Wheelchair-accessible boat gives anglers freedom to fish

Little Birch Lake resident Pete Linsner owns a fishing boat designed for people with physical disabilities. Before Joe Watkeys died earlier this year at age 80, Linsner gave him one last opportunity to go fishing.

When he was 63 years old, Watkeys, of Toldeo, Ohio, suffered a right-side paralyzing stroke that rendered it impossible for him to continue fishing, a sport he loved.

"His fishing days ended," his niece Jody Wessel said. "When visiting Minnesota before his stroke, he would fish Little Birch with my grandpa, Melrose police chief Joe Ahlers. A couple of years ago we had a family reunion in Osakis. I told my cousins if they could get their dad here I had the connection to get him fishing again."

Well, they did just that.

"Uncle Joe, wheelchair and all, was in (Linsner's) boat, and with the electric rod and reels Pete provided, he was catching fish again. It was amazing to be a part of something like this. Uncle Joe actually cried for joy."

In an interview at his home, Linsner told me that he showed Joe how the electric reels operated. He said a button on the reel is pressed that enabled the Joe to pick up slack line and play the fish. "I guess he loved to fish and missed it so much. It was a big to-do for Joe. We went to the access and laid the ramp down; a bunch of his family had gathered at the access to watch. We got him on the boat and took off, fishing," Linsner said.

In a very short time, after a few practice casts, Joe remembered how to fish and how to play the fish.

"He wanted to catch bass," Linsner said. "He didn't want to catch sunnies or crappies. It was so good to do that for him. We spent three to four hours on the lake, pretty much all of the morning. He caught beautiful fish."

Jody Wessel said, "Pete and his boat are absolutely amazing."

Why the boat?

Linsner is a 62-year-old U.S. Army veteran with a quick smile and lots of energy. He was born and raised on the northwest side of Chicago. Now he is a teacher working with students at Long Prairie-Grey Eagle Senior High School with emotional behavioral issues and learning disabilities.

"My undergraduate studies were in recreational therapy, and as I am a recipient of a traumatic brain injury (from a construction accident), I used settlement funds to build the vessel. Before that, if I went fishing, my buddies would have to cast for me." Pete said he designed the wheelchair-accessible vessel with a buddy who was a welding expert when he lived in southern Illinois.

While in school at Southern Illinois University, he thought about it, he said. He and his buddies adapted his boat to his disability so he could fish again. Everything had to be moved to the left-hand side. "I was right-handed. The whole world is built for right-handed persons, and I had to learn to do everything with my left hand." They adapted the stick steering so he could drive with his good arm; he could even use his trolling motor. They also adapted his all-terrain vehicle to a twist drive on the left side.

But Linsner wanted more. He wanted to take other people with disabilities fishing, too.

"They can't come down to the lake. How will they come down to the lake?" he thought to himself. "WWI amphibious craft, where the bow opens up, had the original patent to the type of boat I needed. It was a novel idea but I couldn't get a patent. In WWII, they beached the boat and opened it up to let the troops out. I didn't want something like that.

"I began my design in my head. My welding buddy fashioned it, built it. I ordered a johnboat, a flat bottomed boat, a river boat. My buddy knew how to do it. It turned out to be a boat I could use to take people fishing."

Linsner started sharing the boat while living in southern Illinois. He circulated information about the boat, with his phone number. He took people to lakes near Carbondale, Illinois, lakes built by the Army Corp of Engineers and stocked with fish. "We did a lot of bass fishing, sunnies, crappies, bluegill, even strippers," he said.

"I loved it. Because of my own disability, I knew what they were going through. I know what it's like to have to learn how to read and write all over again. I've been there," His guide service was called "Reel People Lured to Life."

Linsner has taken people with head injuries, spina bifida, paraplegics, almost anyone with a disability, although, he said, he has not taken anyone who is blind.

Linsner took a diving-accident quadriplegic fishing. "This person loved to fish," Pete said. "He was in an electric wheelchair. I set up two poles stuck in a harness. He used a stick in his mouth to engage the rod. He hit the button with his mouth to 'play' the fish. He loved it."

Arriving in Minn.

Linsner came to Little Birch Lake in 1996 because he wanted to go ice fishing. He also wanted a home within a 50-mile radius of St. Cloud State University, where he was enrolled in graduate school. He had a boat, a 27-year-old cockatoo, and a dog named Bendr.

Linsner looked at other lakes but on one of his searches, he and his brother stopped at Joyce's Cafe in Melrose. While there he heard five or six men talking fishing at a nearby table. He soon got to know them. He calls them his bunch of grumpy old men. He signed a deed to the first place he looked at — on Little Birch Lake.

He and his brother drove to Little Birch in April when "it was fertilizer season for farmers," he said. When they stepped out of the car, the smell attacked them. His brother told him to turn around and sell. He stayed. He said he has even learned to love the smell of manure.

The grumpy old men took him fishing. They were excellent ice fishermen. They taught him how to ice fish. They were all Melrose residents. Then he met Dennis Wessel. He and Dennis would go night-fishing. They would set tip-ups on the ice, shake dice and watch from the house. When they had enough fish, they would go to Joyce's, then clean the fish and have a late-night fish fry. Pete felt he was a grumpy old man in training.

When he got to Little Birch Lake, Pete didn't advertise his handicap-accessible boat because Minnesota has a short fishing season. To advertise meant he had to adhere to a schedule for taking people fishing and, "it's hard to tell someone I'll take them and then a storm brews up and they can't go. It's too disappointing for the person." He still takes people by special request, however, and that was the case with Joe Watkey.

Life on Little Birch Lake is ideal, Pete said. He loves all four seasons, likes all the changes, loves the sound of the water. "On the couch, you look out the window and see only water, no land. It's like a houseboat."

This column is the opinion of Marilyn Salzl Brinkman. Write to her atBrinkman1943@gmail.com or the St. Cloud Times, P.O. Box 768, St. Cloud, MN 56302.