What would make someone return to the exact same remote fishing lake… for over 40 years?

This isn’t just a story about fishing—it’s about obsession, loyalty, and a place so powerful it becomes part of who you are. From a broken-down shack with no fridge in 1985 to a modern rebuilt outpost cabin in 2018 after a decade-long shutdown, this journey spans generations, extreme weather, and unforgettable moments.

You’ll hear about a legendary 13.5-pound walleye that still hasn’t been beaten since 1985… brutal storms that raised the lake overnight… and a face-to-face encounter with a bear just steps from the outhouse.

But more than that, it’s about early mornings on glassy water, wildlife all around you, and the kind of peace most people never experience.

At 80 years old, he’s still going back.

And he already knows where he wants part of his ashes to rest.

This is the kind of place that doesn’t just give you memories—it keeps calling you back, year after year.

Interview with Bob Frederick: Gordon Lake History

Interviewer: Wow. You’ve really done a lot of fishing trips if you’ve been to 20 different places. That’s pretty amazing.

Bob: Well, I started in ’85.

Interviewer: That’s a lot of years. So, tell me about the very first time you came up to Gordon Outpost. What do you remember most clearly about that first trip?

Bob: Well, I’ve got a picture on my wall. I scanned it and I got it written. I got you a note in my draft with a picture of it. But our first year there—I had gone to the Boundary Waters for five years.

Years ago, I started fishing Lake Michigan, then fishing Illinois.

Then we got jobs, my buddies and that, and then we fished northern Illinois up to Wisconsin, and finally, we made it up to the Boundary Waters canoe area in Minnesota.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, it’s beautiful.

Bob: Yeah. And I got tired of carrying everything.

Not by myself, you know, and a tent—build a tent, take down a tent, make camp, break camp.

And I thought, “We got to find something easier.” So, I went to a sports show and I discovered, gee, outpost fishing Canada. How am I going to find anybody? Back then—I still got the brochure—it was $555 with food. That was a lot of money back in 1985.

Interviewer: Yes, it was.

Bob: And I got this guy that I had done some work for, and he was older. He was in his 60s. And I said to Bill—that’s the guy with this big fish —

he says, “Yeah.” I says, “I’ve never been to Canada fishing.”

And I said, “Well, why don’t we do it? Try an outpost.”

So, we did it.

And it was really a shack, let me put it that way. But it became home, you know what I mean?

I mean, the bunk beds were in the same room, the kitchen table, the little cooktop—there wasn’t even an oven. And the refrigerator was broken, so they had to bring us ice every day. So it was really, really rugged.

But it was home, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

And this guy that I fished with on our first trip—and that’s how we got hooked on it—he used one lure: a Creek Chub minnow. That’s all he used all week. He didn’t like to touch bait, he didn’t like to touch fish. He didn’t even eat fish, but he loved to fish.

Interviewer: Just the excitement of catching them and being out there.

Bob: Right. And he catches—and I got the picture, I’ll send it to you. It’s something special that I made.

He caught a 13-and-a-half-pound walleye.

And I’ve been trying since 1985 to beat it and I haven’t done it yet.

I’ve gotten 10-pounders at Gordon, but never beat his 13-and-a-half-pounder.

It was a beauty.

So then the next year, the outfitter sold it and a guy named Glenn Holmes got them, and we went to a different lake. We thought, “Well, let’s try another one of their lakes.” And we went to this lake called Grant Lake.

And as soon as we got there, the first two days, I looked at Bill and I said, “You know, we’re going back to Gordon next year”. He says, “Yeah, let’s stay there”.

We both loved Gordon. I still do. I can’t wait till June.

So all of the ’80s and ’90s, and then when my sons and I joined up to 2004, we were at Gordon and had all kinds of fish stories.

Interviewer: Over the years, what kind of little routines and traditions have you developed?

Bob: Well, it started at the same time in June, staying overnight so we’re relaxed, and then flying out. In the beginning, in the ’80s and ’90s, there were always different people. Sometimes guys wouldn’t go and I’d find somebody else.

In the beginning they used to give you the food, but it’s hard to make a menu out of food they give you. It wasn’t bad, but then they started wanting to charge for food. They wanted $30 a day, and I said, “We can eat for less than that”. So, we started making a menu. Now almost everybody does that—you bring your own food.

Starting in 2000, when my sons and other firemen joined us, we would always make our own shirts or hats. You buy them there and they’re $20; you can have them made for $10 that say “Gordon Lake” or “Fly-in Fishing”. It’s our lake; do with it what you want. But we had some good menus.

Interviewer: Do you have something like a packing list that you use every year?

Bob: Oh, yeah. It’s on my computer. I’ve done all the shopping and everything.

One year I said, “Listen, I’m done shopping,” and somebody else did it and they messed it all up.

I said, “I’m coming out of retirement. I’m going to do the shopping from now on,” because I enjoy that.

I start actually in April.
I start shopping, bargains, coupons, different things to try to save money for the guys.

But we would eat good.

We would talk to guys at the sport shows—we don’t go anymore—but they would say, “Oh, yeah. We have fish, hot dogs, and hamburgers”.

I said, “What else?”

He said, “No, that’s all we eat all week”.

I said, “You guys are crazy.”

We have hamburgers the first day, but then we have ribs, pork chops, ribeye steaks, and fish fries.

He says, “You guys eat that good?”

and I said, “Well, yeah, it’s not that hard”.

He said, “Well, nobody knows how to cook.”

You need to find someone that knows how to cook, but we eat pretty good.

Well, I got to tell you, one time it was 2002, we had 14 inches of rain in two days.

The water went up 15 or 16 inches.

They had a dock out and then that floating dock for the airplane.

We used to have to step down to that floating dock, but after all this rain, that floating dock was just even with the walk-out deck.

We looked at it and said, “Look how high this is. This water had to go up 15 inches in the lake”.

And of course, the fish shut off for two days.

Interviewer: Yeah, everything is flooded with food in the water. They’re just totally saturated.

Bob: And then back in 1995, there were temperatures of 95 and up. It was the toughest week we’ve ever had. We had to put the beer in the lake to keep it cold. At night, it was still almost 90 degrees in the cabin.

Interviewer: It’s so hard to sleep then.

Bob: Yeah. And you fish in the morning and at night because you had the sun beating on you and the reflection off the water. One guy got his whole back and shoulders blistered. (use sunscreen) There were a lot of forest fires that year, too, in 1995.

That 14 inches of rain year, roads were washed out and everything.

The guy flying us flew us over some roads and you could see where the road was just gone. Thankfully, we flew out of Emo—take off and land on the water—but we were close to the border that day, so we didn’t have to worry about roads being washed out.

And we’ve had encounters with bear at Gordon.

One morning the guys were up—in those days we were playing CDs—and I said, “I’m going to the outhouse”.

I started walking back there and I was about 20 feet from the outhouse, and I looked to my left and there’s a bear drinking a puddle of water.

You know the old saying, “don’t run”?

Well, that doesn’t work.

I turned around and I took off.

Sure enough, we went back later and you could see the paw prints.

Another time we had cooked pork chops the night before and my son and I were leaving in the morning, and here was a bear swimming across from an island toward our cabin. Just probably after the pork chops. We turned the boat and kind of shoed him back the way he came.

And Moose—we had seen moose and everything around there. It’s a great lake, Gordon Lake.

Interviewer: Were you able to get pictures of moose or wildlife?

Bob: Yeah, I got one here in the water. I’d like to go out taking pictures, but I don’t know if I can do it anymore.

I just turned 80.

I was 39 when I started, now I’m 80 and still going back to Gordon.

I used to get up at 4:30, have some hot chocolate and oatmeal, and I’d be on the water by 5:00 at the latest.

Mother Nature waking up, songbirds, moose in the water, and then the sunrise.

That’s the best part of the day for me.

But the other guys wouldn’t get up till they smelled the bacon.

Interviewer: I’m a really early morning person, too. I just love that time of the day.

Bob: Yeah. I go out and fish a little bit and then just put the rod down and enjoy the scenery.

Even mornings when it was raining and stormy, I would get up and just watch the rain.

I’m only there for a week, so I want to enjoy every minute.

As far as Shane, he’s a top-notch outfitter and everything’s working good. His pilot comes around, makes sure the gas is full and that there’s wood. I’ve been going with Shane for a while.

Interviewer: What are some of the things that the pilots do on a regular basis?

Bob: Well, you come into the base and they weigh everything. You get your own bait down the road.

The group I was with, they would wind up with a few cases of beer, and that’s heavy. So they’d weigh enough that would fit on the plane properly. They weigh everything and load everything.

They get you situated where they want you to sit so they have more weight toward the front of the plane. They’re very experienced pilots.

Once you get to Gordon Lake, if there’s a group there, they help the pilots unload your stuff.

Then the pilot will run around, make sure the cabin is clean, check that there is plenty of gas and the propane tanks are full. He shows you how to run a generator so you can charge things up. Now the cabin has running water and a shower and hot water—still an outhouse, but it’s a nice cabin.

Gordon Lake is a good lake, but we don’t want too many people there. We don’t want to overfish it. It’s a small lake, but it’s a great lake.

Interviewer: Were there any trips that you did over the years that always come back to your mind? One of the pictures you sent me was a cabin fire. Was that at Gordon?

Bob: That’s at Gordon.

In 2008, they burned the cabin down and he closed the lake for 10 years.

So naturally, we had to go somewhere else. Then in 2018, he built a new cabin—beautiful cabin. We were the second or third group in.

He told me at a show, “I hate to show you this, Bob, but we burned it down”.

Now my son says, “Dad, I want to take you back up to Gordon”.

I says, “Fine. I’m 80. We have to find a place where you can put some of my ashes because I want some of my ashes up there at Gordon”. He says, “Okay, Dad. We’ll find a place”. I’m not in a hurry for that, but he knows what I mean.

It is beautiful up there.

You come around a bend and you don’t know what you’re going to see—a moose or even a bear on the shoreline. It’s my favorite lake because it’s not big. You don’t spend 25 minutes getting to the other end.

Interviewer: If you could explain to somebody who’s never been up why you keep coming back, what would you tell them?

Bob: I would say there’s plenty of walleye to eat.

The northerns will keep you busy and there are muskies in there.

There are about seven or eight bays with different structures.

It’s very broken up but you can’t get lost.

Just the scenery—Gordon just stole my heart the first time I was there. I still love it to this day.

Interviewer: If you could give fishing tips to somebody, what would you give them?

Bob: Not to waste your time running around the whole lake. Find spots that you like. If you waste your time running all over, all you’re doing is paying for a boat ride. Concentrate on where you think the fish are. If there’s nothing there, try something else.

If it’s calm, I like surface baits like a Zara Spook to “walk the dog” on top of the water. When a northern or musky hits it, the water explodes. But I only do that for a little bit and then go back to a crankbait, spinnerbait, or a jig with a minnow.

You got to try everything. But like I say, that friend of mine with his Creek Chub minnow—that’s all he used all week and he catches a 13-and-a-half-pound walleye.

Nowadays, you would never keep a fish like that; you’d release it so the genetics stay in the lake.

It feels good to put them back.

Interviewer: What’s it like at the end of the trip as you’re on your way home?

Bob: I’m depressed because I hate to leave. I could stay two weeks, but nobody else will stay two weeks. You pull back and they unload you onto a cart, you load up your car, go in and say goodbye to Shane and his wife, and you’re on your way home.

Interviewer: Well, Bob, it’s been fantastic chatting with you. I really enjoyed hearing all of your stories and I look forward to your photos in June.

Bob: Okay. Great chatting, and I’ll send you more pictures of Gordon Lake in the summer. Thank you. Bye for now.