School's Out, Fishing's In

Finally, it is done. The kids have gone home. All of them. With them the fights, the cursing, the back-talk, and the general noise of 1400 students have, for the time being, disappeared from my life. It will come back. But, 10 weeks from now I will be ready for it. In the meantime there is fish. Only fish--with the addition of some fine beer. As I write this I am enjoying a Rush River Lost Arrow porter-ale. It's basically a very dark nut brown ale. My beer friends was have a considerable disagreement with me over the fact that I like this brewer better than Surly, the new hot brew here in the Twin Cities. Remember when everybody went bat shit crazy over Summit? Yeah, now not so much. It's all about the Surly now. Though the local scrawny hipsters still swill the Brain Melt Premium.

But, I digress...

I've been fishing lately. I didn't go today because my feet were rotting in my sweaty, possibly leaky, waders for the last four days. I fished one of those two extremely popular river with Twin Cities fly anglers. Though when I wandered far enough upstream I was alone. Completely, gloriously alone. It was me and the white pines, the turkeys, and the many trout. Some big ones too. In fact, this particular river doesn't produce many large fish for the angler. They are there, but they are just damn tough to catch. They are all wild which is why I like this river. They are fighters and jumpers. They have the large, heavy leopard spots like the browns in the magazines and TV shows.

Did mention I was completely alone?

The second night I got on the river I felt for my camera and guess what? No goddamn camera. Guess what? I caught the biggest goddamn fish I have ever caught in this river. It was a perfect fish. A big, tank-like slob of a brown. It was silvery like an Atlantic salmon, and didn't have a mark on it. Did I mention that I didn't have my goddamn camera? I guessed it to be about 22 inches--so it was really about 19.

The third night I had the goddamn camera and I caught a pile of goddamn of 8 to 10 inchers. The fourth night I have my goddamn camera and I caught a respectable 15 incher. I didn't take photos of fish until I began writing this goddamn blog.

I love this river. It's one of those lore-saturated Wisconsin rivers: Bois Brule, Tomorrow, Mecan, White, Wolf, Kinnickinnic, Namekagon...I love them all.