Beautifully Restored Brook Trout Stream By Trout Unlimited--Ah, Wisconsin!

The KiapTuWish Chapter of Trout Unlimited really works hard at making trout streams awesome. Here's a brookie creek that with a little work went from 500 trout per mile to over 3000.

If you go there they are everywhere. The best thing is that there are many creeks that TU has restored in the area.

Join and donate time and money to TU.

Every Once In A While...

I came across something really special while fishing. Here's what I stumbled upon.

It's not everyday I run into yellow lady's slippers.

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.

The Season Begins

There was a time, when I was younger--not much younger, when I would jump in my parent's car and drive south to the Whitewater river system near Rochester and go fly fishing for trout--on the first of January when the season officially opened.

I mean this in all seriousness.

There was one time I drove the two hours down there on a day that was TEN BELOW ZERO (that's Fahrenheit) and got out of the minivan, put my gear on, ran down to the river and a good hole, and promptly caught one little trout. Then, I hurried my frozen ass back up the bank and jumped into the minivan, waders and all, and drove the two hours back home. I probably could have just let the motor run.

That was maybe 1996. Looking back I can see why my SAT/ACT scores were not terribly high.

Now you may say how can one fish this time year? Well, it's not really matter "how"but "why?" But, that's a question for another post. However, the unglaciated portions of southeast Minnesota have a wealth of spring fed, hard water streams that stay cold in the summer and fairly warm in the winter. So, the water stays open all year and maniacs like the younger version of myself who felt the walls closing in right after Christmas could go out and let the frostbite blacken a few fingers and toes.

The worst thing is when I once slipped on a rock and fell in and filled my waders. Again, these rivers are cold. But, January cold is something else. I had a half-mile hike back to the car. Have you ever read Jack London's "To Build a Fire"? My experience was something like that. But, there was no fire--I was not that lucky. When I made it back to the car, my clothes were frozen. Imagine trying to strip when all of your clothes are complete ice. Imagine someone else...see, that's funny.

Needless to say, I got the car running, the heat cranked, and used the vents in ways they were not meant to be used.

That was about 1998 or 1999. I think I was done with winter fishing after that.

April is not too far away...

...exactly three months...

Weird, Alien Creatures...

I've been fishing this river in the middle of the state. It's an amazing place. One of those rivers with a big population of smallmouth bass that can grow to large sizes too. The best thing is that it is just a few miles off of the interstate and there is very little development and nobody fishes it. I fished it for the first time on Saturday and caught a few nice fish I fished it again on Monday and today and caught a few huge smallies.

The thing is that when I do catch a big smallmouth from this river, say 18 plus inches, it has one of these things on it. I know, it freaks you out doesn't it. I will touch and handle just about anything, but since I caught a bass with one of these things attached to it I have had the creepy crawlies ever since. It's a lamprey eel. A brook lamprey to be exact, at least I think. There is a variety called the sea lamprey that infiltrated the Great lakes through the Welland Canal and caused the lake trout population to plummet. But, this lamprey is native. They are like leeches, leeches that stay on you forever. They are basically eels with a toothy toilet plunger on its face. I know, they look like something that will leap out of some alien egg and suck your brains out. Needless to say, these things are always wriggling around in the back of my mind while I am wading in the river. Yeeeeesh!





Anyway, here is the smallmouth bass--happily without a lamprey stuck to his back. Though I am not one to get in the way of nature, I do not like the idea of these things sucking the life from the river's population of large smallmouth.

Another Beautiful Smallmouth River, Central Minnesota

I've always pondered fishing this river, but I have never gotten around to it until now. Lots of fish but small.







Then I looked downstream...













There were osprey and eagles everywhere. Note the stands of large white pine peaking through the other trees. Historically, this river and another slightly to the north, both tributaries to the St. Croix, had huge stands of white pine prior to logging.

The Hex

I've been sitting in cafes and bars that dot the flat, sand country of central Wisconsin in the early evenings. I'm waiting, reading newspapers, getting online where there is WiFi. Yesterday, I had a mishap in the stream and strained an already tender muscle in my thigh. Today it is very stiff and painful. So it goes...

For those that don't live around here: about the time the sun takes the final dip and the wind still and the temp cools, massive anvil-shaped clouds erupt on the western horizon. Then comes the hail, the heavy wind, rain and frequently a tornado. Towns have been leveled. About every third car has heavy hail damage--image if the hood of that car was your head. Living here can be dangerous--especially this year.

As I wait, I flip from news blog to NY Times reading the Op Eds for what I already know, that early November headline: Obama Kicks The Shit Out Of Crazy Old Bastard! I've never been so disinterested in politics in all my life as I am now. So, back to the other stuff.

I sit in these cafes. I go out fishing in the morning for little brook trout. I come in, I sip coffee, I lie around and do nothing. I wait.

About this time of year a mayfly emerges called Hexagenia Limbata. The Hex. It's that mayfly that brings out the snowplows to clear the bugs off of the bridges over the Mississippi and other rivers. It's going to emerge any time now. I've seen a couple here and there, floating downstream like little paper sail boats twirling on the dusk's black-orange reflection

There are trout rivers around here that get the big hatches: The Brule, White, Namekagon, Tomorrow, Prairie, Mecan, etc. I've been fishing one of these, and another that never gets named. These are all slow moving streams in their upper, trouty reaches. Quiet rivers slipping slowly through spruce bogs and alder swamps. Big trout live here. Big, big brown trout. Fat, lazy brown trout that sit underneath root wads until dark and come out and feed on other trout, frogs, mice--whatever gets in their way. Really ugly brown trout with broad, buttery sides. The kids of fish that get really excited when the big bugs descend on the water to lay their eggs by the tens of thousands, and do so only in the dead of night. This is night fishing. It's so quiet. Except for the whippoorwill's call, the cackling raccoons, the skunk. The fireflies are thick, spooking in the mist--the Ojibwa dead walking the swampy blackness for a time when their world and ours come together.

When all goes right the bugs come off the water right at dusk. They flitter above the water, a river of bugs parallel to the stream. The trout begin to rise. Little ones splash, the bigger ones slurp, the giants appear later--their sound is a toilet flushing. Everything goes wrong when it's 1am and you actually hook one of these things! Or you get sprayed by a skunk! Or an unseen, unheard black bear bellyflops into the pool you are fishing to scoop up handfuls of giant yellow mayflies that carpet the surface.

This is the Hex...

Bring the skeeter repellent and check for ticks.