

MTT. Minnesota Tournament Trail
NWT. National Walleye Tour
AIM. Angler’s Insight Marketing
Chili Bowl, Border View Lodge
Arnesen’s, Summer Tournament
River Bend Resort, Ladies tournament
Zippel Bay Resort, Northern Pike Tournament
AND MORE!
They arrived from all over the U.S., but mainly neighboring states and all across MN. When it’s all said and done, veterans of all types, male and female, various branches of the military, some in the heart of conflicts overseas, many with a physical and/or psychological ailments such as PTSD or TBI come together and rub elbows with other veterans. Veterans spending time with other veterans on and around Lake of the Woods in a loving and supportive environment. This recipe is what makes the Pay It Forward event so magical.
There are so many touching stories. Some are happy stories. And honestly, some are not so happy. Like many veterans discuss, for many, even though back home, the “battle” is still real, maybe just in a different form. Like one veteran put it, “I may have left Vietnam, but Vietnam has not left me.” This quote is deep and resonates with many veterans regardless of when they were in and what they were involved with.
Pay It Forward allows veterans to forget about challenges, at least for a few days. Hand picked speakers help shed light on a variety if issues, resources and solutions affecting our veterans. How to peruse the VA medical system? Where can I go for a job? Who can I reach out to if I feel like I am falling through the cracks? What does a veteran’s service officer do and how can I reach one? Are their support groups? How can I receive help for my specific struggles? What is my purpose in life? In many cases, there are resources or groups that can be helpful in some way to veterans.
One of the guest speakers this year was Melony Butler of Eagle’s Healing Nest in Sauk Centre, MN. On the first night, Butler explained more about the “Nest”.
We are a non-profit organization committed to meeting the needs of our veterans, service members and their families who suffer from the invisible wounds of war. Our entire team is committed to meeting those needs.
A promise to one and a need of many was what created the vision of “Eagle’s Healing Nest”. The “Eagle” represents the past, present and future military strength, independence, pride and honor. The “Nest” is full of meaning such as home, family, brotherhood, safety and security. The “Hands” cradling the nest represents the many that will wrap their support and give services to the veterans and military members to help reintegrate them back to their families and into their communities.
Many of our military are struggling and need programs with a caring hand to assist them. Eagle’s Healing Nest will help foster purpose and direction. Our service member’s families, who also serve our Country, deserve the resources, support, and best treatment available. Eagle’s Healing Nest provide this.
The final evening was a time to award the top prize for longest walleye and pike. Top walleye honors went to Joe Bistodeau with a 28.5 inch walleye, beautiful fish. The top pike is awarded despite everyone walleye fishing and a pike catch is normally accidental. Nonetheless, we normally get some big ones. Vern Schwalbe took pike honors with a 28 inch pike. There was video of a 40 plus inch pike that literally got away at the boat.
And finally, some great entertainment. The first performer was Mike from Eagle’s Healing Nest. Mike would be the first to tell you he isn’t a pro, but nobody could tell as he played a short set of some of his own songs written about veterans.
Roughly 20 veterans commit suicide every day. Many veterans believe that number is understated greatly with the number closer to 100. Any number is too high. A number of caring veterans, people, volunteers and folks working with organizations who help veterans are part of the Pay It Forward event. There are a number of key ingredients that come together to make a good recipe. Everyone of those ingredients are important and in this case, it is no different.
This year, and since the outset, Fishing For Life has assisted as a partner of Pay It Forward. They are a group based out of the Twin Cities but reaching out to folks throughout the region helping tremendously with bringing veterans together, identifying issues and providing solutions, creating veterans events that are key to fostering support and so much more.
Pay It Forward is made possible through the generosity and giving nature of sponsors. This includes resorts who donate lodging, charters and meals, small businesses and veteran organizations who believe in helping veterans enjoy a fishing trip aboard a charter boat in this loving, caring environment along with the positive outcomes we see year in and year out. Thank you to all sponsors who make this event happen.
This past week’s event, like every event, brought very special people who happen to be veterans to Lake of the Woods. And once again, magic happened.
If you are interested in yourself or perhaps a company being a sponsor or if you are a veteran or know of a veteran who may be interested, check out www.payitforwardlow.org or our Pay it Forward page. You can also email Joe Henry at Joe.Henry@LakeoftheWoodsMN.com or give a call to 320-260-7727.
Thank you to all veterans and all who protect and serve!
(Click Here to return to the Lake of the Woods Tourism website)
Lake of the Woods
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to