September 2024 Edition | Page 15

ple who knew about this that we never worried about anything getting stolen . In fact , very few people even knew about the Blood Hole at that time . We named it the Blood Hole because of all the blood that would accumulate on late ice when you fished this spot . A big box culvert that went under the old railroad tracks combined a deadly combination of current , rip-rap and a bottleneck .

Tony , Paul and I somehow fit everything onto a small four-wheeler . We had about 300 yards to drive down the bumpy railroad tracks . Minnows and water sloshed back and forth as we bounced over each railroad track tie .

The rails were still present . Paul was balancing on the back trying to hold a big beta camera while Tony sat in front of me . About a hundred yards down the tracks , Tony looked

back at me and asked what I will do when a train come . The tracks had been abandoned a few years prior , but Tony didn ’ t know that .

I was joking and told Tony that you run and get about 50 feet in front of the four-wheeler and lay as low as you can in the middle of the tracks .

I then told him to wrap his arms around the fishing rod as tight as you can because the wind and the draft from the train driving over the top of you would often lift the fishing rod up and break the tip off .

Tony thought I was serious . I think he was terrified . He was like an owl looking up and down the tracks for an oncoming train . A few times he nudged me and told me he thought he could hear a train coming from the distance . I told him we ’ d keep driving until you could feel the train . I told him that if a train was less than a quarter-mile

away we ’ d feel the vibration in the tracks .

We fished and typical fashion , the trolling motor battery was dead in less than an hour and we were anchored by tying a rope to a rock on the track . But we caught some big fish that afternoon . Turned out to be a great show .

Of course we laughed about laying in the middle of a train track for quite a while after that . Imagine Tony Dean lying in the middle of a train track with his legs crossed and his arms wrapped around his favorite jigging rod as a big , green Burlington Northern train barreled overhead at 50 mph a foot above his shaking , screaming face !

I still remember going to Las Vegas with Tony that last summer he was alive to attend ICAST . We sat in a hotel room together and laughed about the train until we both had tears

running down our face .

What I appreciated about Tony so much was the fact that he was always game . Tony honestly thought a train could come down those tracks at any second and that he would have to lay in the middle of those tracks as low to the ground as possible if a train were to appear . He never asked to turn back . He didn ’ t tell me to stop . There were walleyes to catch and that was all that mattered .

I never mentioned to Tony that there was no way in hell I could ever lay in the middle of a railroad track while a train passed overhead . I was worried he would have been disappointed with me .