ON RAINY LAKE _ At the age of 89 years, 11 months and 21 days, you would have found Jim Rolando in his 18-foot Crestliner fishing for walleyes.
Then again, that's where you would find him on just about any summer day, probably even on his 90th birthday.
Forget the rocking chair on the porch. Rolando wants to be sitting on a pedestal boat seat, steering his Evinrude kicker motor, trolling backwards into the waves, dragging a Lindy Rig tipped with a minnow.
And catching walleyes.
"I fish a couple times a week with him but he (Jim) is about just about every day with someone," said Tom Worth, 81, Rolando's frequent fishing partner.
"I've always loved to fish," Rolando said. "I don't know, I just have."
Rolando grew up in Ely, Minn., where his fishing prowess ranked maybe just behind his success in basketball and football (and where he earned the lifelong nickname "Pooner," for reasons never quite clear). He coached basketball in North Dakota, Montana, Gilbert and Eveleth before moving to International Falls in 1971 where he taught physical education, coached varsity basketball and served as athletic director for a time.
He and Worth struck an immediate fishing friendship that's endured in various boats for nearly a half century.
"I don't know that we've ever had an argument," Worth said when asked. "Neither one of us is very verbose. And we don't talk politics much."
Worth, a former International Falls middle school principal, grew up in Bemidji, Minn., where he went to high school and college. When he was offered his first teaching job in International Falls his wife didn't want go because it was "too far north," he said. "I told her we'd try it for a year or two and see how it worked out. ... That was 1957 and we're still here."
Both Rolando and Worth retired from the school district back in the '90s when Bill Clinton was president. They've been fishing together even longer "but now we can go more often," Worth said.
"We used to go way up into Canada, to Flin Flon (Manitoba) and Lac Seul and other lakes up there," Worth added. "Now we mostly stick close to home."
Close to home _ meaning Rainy Lake _ is usually a pretty good place. The men have caught hundreds, likely thousands of fish together, including many large walleyes. This has been a particularly productive summer, Rolando said, and the walleyes have usually been cooperative.
Rolando has Rainy Lake committed to memory. His dashboard depth finder doesn't work (or at least was never turned on) and he has no GPS unit. He navigates at high speed, clearing the red and green channel buoys always on the correct side and avoiding any rocky reefs that reach toward the surface. At 90 he still doesn't need glasses for distance vision "just for reading."
The pair _ active members of the Rainy Lake Sportfishing Club _ will keep fishing Rainy Lake into September and then switch to the Rainy River in October for big walleyes.
"We mostly fished up on the Canadian side all the time. But they made it too hard now so we stick to the American side," Worth said.
The two were out this month with a guest on a mild August day that brought an unexpectedly strong northeast wind, sending whitecaps across this giant border water and making it a challenge to control the boat over just the right spot.
"The wind got us today. We can't fish some of the good spots," Rolando said.
We had to coax the walleyes to bite our offerings of small minnows and nightcrawlers cut in half. We pulled them along slowly, with most fish on the locator hugging the bottom about 35 feet down. It was a finesse bite that was hard to feel in choppy waves.
We started fishing a favorite spot near Little Steamboat Island and Rolando had a fish in the net within the first minute. When things slowed down we tried a spot in calm water in the Brule Narrows.
"This has been our favorite spot for the past five or six years," Rolando said. "But this year it's been all small fish. I don't know why."
It would be a slow day for the Intentional Falls duo and guest. In six hours on the water we managed to boat 30 walleyes. But most of them _ 23, in fact _ were quite small. Only seven were more than a foot long, the one's Rolando considers keepers. There would be no big fish. We knew the exact count because Rolando has a walleye counter affixed to his boat. He punches one of three categories every time a fish comes into the boat _ either too big, just right, or too small.
"There's too many of the too small," he said of the day's tally. (On Rainy Lake all walleyes between 18 inches and 26 inches must be released. The limit is four walleyes.)
This fishing duo has a routine. They always meet at 8:30 a.m. Worth (who lives on the next block over from Rolando) drives his Ram pickup, backs it up to Rolando's garage and hooks up the Crestliner.
It's sort of a family affair.
"Our wives are having coffee together uptown right about now," Worth said.
At the boat landing, Worth handles the backing duties. Rolando hops in and starts up the motor. While he uses a cane and walks a bit stooped now due to some hip issues, Rolando sits upright at the helm of the boat.
Once into a rhythm on the water the two men often went minutes without talking. But there was synchronicity in their silence. Rolando would start reeling in a fish; Worth would reach for the net. Worth would get snagged; Rolando would put the boat in forward to get it unstuck. All without speaking a word.
Occasionally a heftier tug would elicit a remark above a hushed tone.
"This is a keeper, I'm pretty sure," Rolando said as he reeled in yet another walleye. "Son of a gun, he got off."
And that was about as close to animated or excited as Rolando got all day. His voice is never raised. Nary a curse word comes from Pooner's mouth, even for a snag or lost fish or over punishing wind.
"I had a player once, Charlie Kocinski, who cussed a lot in practice. I made him do five laps around the gym every time," Rolando said. "I was up on Lake of the Woods once after that, and heard a guy cussing in the next boat over. It was Charlie Kocinski. I yelled over to him 'Hey Charlie, five laps around Lake of the Woods.' "
As morning melted into afternoon, Rolando looked mildly agitated.
"Usually we're home by noon with our limit," he said. "My wife starts getting nervous if we're not home by 4 (p.m.)."
After one more walleye _ a 15-incher Rolando would toss in the cooler _ keeper No. 7 for the day, we decided to call it quits.
"My wife doesn't mind if I'm late," Worth said with a laugh. "She always says, 'Back so soon?!' " The buddies bid goodbye to their guest and went to clean the day's catch.
"My wife has sort of a trapline, giving our fish away to widows whose husband's fished. They love getting fresh fish from us," Worth said.
Tom Worth would stay home the next day to do chores around the house. Jim Rolando was back out on Rainy Lake chasing walleyes.
