully admired before watching it swim back to the 16-foot depths from which it came.
The fishing was not easy. Sundin pulled up every 45 minutes or so to go hunting a pod of active fish. We chipped away at shore lunch, though, putting 13s and 14s into the cooler. Sundin got one or two on a Lindy rig and leech, but mostly, the Sneaky Petes did the job.
Catching 14-inch walleyes is not particularly exciting, but knowing we needed them for shore lunch gave us a sense of purpose. At midday, we tied up at a Chippewa National Forest campground, and Sundin effortlessly filleted five walleyes, diced potatoes and an onion, and plopped a can of baked beans atop the fire grate.
Eating freshly caught walleyes is always good, but eating them on a northern Minnesota lakeshore, with woodsmoke wafting on the breeze and cotton-ball clouds drifting overhead, is nothing to be taken for granted.
If you ever wondered why walleyes remain the fish of choice in Minnesota, the first bite of a Sundin batter-fried fillet will refresh your memory.
There were no leftovers.
The main project for the afternoon was catching a few more fish and trying to stay awake with all that shore lunch in our bellies. We succeeded on both counts, finishing with 15 fish for the day.
Sundin is happy with the decision he and Jane made 25 years ago to settle in Deer River. While Big Winnie is the centerpiece lake in the area, he has lots of other choices.
“There are well over a hundred lakes,” Sundin says. “I’ve fished every one that has a decent boat landing.”
He guides all summer and fall. He makes and paints jigs all winter. He sells about 40,000 a year, he says.
“It’s still a hobby,” Sundin says. “It’s as much as one person can do. There are a handful of bait shops and resorts that sell them. If you moved 50 miles outside the Deer River area, you’re not going to find ’em.”
Sitting at the tiller of his boat, wearing shorts, with a beefy cigar clamped in his lips, Sundin seemed completely content.
“It’s a pretty small group of people in the world who have made a living with a fishing rod,” Sundin says. “I might not be rich, but I’m not poor, and I get to do what most people have to take vacation to do.”