Profile: Laurence Berube

July 15, 1913-November 29, 2000 : ”Time is the stream I fish on.”

By Steven Therrien

 “There’s never a bad day on the Brule!” boomed through the trees down to the landing where I’d just brought my client for lunch.  I’d heard him say it more than once over the years,  but when I heard it this time I had a hard time believing in it.  Thoroughly soaked to the skin from a pounding rain that had come up fast, I was very much into the misery of the moment and no amount of talk from Lawrence Berube was going to take it out of me.  I pulled the canoe up on the landing and emptied the inch of water that rolled round in the bottom.

 Lawrence stood by the cook fire that he had just started.  The flames reached high above the open stove.  He looked warm and dry and happy.  The big smile on his face accented the deep creases in cheeks. 

 “Can’t be all that bad out there now, Steve,” he said chuckling, “You’re here now and the stove’s getting hot.”  He seemed to fill the cook shack up that day.  On the river and off, you always knew that Lawrence was around.  His voice, laughter, and pleasant attitude were infectious and as much a part of his presence on the river as his red felt hat, a trademark of Lawrence’s guiding persona.

 Lawrence was not a big man, but a strong one.  A fellow whose strength comes from the self-assurance you get from working  with your hands and living out doors.   The kind of strength you can see by the way a man moves.   The strength you can see in a man’s face, his sun darkened skin, bright  eyes and winning smile.  All this came together as a measure of his character, and as a consistent reminder of his underlying enthusiasm and positive outlook on life.   Whether you saw Lawrence  on the river in his Grumman canoe or in the woods or in town,  you always got the feeling that here was a man who was always in his element.  He loved life and especially loved the Brule River.   

 The first time I ever encountered Lawrence on the river was during a summer canoe trip over twenty-five years ago.  I was still in college and had decided to spend a day on the Brule.  I passed him early in the trip no more than a mile or so from Stone’s Bridge, one of the most popular landings on the river.   I slowly hugged the opposite side of the river to avoid disturbing him and his client as they worked a partially submerged log.  What fascinated me most was how apparent it was that they, the guide running the canoe and the fisherman,  worked together.  Lawrence calmly explaining where he was positioning the canoe and where to place the cast; the fisher responding by slowly back casting, pausing, to let the back cast dampen the rod, then unfurling a long elegant loop just under an over hanging cedar limb.  The fly bounced off the log in the dark shadows and drifted the length of the log,  disappearing in a dark swirl at the point where the log dipped into the current.  Both men responded.  The fisherman lifted his arm swiftly, a movement he had probably done hundreds of times before.  Equally, Lawrence responded with the paddle, moving the canoe away from the the fish that raced up stream against the  arch of the rod.  Fisherman and guide each playing the fish in their own right until the fight was over.   Lawrence quickly scooped the fish up in his long handle net.   All beautifully done.

 Lawrence Berube, the man in the red felt hat, paddle in one hand and landing net in the other, looked over his shoulder at me lifting the fish from the water and asked, “How do like that young fella?”  His laughter and smile on that day have been with me since.

 For fifty years Lawrence Berube guided the Bois Brule, in Northwestern Wisconsin.  Many of his clients knew him as “The Teacher,” because he was a teacher and principal in both the Iron River and Poplar school districts.  Hunting and fishing and enjoying the outdoors became his life long passion and he inspired that passion in others.  Born in 1913, in Iron River, Wisconsin, Lawrence Berube’s roots ran deep in the sandy soil of Northwestern Wisconsin’s Pike Lake Chain near Iron River, Wisconsin, and the Brule River valley.  He lived much of his life there and was buried in the same soil he set roots so in so long ago.   Roots that also ran deep into the lives of the people he taught and guided.  Roots that inspired a love of the outdoors and the Brule River in the family, friends and his clients whose company he shared on the river.

 An interest in trout fishing came to him at an early age when his father, Frank, would take him and his brother along on early season trout fishing trips.  On foot, horseback, wagon and Model-T, they would take logging roads to the upper reaches of the area streams like the Flag, Cranberry, White, Iron and Muskeg.  Though his father always fished flies on their outings, Lawrence would cut a willow stick and attach a line to it and become “a worm dunker.”    With the help and instruction of many family friends, he would later evolve into a “dyed in the wool” fly fisher.     These early experiences, with his father, imprinted a life long  love for trout fishing  and the trout waters of Northwestern Wisconsin.  This early baptism in the world of trout fishermen and trout fishing would intrigue him so much that he said it was “the  greatest influence on my later life as a trout fisherman and a guide.  It possibly even influenced my career as an educator.”  He came to realize how special the streams of Douglas and Bayfield Counties were after a year in California.  He returned to live and work as an inspired teacher and an accomplished and seasoned Brule River Guide. 

 Lawrence came into guiding in his teens when his parents built a resort, the Log Cabin Lodge, on the Pike Lake Chain outside of Iron River, Wisconsin.  Guiding for the guests at his father’s resort established a basis for his guiding career on the Brule.  He had the good fortune of doing his river apprenticeship under some of the storied guides of the Brule.  The techniques in fishing, canoe handling and cooking came through the observation these of guides and years of perfection.  John La Rock; Carl Miller; Ed and Ben Dennis; Steve and Max Weyandt; Basil Edgette; Dave Sample; and Antionne Dennis: all helped Lawrence develop his skills as a guide. 

 Shortly before his death I asked Lawrence what he thought it took to be a good guide:

 “A guide’s got to know about the area, the river and its history and the people and geology, fish and aquatic life, wildlife.  Got to handle a canoe well!  You’ve got to be able to cook, too.  Neat and clean and stay away from talking politics and religion.  Most of all, you just have to learn to get along with everybody and make them believe that their trip on your river is best experience they’ve ever had.  They come all this way to fish with you on this day--it’s their time on the Brule.  Make it a good memory.”

 By the time I started guiding on the Brule, the legendary Lawrence Berube had, for the most part, retired from guiding.  I did have the honor of guiding with him on occasion, especially when he would work for Cedar Island Lodge.  Lawrence and the caretaker at the time, Emmett Swanson, were long time friends.  Lawrence had been Emmett’s teacher and scout leader.  Those few times when Emmett would call Lawrence out of retirement and guide with us at Cedar Island were always memorable.  The reaction of the fishermen in our party who knew him and the pleasure in the faces of the Ordways who own Cedar Island spoke volumes to Lawrence’s status as “an old time Brule Guide.”  

 In 1983, I had the good fortune of replacing Lawrence as a guide for a retired lawyer from Washington, D.C., Robert North.  Lawrence had guided for North twice a week throughout many summers.  Lawrence would join his old client and I once a summer for a picnic trip on the river usually on Berube’s birthday.  Occasionally his wife, Millie, would join us and bring one of her delicious pies.  Through these picnic trips and occasionally working with him on the river or at Cedar Island, I came to understand that in some ways there is little distinction between a place and its people.  Lawrence Berube, for most who know the river well, was truly a man of the Brule.  If you wanted to know about a flower or animal or bird, you asked Lawrence.  If you wanted to know about what had happened on the river years ago, you asked Lawrence.  His presence on the Brule was as much a part of the Brule River experience as the seeing a kingfisher or an eagle.   George Sandman, another long time guide of the Brule, once said that Lawrence knew more fishermen, more people up and down the Brule Valley, than any one he knew.

 The last words I shared with Lawrence were in September of 2000 at his home on banks of the Little Brule and Sandy Fork, tributaries to his beloved Brule.  It was with sadness that he told me that he wouldn’t be able to get out and fish with me in the next season.   Something he had always promised to do, but we never seemed to be able to find the time.   Without saying so I knew for a moment the deepest sorrow a fly fisher could feel--the realization that you’ll never get back to the river.  I also knew that I wouldn’t see Lawrence Berube again.  Leukemia would take his life two months later.  For the rest of our time together we talked about our favorite subject:  The Brule.   

 It rain hard that night as I drove back home.  It rained hard, and it was cold.  I thought about how it would be to be out on the river on a night when the rain hit you in the face, and it stung; and your hands felt like cold blocks of hard wood.  I started thinking back over the years that I have guided, half of what Lawrence had put in, and traced our guiding heritage on the Brule back through the names.   His career now linked with mine and stretched a line though the names, Antionne Dennis, John LaRock, Carl Miller, Max Weyandt, Basil Edgette, Dave Sample, Buck Follis, Roy Lyons, Stubb and Joe Swenson, and Dave Spencer.   I day dreamed about being on the river again, cold and wet, and as I blinked into the glare of the lights in the on coming traffic, I imaged Lawrence bellowing a laugh and saying, “There’s never a bad day on the Brule.”