LAKE VERMILION, Minn. — On this big lake last weekend it was shake and bake, baby, another fishing opener, with walleyes n bacon on the menu.

That’s the way Tom Stuen spells it. Walleyes n bacon. His wife, Mary, spells it that way, too, and together they’ve scripted those words on the pickup camper that is their home away from home when they tie on a jig and try their luck.

Year-round, Tom and Mary, of Stacy, Minn., are among Minnesotans who fish walleyes as if they were running out of time. Even in winter, the couple might be parked on the ice of Upper Red or Winnie or Mille Lacs, or right here on Vermilion, two lines dangling through the floor of the pickup camper they convert to an ice-fishing house for the cold months.

Tom, a carpenter, made the camper with his hands. They had tried golfing together, he and Mary whacking little white balls. That didn’t click. Heaving bigger balls, they gave couples bowling a go. This was a showcase sport for Tom, a one-time pro with a few 300 games under his belt. But bowling didn’t excite them, either.

In the end, what tripped their trigger was fishing. And camping. And seeing what Minnesota has to offer. Which explains why Tom, 60, built the camper, and why on the day before last weekend’s opener they were in Tower, loading up on groceries — probably more bacon — and headed for nearby Lake Vermilion, along with their yellow Labrador, Lucky.

“Lucky still chews,” Mary, 62, would tell me. “But maybe he’ll grow out of it. He’s 6.”

All of which in most instances would have caused me no never mind. But while passing through Tower on the day in question, I happened to see on the sides of Tom and Mary’s camper the words WALLEYES N BACON, stenciled in bold, red capital letters — below which, in equally large, red letters, was stenciled the word, ENGAGE.

Curious, and channeling my inner stalker, I tailgated Tom and Mary as they rumbled out of Tower, bouncing their pickup toward McKinley Park Campground on Lake Vermilion. Hitched to their bumper was a classic Minnesota walleye boat, 16 feet of aluminum, 50-horse outboard, behind which, honking, was me — behavior that in any other instance would be indictable as road rage.

Curious themselves, perhaps, about what kind of whackjob was following them, Tom and Mary pulled their rig to the roadside.

Swinging his pickup door open, Tom ambled in my direction, a smile creasing his face.

“I was wondering,” I said, “about the words on your camper, ‘walleyes n bacon.’ Also ‘engage,’ I was wondering about that, too."

“Well,” Tom said. “I do like walleyes. And I do like bacon.”

“And ‘engage?‘ "

“You familiar with Ricky Bobby?”

“A great American,” I said. “Shake and bake, baby.”

“Then you’ll know that, in the movie ‘Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,’ just before Will Ferrell, who played Ricky Bobby, sling-shotted into the lead during a NASCAR race, past his buddy Cal Naughton, he said, ‘sling-shot, engage.' "

“So,” I said, “it’s walleyes n bacon, engage? Like, walleyes n bacon, go for it?"

Tom nodded.

I nodded, too, because throughout Minnesota last weekend, when the fishing season opened, and in the days leading up to that celebration, plenty of ‘Tom and Marys’ were putting their own spin on the many lifestyle-defining opportunities offered by Minnesota’s lakes and rivers, and walleyes and other fish.

A few days before the opener, on the St. Croix River, beneath a warm sun, a guy in a small tin boat was catching silver bass within 100 yards of where a few dozen bikers were quaffing beer at P.D. Pappy’s in Stillwater.

On another day the same week, farther north, within sight of Lake Superior, a steelheader hiked up the Baptism River, not quite to the falls, but close, hoping to find a current seam in that springtime torrent that might hold a late-season fish.

And farther north still, in Ely, a father and son, looking like they might be taking their final paddling trip together, gassed up their truck at the Lucky Seven General Store before heading into canoe country and whatever surprises might await them there.

Some of these intrepid souls would be gone for a day, others for the weekend, and still others for a week or two. Staying in cabins, pitching tents or retiring at day’s end to an RV, they would be out and about, engaging.

I followed Tom and Mary to their campground, where we chatted as they prepared to meet friends and relatives who in the coming days would share campfires, good food and fish stories that would live forever.

In 1653, Izaak Walton, writing about fishing — the “contemplative man’s recreation,” as he called it — addressed a mistake that “serious” people make when they consider fishing a mere sideshow to the more important undertakings of the day.

“And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity anglers,” Walton wrote, “let me tell you, sir, there be many men that are by others taken to be serious, grave men, which we (anglers) condemn and pity.”

On Lake Vermilion last weekend, Tom and Mary (and Lucky) fought the wind and cold, and found their walleyes.

And lived their lives.

Engage.

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC