by Gloria Stanton

Encounter in the Lake
A Surprise Nibble Turns
a Normal Sunny Day into a Memory

Lake Superior was warm (relatively) that late afternoon in July 1959.

It had to be in order for my dad, Evan Glass, to accompany me to the shore behind our 31st Street Park Point home in Duluth. Dad was not easily enticed into the usually cold depths, yet once he got there, he was transformed.

That day the sun contrasted Dad’s white torso and legs against his sun-tanned hands, face and neck - testimony to hours in the “yards,” repairing boxcars for the Northern Pacific railroad. This afternoon he’d left his grungy gray shirt and pants in the laundry room and had gone with me to the beach. Observing the smooth, light blue water with just a trace of tired-out nor’easter ripples, Dad stepped gingerly along the sandy lake bottom until the water reached his waist.

The author at age 17 in the suit that she was wearing when she “faced off” with something, perhaps a lamprey. The 1957 photo was taken by her cousin, Gary E. Glass of Duluth.

Suited up in my black one-piece, I waded near the shore, eyes on Dad. I knew his routine. Sure enough, he splashed water onto his arms and chest, then gently lay back on the water’s surface to do what he did best: float, like a small Lake Superior dinghy. His blue swim trunks billowed as if a tiny parachute while he relaxed, totally at ease. Never had I seen him ply a single stroke to change position and this afternoon was no exception. I marveled at his ability to stay afloat in rest, so calm and peaceful, away from the clank and hiss of railroad cars.

With billowy clouds overhead, the beach to ourselves, and Dad enjoying his floating, I was content to wade, letting the water lap gently at my knees. I glanced up occasionally to wonder if my dinghy dad had moved the slightest with the lake’s ripples. Was he asleep? (He was known to snore in the bathtub.) I couldn’t help but smile.

It was in that moment of pondering that I felt something rub against my leg above the left ankle.

I instinctively gave a brief kick - to no avail - and reached down to brush away what I took to be some seaweed.

It was then that I glimpsed a lengthy object clinging to my lower leg!

I shrieked and began kicking wildly to release whatever had a grip on me. Naturally, my thrusting was slowed by the water’s density.

Sea Lamprey These ancient parasitic fish, which resemble eels, attach to trout and other fish in the Great Lakes to suck blood. By the late 1950s, the non-native lamprey were at their peak in Lake Superior and devastated the lake trout population. Trout have rebounded in Lake Superior, thanks to aggressive stocking and successful sea lamprey control, which costs $17 million annually in the Great Lakes. Doug Jensen, aquatic invasive species expert with Minnesota Sea Grant, says that lamprey are now thought to be native to Lake Ontario. They gained access to the rest of the Great Lakes shortly after the Welland Canal was deepened in 1919 and arrived in Lake Superior by the late 1930s, feeding on species such as burbot, salmon, walleye, whitefish, rainbow and lake trout. A lamprey latched onto Doug during a Sea Grant study of potential commercial markets for the fish overseas. “I grabbed it and its instinct was to grab me back. Like Gloria, it sure surprised me.” An unprovoked bite, he suspects, “would be … completely unintentional.”

I felt no pain, but as I lifted my leg to plunge it up, down and sideways in a frenzied water ballet, I caught another split-second glimpse of the snake-like creature as it let go of me and disappeared, all in less than a minute. Even if I’d thought to yell for Dad, it wouldn’t have mattered. There he lay like a log about 40 feet from me, eyes closed, ears under water.

Before long, Dad was on his feet, rubbing his eyes, stretching and shaking his head to clear his ears. I’d been out of the water for a few minutes standing on the beach.

“Dad!” I called. “You missed it. Something tried to get me near the shore. It was this long.” I gestured with my arms.

He merely laughed.

“It was probably just a stick,” he said, shaking sand from his towel and drying himself vigorously.

But he could see the stunned look on my face.

“Seeing is believing,” he said empathetically.

“Honestly, Dad. It was right here, above my ankle.”

As I pointed to the spot, we both saw a reddened, circle-shaped impression that was about an inch in diameter where “the thing” had momentarily attached itself to me.

“A pretty lively stick, all right,” Dad conceded. Still, to this day, I wish I’d had the presence of mind to race from the lake, shake the creature from my leg on the beach and keep it for evidence.

It wasn’t long afterward that I heard about the sea lamprey in Lake Superior. I’ve since learned that if it was indeed a lamprey nibbling at my ankle - and I truly believe it was - this would be an extraordinarily rare occurrence. Lamprey prefer cold-blooded prey, so my warm-blooded Minnesotan leg probably left a bad taste in its mouth.

I also learned that trout is a favorite lamprey prey. I can appreciate that. I, too, am a predator of trout and remember when a lake trout nearly jerked the fishing rod out of my hand when I was 14.

It happened one cool evening in our family fishing boat that Dad had built in our garage from a kit. He painted it green and named it Marianne after my sister.

It was slightly overcast that day when Dad took me lake - real lake - fishing. I had often accompanied him to fish the Knife and Split Rock rivers for brook trout, but this was my first time on the Big Lake.

I was trolling a spinning lure with Dad at the motor when I felt a jolt that told me I had snagged something bigger than a brookie. I had to hang on hard.

Dad cut the motor and calmly said, “Reel her in, little girl.”

So I did. My one and only Lake Superior trout was 18 inches long - a trophy fish to me.

I’d say that lamprey that took me for bait was at least 18 inches long, too, but I bear it no grudge.

I have the lamprey … or whatever it was … to thank for something: That spectacular sunny Lake Superior day will always remain a powerful and fresh memory thanks to a startling nibble when I wasn’t even fishing.

The writer of this issue’s Journal: Gloria Stanton grew up in Duluth on Lake Superior, where she enjoyed most things the Big Lake had to offer. Her favorite was exploring the icebergs. After graduating from the University of Minnesota Duluth, she taught in the English As a Second Language program and has been a freelance writer since l967. Her current work appears in Mosaic, an Anthology. She co-authored an historical fiction novel, Caught in the Crossfire, A Boy’s View of the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, and recently edited her grandmother’s memoir, Sailing East and Sailing West. She lives in Kentucky.