New London man recalls fishing trips
By Greg Seubert
Brad Mathewson has plenty of stories to tell from his years of musky fishing on Canada’s Lake of the Woods.
He just needed to find a way to tell them.
The New London resident recently self-published his first book, “Musky Slayer’s Bible: A Guide on What Not to Do,” which is now available through Amazon.
“I’ve been going up to Lake of the Woods musky fishing since 2009,” Mathewson said. “A group of buddies – old, retired guys – have been going up for 25 years and I always wanted to go with them. They have a group of 10 guys that go every year. Instead of deer camp, it’s musky camp.”
The group invited Mathewson to tag along in 2010 and he did each year until 2016.
He and his wife, Laura, also spent their honeymoon on Lake of the Woods in 2009.
“I really wanted to go to Canada on my honeymoon, but my wife wanted to go to Florida,” he said. “I took her to the All-Canada Show in Green Bay and I said, ‘She’s going to see everybody’s displays of fish and animals and everything else and she’s going to fall in love with Canada.’
“This was a week after we got married,” he said. “On the way home, I was like, ‘How would you like to go to Canada?’ She said, ‘Well, I know you always wanted to go, so I guess we could go.’ I got her hooked.”
Lake of the Woods, which shares a border with Minnesota, Ontario and Manitoba, is more than 70 miles long and wide and contains more than 14,500 islands and 65,000 miles of shoreline.
Keeping a diary
“I thought I better start keeping a diary of all of my trips and basically compiled my diary together into a book,” Mathewson said. “We’d have two guys in a boat and switch partners every day. We’re in the water at 7 (a.m.) and get off at 9 (p.m.). It’s really long days on the water. You wake up in the morning and your arms hurt and your back hurts. You can barely move your fingers from casting all day. The more time you spend on the water, the more things are going to happen to you.”
The group set up camp in the Sabaskong Bay area on the lake’s east side, near Morson and Nestor Falls, Ontario.
“I’d go up there to get away from everybody,” Mathewson said. “Internet service is terrible. You don’t have a television. Most of the radio’s in French. It gives you a chance to unwind and disconnect from the world. We have a rule in our musky camp: No talking about work and no talking about family. It’s muskies only.”
Mathewson’s trips to Canada ended in 2016 thanks to four surgeries from 2017-19 on his right and left shoulders.
“The last time my boat touched the water for musky fishing was August of 2016,” he said. “I haven’t gotten back to musky fishing or Canada since then. I end the book asking if this will be my last musky trip ever. That question’s still up in the air. I don’t know. It’s not going to keep me from fishing, but it has kept me out of the boat. The rehab process is so long. You always get fearful that you don’t want to retear anything and have to do it all again.”
Mathewson’s family owns and operates GEM Custom Cabinets LLC in Hortonville. Besides working at the family business, he also spent 10 years working on the book.
Self-publishing
He ended up self-publishing the book through Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows him to reach readers through Amazon.
“I did check into the traditional publishing route and had an offer for my book, but it was ridiculous,” Mathewson said. “Books are now printed on demand, I don’t care of it’s me or Stephen King. They’re printed on demand when you order from Amazon. They print books as they’re bought. I get a percentage from Amazon for each book sold.”
Mathewson ended up rewriting the book four times.
“It was a sense of relief that I was finally done,” he said. “I put 10 years and hundreds and hundreds of hours into this. The feeling of having a book in my hand, it was almost hard to believe that I wrote it.
“Some friends and family are kind of shocked because I didn’t tell anybody I was working on this,” he added. “The only person who knew was my wife up until the day that I dropped it on Amazon. I sent out a mass message on Facebook.”
He promotes the book through a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/muskyslayersbiblebook. It can also be ordered on Amazon and is available as an e-book through Kindle. He will also have a booth March 19-20 at the Wausau Musky Bash.
Mathewson said he has invested about $2,000 in the book so far.
“Like any author, it’s definitely a labor of love,” he said. “I’m not making any money on the book. I just want to break even. It’s more of a legacy thing. Even when I’m gone, it’s still going to be on Amazon or on someone’s bookshelf somewhere. More than anything, that’s why I wrote it.”