(Peter Kohlsaat illustration)
February 05, 2025
By Greg Knowles
Editor’s note: We celebrate the publication of North With Doc column #200, by giving writer Greg Knowles this column to have a look back. Often short of room just before publication deadline, we learned never to drop North With Doc, or risk the ire of readers and never-ending letters and emails, writing in favor of the most popular column in this magazine.
Decades ago a high-school pal talked me into spending a week in the Bush with some other friends I met at Thursday night poker games. Several of them had never fished anywhere before, yet they jumped at the chance to buy tackle boxes and Zebco rigs, drive from Iowa to Sioux Lookout, fly into a lake with only one cabin and zero creature comforts, and play poker under a sputtering Coleman lantern for a week.
After a few years the poker players dropped out, and a core group of six actual fishermen made the annual trips. Somewhere along the line Doc, an avid fisherman and certified human being, joined the group.
An advertising copywriter, broadcast producer, and, eventually freelance writer by profession, I had long enjoyed fictional characters named “Doc” who seemed to have a special quality simply by token of the nickname. So I penned five episodes of our adventures, featuring a Doc character.
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(Peter Kohlsaat illustration) In fact, I called the column “Thanks, Doc” as that’s how I ended each episode when Doc showered we mere mortals with wisdom or insight or solved a problem.
I sent them to what I figured were the best outdoor magazines in the country at the time. I got nice rejection letters from everyone except Doug Stange at In-Fisherman , who said he’d try me out for a while, and see if the readers approved. The first thing Doug suggested was to rename the column “North With Doc,” and I immediately agreed and jumped at the chance to get my feet wet as an “outdoor writer.”
The first seven episodes were in the now defunct Walleye Insider magazine, beginning in 1989. Number 8 was Bush Hog Buffet and I think that was the first in In-Fisherman in 1990. And 200 columns later, here we are.
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Anyone who has fished with the same bunch of friends for a few years or a lifetime can identify with many of the situations the North With Doc group encounters. That all the adventures are far from home and lacking communication to the outside world adds to the allure of a fly-in fishing trip.
From the beginning, the column was more about the interactions of the anglers, and less about fishing, but there was ample time to tie knots and choose lures and try to catch Mr. Big along the way.
(Peter Kohlsaat illustration) The characters are loosely built around real friends, yet I chose not to give them real names except for Doc, and simply identified them by what they did away from fishing: policeman, attorney, banker, plant manager, writer (that’s me), and the cigar smoking, mostly accidental sage of the Northwest Ontario Bush, Doc the dentist. Some years ago, as I aged and so did the characters, I decided I needed a fresher outlook, so I killed off (that sounds so evil) the plant manager, and replaced him with The Kid.
Many, many years ago, one of the group commented, during cocktail hour as we watched a stupendous Canadian sunset, that if we were to pick the 10 best times of our lives, at least 5 of them would be our annual trips with Knobby’s out of Sioux Lookout. Knobby, a very real person, may he rest in peace, was truly one of a kind, and many of the tales I concocted that starred Doc leaned heavily on Knobby’s oversized and well-earned reputation.
When old friends and fishermen get together, there is never a lack of stories to tell and retell about experiences real and imagined. While the majority of Doc’s stories have at least some basis in fact, there are times that I have gone a bit overboard to make a point or concoct an event that could have happened, but most probably never would.
(Peter Kohlsaat illustration) Too, I am forever grateful to Peter Kohlsaat for illustrating the column so astutely along the way. His cartoons often perfectly capture the essence of every episode. I especially like the Ontario Overload toon with piles of gear stacked on the dock for the fly-in, the one he did for the book promo with Doc sniffing his cigar while the rest of the men gagged, and Doc sitting on his couch with the ferocious pike stuffed and mounted on the wall. I hope to continue the North With Doc tales as long as I am able.
Thanks, Doc. And Doug and Rob . . . and, of course, In-Fisherman readers far and wide.