It’s a picture in one of 13 shoeboxes of pictures. 1973. Two middle-aged men stand leaning forward against the top rail of a fence. One of them--my father--towers over the other one, whose skin is taut against his face and neck. Between them six fish, four northern pike and two walleye from two to three feet long, hang from the railing. A white sign also hangs from the railing that says Brown Bear Lake Resort, although the fish obscure some of the letters. The short one--Eddie Nagler--is holding onto a 49-inch muskie hanging from a chain, its tail dragging against the dirt. The walleye and northern pike are nice adornments, but that muskie is why this picture was taken. It’s the “fish of 10,000 casts,” rarely found in the clear water lakes of the upper...

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