Journey to the Nub Part 3

I'll close up my chronicle of our journey to the Northwest Angle with the reason we travelled out there. Here's the article I wrote for my journalism class.


Flag Island Resort sits at the end of a long ice road that winds across the frozen Lake of the Woods. This ice road begins at the end of a long road that cuts through pristine, untouched wilderness. Flag Island feels like the edge of the world. That feeling is what brings droves of fishermen there every year.

“It's part of the experience, travelling down that wilderness road,” said Dan Schmidt, who has managed the 74 year old resort for the last 35 years. “It feels like you're going to no man's land.”

Flag Island sits 15 minutes by car off the shore of the Northwest Angle, the only part of the contiguous United States of America above the 49th parallel. The Angle, as the locals refer to it, owes its existence to American and British diplomats not being able to read a map properly. When they set the border between the U.S. and what would become Canada in 1783, they misread the map of the Lake of the Woods region. Because of this error, the fishing resort community of 8o permanent residents is separated from its home state, Minnesota, by Lake of the Woods and a heavily forested chunk of Manitoba.

Over 1,000 tourists visit the Northwest Angle every year to experience this secluded, isolated peninsula of land and the islands that surround it. In the winter they come from all over the American Midwest to fish for the highly prized and very savoury walleye. Most resorts set fishermen up in a tin walled, cramped ice house out on the lake. Flag Island Resort has a different philosophy when it comes to ice fishing.

“We don't emphasize ice houses. In an ice house you spend hours on end staring at a tin wall,” Schmidt said, as he sat in the living room of his house on the island. “We're in the middle of some beautiful wilderness, so why put people into a cramped shack.”

Flag Island Resort offers a guided ice fishing service that sets guests up right out on the ice, so they can fish surrounded by Lake of the Woods' legendary scenery. Deer, moose, fox, and timber wolf sightings are common and that helps to bring people back to the resort year after year.

The natural beauty of the Northwest Angle has drawn Duluth, Minnesota's Mark Bergstedt to Flag Island every winter since 1978. For the last ten years, he has brought his daughter, Christina, up for a father-daughter ice fishing weekend.

“If you hunt or fish or just vacation, this is a great spot,” explained Bergstedt, as he enjoyed a beer in the resort's rustic, wood-panelled main lodge. “Look around you. It's pure unspoiled wilderness. What more could you ask for.”

Visit www.lakeofthewoodsresorts.com to learn more about the secluded Northwest Angle. To plan your next fishing getaway, visit www.flagislandresort.com.