- [Bret] How old is this decoy right here?

- [Glen] My grandpa died in 1960 and he made it.

So it's at least 1960.

- [Bret] You feel weird using, using them?

- [Glen] Oh I, I would feel worse if I lost the spear or the chisel.

'Cause he made both of them too, so- - [Jim] We are now recognized as a top museum in the country.

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- [Bret] While walleyes, crappies, perch, and bluegills are generally the most targeted species through the ice these days; it wasn't always this way.

Bend the ear of any angler who's been around since before the time of electronics and wheelhouses and they'll spend hours telling tales about big northerns and sitting on buckets.

Sometimes you'd even cut a big hole in the ice and target 'em with a spear.

While there are some hanging on to those traditions, the idea of spearing is becoming less common among today's anglers.

It's true there may be fewer people taking part in darkhouse spearing, but the tools that were used are regarded as priceless relics from the generations of old.

- [Bret] Okay.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

- Excellent.

- [Bret] Good.

- Yep.

- [Bret] All right.

Cue the fish, we're mic'd up.

- [Glen] There you go.

- [Bret] I'm ready.

- [Glen] Come on down, huh?

- [Bret] Yeah.

Kick the cage.

Today we're in the Alexandria area with Glen Tomoson, his brother, Jim, and Glen's son's Eric and Dustin.

- [Glen] We're in about 10 feet of water and we're- we set the house up yesterday.

Eh, we've got a few weeds in the hole, but that's all right.

Gives you something to judge the depth by.

And we've seen a few fish on the cameras.

We haven't had anything come in yet, but they're here.

- [Bret] Tell me about what decoy this is that you're using right now.

- [Glen] Well- - [Bret] Is there anything special about it?

- [Glen] No, this is probably an average size.

This is the middle size decoy and it's- I just like red and white.

It always seemed to do the, the best for me.

Made different decoys that have different patterns and different colors, but it seemed like red and white seems to attract them as well as anything.

- [Bret] Glen's grandfather Red, made decoys for Chet Buss back in the 1950s.

Now, normally those decoys are safely stored or displayed at home.

But every so often, on a special occasion, they're once again lowered into the water to tempt willing pike into spearing range.

So how old is this decoy right here?

- [Glen] My grandpa died in 1960 and he made it, so it's at least 1960.

- [Bret] Do you feel weird using using them?

- [Glen] Oh.

I- I would feel worse if I lost the spear or the chisel.

'Cause he made both of them too, so- - [Bret] He's probably happy you're using one.

- [Glen] Yeah, I'm sure he is.

- [Bret] Our decoys were attracting some pike but they just weren't coming in all the way.

The beauty of spearing is even if you don't stick a fish, the view can be spectacular.

(Clock ticking) (Suspenseful music begins) The reason you are in a darkhouse is because blocking out all of the light above the ice allows you to see under the water.

It's like having a life-size aquarium under your feet.

Tall weeds curled away upward, while bluegills and other small fish hide from predator fish in the cover.

It's possible those weeds are making pike leery of coming closer.

It could also be the five guys making a TV show above the hole.

Either way, we were confident that Red's old decoys would get the job done.

So what's your go-to strategy when you see a pike in the vicinity?

- [Glen] Get ready.

Get ready and uh- anything can happen.

I mean, you- I've seen them go through just- zoop!

And you ain't never had a chance to spear 'em.

Seen 'em come in and take the decoy and pull it out and let go of it and keep right on going.

Whatever, it- It'll do just about anything.

Yeah.

There's two, two rules about spearing.

Keep your feet off the rope and your decoy high.

(Glen chuckles) If you remember those two things, well you'll be in good shape - [Bret] You keep the decoy high so you don't have to- - [Glen] They'll come up to it.

- [Bret] Yeah.

(Suspenseful music) (Clock ticking) - Yeah.

I, I use these decoys that I have here when I'm spearing, because I've, they've all been used and I have some that are unfished and they're just a category of like- when you grade a coin.

The better coins are the ones that are uncirculated.

Well on fish means it hasn't been in the water.

And these decoys, uh we went on Facebook and one guy commented that they- they're not real good at holding their paint.

- [Bret] Oh?

- [Glen] After they've been used.

But they're made out of basswood, which is actually from Carlos, which is about nine miles north of here.

Grandpa used to come up here and get his basswood from that guy.

And he'd just buy one-buys and cut them into blanks.

- [Bret] How many decoys do you think he made?

- [Glen] 900 a year for 10 years.

9,000.

- [Bret] Wow.

(Country music plays) - [Bret] There's a lot of history behind spearing and the gear that was used.

We visited Glen's home in western Minnesota to learn more about his grandfather's business.

- Well, his name was Charlie, or they called him "Red", Tomoson.

- [Bret] While Glen's grandfather made the decoys they weren't sold under his name.

Red would make them for Chet Buss, who would then do the selling.

- They worked together at the state highway in Morris and that's how they got tied up together.

And grandpa and grandma used to make the decoys.

And then Chet would take 'em up to Alec and sell 'em at the bait shops and things like that.

- [Bret] Red's fabrication skills were a byproduct of his full-time job and the era that he lived in.

- He worked for the state highway.

He was a blacksmith for the state highway.

In other words, it took care of all the plow trucks.

Built the snow plows and put the cutting tips on them and the cutting blades and mounted 'em on the trucks in the winter time and took 'em off and built- Made anything that had to be made for 'em.

He was a type of person where if he found something that he wanted to make or use, and he couldn't find one that worked to his standards, he'd make his own.

He made a fishing boat that the family used.

With an eighth grade education, I think he was a pretty smart man.

Just, you know, just schooling isn't always the bottom line.

Yeah.

He could figure out something.

If he needed to do it, he could just figure those kind of things out.

And I think that's a special talent.

- [Bret] We ask Glen to give us a walkthrough of what making those decoys would've been like.

- In the making of the decoys, they start out with a blank like that, of basswood and drill your holes in it.

And then you have the- an array of patterns that they used from the little one to the biggest ones.

And I think probably this is the most common sizes here.

And then it goes to this shape right here with a a jig that you use to cut the angles.

And this is the next step, where the fins are added.

And these are just some of the tools that he used to make the decoys.

The tweezers and just things that didn't have tools.

So you made them, this was his anvil for straightening tin or doing whatever he needed to do with the tin part.

Then we went to the lead.

This lead probably came from the state highway wheel weights, but it was all melted with this blowtorch that they used white gas in.

They would melt the lead to go in the decoys.

They'd position 'em like this, and then fill 'em up.

And then they'd smooth them off with a, a file or whatever.

And this here is what he kept his eyes for the decoys.

He'd buy white tacks, paint 'em red, put a little black dot in the center.

And then we end up with this decoy here.

This is a box of 'em that are- have the fins and lead all put in.

And this is the end product here.

The- you can see where they made- used glitter in the paint and paint 'em.

I think they just painted 'em whatever color they decided might attract some fish.

- And it wasn't just Glen's grandfather that did all the work.

His grandmother was involved in the process as well.

- She painted 'em.

My grandma did all the painting on these.

You see this one here was burnt.

Where you take a torch and burn the ends of it, and then just varnish over the top of it.

- [Bret] When it came to spearing, decoys weren't the only things that Red made.

- The spear and chisel.

The end of this is a cutter bar for a snowplow.

You can see where it's been welded on to just some flat stock here.

And you can see the shape of that chisel.

That really is a good, if you need a chisel that cuts- These were pretty popular back in the days.

And then he made this spear.

This is made out of pitchfork tines.

And he'd cut 'em off and bend them and and braze them together.

And this is brazed on.

They'd- he'd take these pitchfork tines and cut a side off 'em and weld them on the ends.

- [Bret] Making spearing decoys wasn't just a way to make a little bit of extra cash either.

It was a way to put food on the table.

- Exactly.

That was part of their subsistence.

Was fishing and eating fish.

- [Bret] While there's various reasons why the interest in spearing may be declining, the biggest reason might just be what else is available swimming under that ice these days.

- And back in the fifties, that's- there weren't walleyes around here like there are now.

You know, back then it was northerns and bullheads - [Bret] Back then it was all about surviving and making a product that could be sold for some extra income.

And when you go back even further into the Tomoson family history there was something else that was being sold for little cash on the side.

- Well that was his dad, grandpa Tomoson's dad that did that.

And I- it's in the Morris paper.

That's the only thing that I've ever seen on it.

Is that there was a shooting in Alberta and, and it was a guy from Hancock and a guy from Alberta.

And 'a guy from Alberta' happened to be my great grandfather.

And it was over rum running.

Now, whether it was 'you owe me', or 'this is my territory' or- or what the deal situation was, I'm not sure, but.

- [Bret] Times are a bit less wild these days.

And instead of making moonshine the next family reunion might make something else from the family's storied past.

- We have a, I have a bunch of blank decoys that I thought would be nice to take to the reunion and give one to each one that wanted one and they could make a decoy and bring it back the next year and then have a- a contest of the best one.

- [Bret] A family reunion that might carry on the tradition of Red's old decoys that he made for Chet Buss, otherwise known as- - Grandpa's decoys.

That's what they were all always called by us, so- - [Bret] Alexandria, a small city in the heart of Minnesota's lake country has a rich history of fishing and boating.

In the late 1800s, Swedish immigrant Erick Erickson started Alexandria Boat Works.

Makers of Lady of the Lakes wood boats that plied the water beautifully.

You don't see many of those old boats on our lakes and rivers today, but because of a few guys who love vintage boats, they're on display in Alexandria.

At its peak, Alexandria Boat Works had over 150 employees, and by 1952 had constructed more than 15,000 boats.

- When fiberglass came in, people that had wood boats said: 'Oh, wow, I'm going to get a fiberglass boat.

I don't have to worry about keeping it polished and cleaned up like you have to do with wood boats.'

So they, some of these old wood boats were parked in their garages or in their sheds and forgotten about.

- Because of aluminum and because of fiberglass their business came to an end.

The late 1960s, our, our beautiful Chris-Crafts, Gar Woods, Canadian Boats the Greavettes, the Ditchburns.

All of those boats.

Production came to a halt.

The sad part about that is that people didn't collect them in those days.

Some of those boats were built with a, like a five year, seven year life.

And that was it.

And instead of refurbishing them, they went into bonfires.

- [Bret] While wood vessels may be a relic of the past, there are collectors who love these vintage boats like Carl Mammel of Omaha, Nebraska, who spent summers at his parents' retirement home on Lake Mary in the 1960s before he built his own home in the Alexandria area.

In 1965 Carl met Tom Akenson who had restored an old boat.

- Akenson had a large old Chris-Craft boat that I admired very much.

And I started asking him how I, I might end up getting into the wood boats.

And so he then introduced me to Tom Jewel who restored boats.

And so we started looking around and that's when I found the first Chris-Craft boat.

And Tom Jewel did the restoration on the boat.

And what he started out with was just a, a hull without any wood side- Just a basic framework and you have to be a master craftsman to do woodwork that could restore a boat like that.

And be- every piece of wood you see in that boat is new.

It would take a little over a year and probably a little over a hundred thousand dollars to restore it.

This is a rare boat.

As time passed I probably ended up having another eight or nine boats that Tom Jewel worked on - [Bret] In the late 1980s Carl, Tom Akenson, and Tom Jewel won awards at regional shows and launched the Chain of Lakes boat show at the Arrowwood Resort and Convention Center that continues today.

In the mid 1990s they started talking more about a permanent display and met at their friend Jim Eidsvold's wholesale grocery company, Henry's Foods.

- We went in the warehouse and we sat on crates.

There we sat on the boxes and that's where we kind of put together the first idea of getting a space.

- We flew all over the country.

We went out to the east coast.

We went to Clayton, New York where the Antique Classic boat museum nationally is held.

On the St. Lawrence river.

Went down into the Mystic Seaport, visited about four museums, got ideas got excited and thought, well maybe there's a chance that we can hatch this idea.

So what we did is that we talked with the Runestone museum and did a partnership.

And we were able to secure the building that they had available.

Half of it, anyway.

We hired our first curator and signed a three year lease.

- [Bret] The wood boat enthusiasts had already incorporated their nonprofit, Minnesota Lakes Maritime Museum when they moved into the Runestone Museum's Agricultural building in 2004.

- You're going in there, there's all these old threshing machines.

And then there were these wood boats.

- [Bret] When the group discovered the city was going to build a new Street Department building, they purchased the old one.

- Carl made sure that we all raised some money and he kept at it, which is something I, I greatly learned from Carl.

If you want something, if you keep at it, you can get it.

- [Bret] The building was designed to reflect the architecture of the late 1800s and early 1900s - [Carl] In front of our museum is a, is a replica of a of a big hotel that once was in the Alexandria area.

- [Bret] The new museum opened in August, 2006 and four years later added a 1400 square-foot north gallery that had better heat and humidity controls to preserve vintage boat's varnish.

In 2016, the museum was renamed Legacy of the Lakes, to reflect other aspects of the area's history such as fishing, recreation, and the thriving resort industry that dates back to the 1800's.

- [Bret] Legacy of the Lakes Communications Director Kaci Johnson gave me a tour of the museum that includes a rare Horus J. Conley boat purchased with funds that Carl donated to the museum.

- This is one of only two that exist as-built originally.

So there might be some other Horus J. Conley launches out there that are- but this one is unique because it's powered by a naphtha engine.

- Yeah.

And then so- explain what that is.

- So naphtha engines were patented by Frank Ofeldt in 1883 and it was considered safer to boil naphtha- which is like a kerosene kind of textured gasoline than steam, because steam was very volatile and it could explode or, you know it was just very dangerous.

Before, you know you could have a gentleman who could steer his own boat but he'd need somebody in the back shoveling coal into the boiler to power the steam, to get it to go.

Well with the naphtha engine you don't need that, you can command your entire vessel.

Following the wars, World War I and World War II, a lot of the copper fittings and things off of naphtha engines were scrapped for the war effort.

And so that's why so few of them exist today.

- Tell me about this boat.

- Well, this is one of our newest acquisitions here at the museum.

This was just donated to us.

It's a 1918 27-foot launch.

So this one is by Burtch and it was made in New York.

And over 2000 hours of restoration work went into making this look like what it does today.

- [Bret] Kaci showed me a Heli-Bout that I wanted to take to the air, but it was only made for display.

And a boat on wheels that Carl donated.

- What are we looking at right here?

- Well, this is a boat that has been turned into a car.

- Because we're in a boat museum and I see wheels.

- Yes.

So it's a boat that was turned into a car.

Basically they just took the body of it and put it on a Volkswagen chassis and then built in, custom built all the fenders and things like that.

And it was made for parades and promotions.

So, you know, in, today we still do pull this out and park it in front of the museum or put it in parades too today.

This is from Little Falls.

- Okay.

- And it's called the Falls Flyer after one of his- Larson's good friends, Charles Lindbergh.

- The Legacy of the Lakes Museum's partnerships with other museums has allowed it to display rare vintage boats from around the country.

It's not very often.

You see a boat with a triple axle trailer underneath it.

This is quite a boat right here.

- It is quite a boat right here.

This one we're very lucky to have on display at the museum at the moment.

It's from the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York.

While boats today are for fun, their primary function when they were first- is transportation.

And so this is kind of like a limousine on water.

You know, you take this out and you'd go and visit friends up the river or across the lake.

This is what you would take.

- [Bret] The museum has other rare boats, such as an 1894 Dungeness that Andrew Carnegie sailed around the world and boats made by Chris-Craft, Elco, Fay & Bowen, and Gar Wood.

- [Carl] Gar Wood made his money with the development of dump trucks.

And he got interested in racing boats and building boats and built really high-quality wood boats Gar Wood used to race the boats.

- Yeah.

- And it, and they would go a hundred miles an hour.

I mean, it was incredible.

One time he raced a boat, try and beat the the train from New York City to Albany.

And he, he raced, raced the train with his boat and beat the train.

- So one of the reason these wood boats need to be preserved in a museum like this is because they're not being made anymore.

There was a transition to fiberglass.

And this boat right here is right from that transition era, right?

- It is.

So this boat here actually has a wood hull and then it's got like a fiberglass overlay over it.

And so it really does show that transition period from using all wood materials, to using fiberglass.

- [Bret] Beyond boats, the museum has canoes, kayaks, old fishing gear and changing displays.

Like artwork made from paddles by community members.

Legacy of the Lakes is a vital part of the greater Alexandria community.

Gardens between the museum and the lake are used for classes, concerts, weddings, and other events.

- What was out back was just wasted land and there was a bunch of trash there.

It was nothing that added anything to, to the community.

And a few people got the idea that we could actually have a quiet place, a beautiful place where people could sit and enjoy nature and being out there.

And also a place for events.

It's just genius, you know, what they have been able to do here.

And the development of the gardens.

And the gardens are maybe one of our best kept secrets.

- [Bret] The nonprofit museum is funded by memberships, major gifts and grants.

An endowment has been established to ensure funding into the future.

- [Jim] We are now recognized as a top museum in the country.

- [Tom] Some people- Face it, they're not all that greatly interested in boats, but they they find the- the gardens back here and just, you know, the way this whole thing is situated in our town.

It's just a, just a great asset.

And I'm, I don't, I've never heard anything.

Anybody say a bad word about it.

They better not.

Carl will get 'em.

(Men laughing) - Funding for this program was provided by: The Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, SafeBasements of Minnesota, your basement waterproofing and foundation repair specialist since 1990.

Peace of mind is a safe basement.

Live Wide Open, The more people know about west central Minnesota, the more reasons they have to live here.

More at livewideopen.com.

Western Minnesota Prairie Waters, where peace, relaxation and opportunities await.