GREENWOOD LAKE – Lloyd Speck once had to club an attacking beaver with a canoe paddle to prevent it from biting his leg.

“Smacked it on the head,” Speck said. “It was coming at me in the boat, teeth out and it was madder than hell.”

That was back in the 1960s, Speck explained, while he was trapping beaver near the Long Island, Gordon, and Frost lakes area in what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Speck and another young man who grew up in the wilds of Cook County near the Boundary Waters trapped beavers each spring. They made good money doing it, Speck said. The afternoon of the beaver attack, Speck said he had three beavers in their traps. His friend stayed behind at their camp on Long Island to fish for lake trout while Lloyd went to check the traps on the river system flowing through the chain of lakes, and on Gordon Lake itself. With the three beavers from the traps in the old square stern, Speck started to head back toward camp. That’s when the largest of the beavers he’d pulled from the traps woke up. With little time to react, Speck said all he could do was reach for the nearest blunt object so he could hit the angry beaver with it. The canoe paddle took care of business, so to say, but it also cracked the paddling instrument.

“My friend wasn’t happy about that,” Speck said.

Lloyd Speck fishes for trout in Greendwood Lake. Photo by Joe Friedrichs

Some of the Paddle & Portage team recently traveled to Greenwood Lake, just south of Pine Lake on the eastern side of the BWCA, to spend time fishing with Speck. He wanted to show us a prescribed fire the U.S. Forest Service lit in May, one that continues to burn and cause distress to cabin owners on the lake, Speck said. (Note: We’ve reached out to the U.S. Forest Service for more information on the prescribed fire burning on the shores of Greenwood Lake this summer. We’ll be sharing more information about that situation in subsequent articles.)

Despite the specifics of the invitation, our conversations with Speck covered many decades. Born and raised in Grand Marais, Lloyd will be turning 79 in December. He has gray hair, but he’s still as strong (or stronger) than most people half his age. His hands are worn from years of hard labor. His neck is stiff on the day we’re fishing and exploring on Greenwood, the result of recently painting the entire cabin during a stretch of hot days in July.

Speck got his first job when he was 13, he says, and spent many years as the gravedigger in Cook County. Over the years he installed insulation on pipes, poured concrete slabs, did rock work, constructed chimneys, and built and sold eight homes in the county. He’s survived battles with cancer and at some point, some members of the community had written him off.

“I see one of the county commissioners after my fight with cancer and she says to me, ‘Geez, Lloyd, we thought you were dead,’” Speck says.

Lloyd Speck has caught trout in many BWCA lakes across Cook County. Photo by Joe Friedrichs

Despite the health setbacks and all the years of hard labor, Lloyd’s done well in this life, he’s not afraid to point out. He figured out a way to make things work in a landscape where many people his age retire to, having made their wealth somewhere else. Lloyd is a local’s local. He follows local government closely and can share all manner of statistics and name all the players at the city and county level.

“I’m a numbers guy,” he says of his interest in local matters.

Speck really shines, though, when he’s telling stories about his many outdoor adventures. He’s shot huge deer in the eastern part of the county. Then there’s the 16-pound lake trout he caught from Greenwood, and the 44-pound laker he caught in 10 feet of water at Isle Royale. He has the evidence to support his tales, with mounts hanging from the high walls of his cabin on the shoreline of Greenwood Lake.

Lloyd’s cat is as much of a character of the North Woods as Speck himself. A Siamese cat that goes by the name of Gedo, Speck says his feline friend is like a son to him. The loyal cat once had a fight with a timberwolf that led to stitches, Speck shares while we’re out on the water looking back toward shore, where Gedo is bounding from boulder to boulder. Just last week, Lloyd says, Gedo had a stare-down with a local fox. The cat is a creature of the woods, Speck says, and winter doesn’t slow it down one bit.

“It walks the trails with me,” Lloyd says of his cat.

Lloyd Speck fillets a lake trout while Gedo the cat strolls by in approval of the situation. Photo by Joe Friedrichs

Things have changed in Cook County and across the Boundary Waters, Speck reminds the Paddle & Portage team. The fishing isn’t as good as it once was, but we still manage to catch a lake trout from the depths of Greenwood while we’re out scanning a long peninsula to see where the prescribed fire burned. Though he doesn’t get out there as much as used to, some of his favorite lakes are still producing trout, he hopes, including Daniels and other trout lakes along the Gunflint Trail.

“I have spots in a lot of these lakes where I’d catch 4- or 5- pound trout all the time,” Lloyd says.

Speck pauses and acknowledges that a younger generation is still out there chasing trout in many of the lakes he frequented as a young man.

“I’m glad people are still finding fish in these lakes,” he says. “You never know how long they’ll keep fishing well. Gotta get out there for yourself to find out.”

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