The search continues

Narrowly escaping a delay at work Friday, Jen and I headed up north for another weekend of steelhead fly fishing.  By chance, a couple of buddies (Mike and Phil) saw us as we passed through Superior, WI and they called my cell phone to say hi and we pulled over for a couple of minutes to say hi and take a little leg stretch.  We caravanned the rest of the way to the motel and after checking in, stood outside in the dark brisk parking lot looking up at an almost full moon taking away about who had heard what for fishing reports and what everyone's plan was for next day.

I could have stayed in bed all day Saturday instead of fishing.  But we got dressed and ran the truck for a awhile to get rid of the heavy frost on the windows and ventured out.  All the normal parking lots were pretty much full and that was causing me to get frustrated in trying to get away from the crowds.  We went back to the least full parking lot and thought we would give it a shot.  Even though there were many cars at this lot, we pretty much only saw one fisherman who had a European accent.  But, we saw him over and over and over again.  And that got on my nerves trying to get away from him.  Whatever.  Jen caught and landed a nice 18" skipjack that day so she was doing pretty good.  Myself, not so much.  I hooked and lost one fish, hooked many rocks, logs, branches, trees, and my rain jacket.  At one point I lost my composure and threw my rod on the bank in the mud.  Pure frustration coupled with annoyances of not being able to get way from euro-dude and not being familiar with the stretch of water were were on and not catching steelhead made for a short day.  We called it quits earlier than normal with the idea that I just needed to stop fighting with whatever forces were at odds with me.

The evening went much better, after we changed and grabbed a beer at the hotel room where we were found by the Bob's (who just pulled into town), Peter and his wife Kris, Crazy-Luke, along with Mike and Phil.  They had better luck than myself and a more enjoyable day when it was all said and done.  We went out to dinner together for the evening since it gets so dark so early now to catch up and make plans for the next day.  

Sunday was a better day for my disposition in spite of the thick frost on the cars on a crisp 26 degree morning, and our fishing luck improved....sorta.  Jen hooked a larger skipjack that had it not been for my slow response and her quick landing would have been a netted.  But since I was slow on the draw, fish spit the hook where she had almost beached it and it swam off.  She was kinda not happy with me, even though she tried to cover it up.  We both know, that I screwed that up as net man.  In my defense, I do think that was the quickest landing of a steelhead that she ever executed.  I hooked three that day and landed none of them.  The Green Bay Packers won. Yoda, hooked and landed a 25" up river from us; Mother Feiker lost a nice one on his last cast of the day.  Yoda was able to get a lot of the battle on his Go-Pro, but in the end the Steelie spit the hook and gave Bob the fin.  Crazy-Luke caught four on Saturday and one on Sunday. I don't remember the numbers for Mike and Phil, but I do recall they did really well, especially in one particular hole. 

Jen and I spent the night there with the Bob's instead of hurrying home since we had taken Monday off to just chill out with each other and to go to an hour long appointment I had set up after I had taken the day off.  More about that later....maybe.

Tuesday morning I had taken off to go fishing with Mike and Dad for small mouth bass in Location X.  Dad however called last week and cancelled his spot.  But since it had taken so long to work out a date and get time off, I went anyway fishing with Mike anyways.  We met at Mikes place and we kind of dragged a feet a little as it was another balmy 28 degree morning.  We got the boat launched and did some fishing.  The first half hour we kind of battled the thin layer of ice that had formed on the water trying to cast over or through it with our flies and fly line.  But the once the sun came out and waves picked up the ice broke up.  Mike ended up with two smallie's landed, and I caught two very small pike.  So my streak of small mouth fishing success continues to be not exciting.  That change, someday. 

Now I'm on the countdown again.  Only three days until we head up again for another chance at catching AND landing some good steelhead.

A new form of "Ice Fishing"- fly line on top, fly  dangling down below.

A cast where the fly didn't make it through the ice.

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2012 trout fishing practice run.

First time out with the fly rod for this year and it went pretty well.  Had breakfast in River Falls at the South Fork Cafe with a pretty good sized group of the club members of the Saint Paul Fly Tiers and then left for fishing from there.  The sun was out, snow was melting, I'm guessing we were in the mid 50's for air temperature, spring was definitely in the air.

Based on information from the day before, our little sub-group of the club ventured over to the Rush.   We explored several bridges only to find that the river was blown out.  Total Chocolate milk. 

Without getting into all the drama this may have entailed, and losing the Canadian....again, we went back to the Kinni and rigged up.  Oh, and I found out that what Mother Feiker calls the Pig Farm, didn't have any pigs.  Yeah, I gave him a lot grief on that one.  Seriously, only my friends would name something after something that's not what it is.

Anyway, the Kinni was stained, but fishable.  We all caught fish, using wets and nymphs.  Small black Stone flies and midges were present, but there was no dry fly action on our stretch.  Bummer. 

The added bonus to being out on the river this beautiful spring day after being cooped up for four months was that I got to fish with my newest bamboo fly rod that Steve Yasgur had built for me.  It was a lot of fun, but I need a couple more outings with it to be thoroughly sure of it's fun factor.  ;) 

That's it, that's all I got for you for this report.

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Fall fishing, closing one season and starting another!

Brookies, Browns, Muskies, and Steelhead, Oh My!

Wednesday:

I left early morning and headed southeast to Vernon county to close out the inland trout season.  There was much uncertainty the night before at the Fly Angler trying to decide where to go since so many rivers have been impacted with all the rain, but I rolled my dice to see what I would find.  I rolled into Viroqua, WI and headed straight to the Driftless Angler fly shop for some local intel.  The guy at the shop was way helpful with where to go, where to avoid, and what the hot flies were.  Turns out the rivers North of town were cloudy to blown-out and the rivers south of town were clearing up really well. 

A total of twenty minutes spent at the shop and I was out the door to my first destination where I rigged up my 4wt bamboo rod for the occasion.  That day, with no exageration, I caught close to fifty brookies and browns.  Mostly all the fish were caught on nymphs.  The 15-20 wind pretty much blew out the Blue Wing Olives that were around and killed any hopes for a little dry fly action.  There was one rocket of a trout that shot out for the ant pattern I threw.  He managed to take my line over a big branch sticking out of the water, so when I crossed the stream to "save the trout" I blew a perfectly nice pool only to find that the trout attached my hook to the branch and had left before I got there.  The tricky little bastard conned me.  So not only was he not there to save, but now I had to wait a while for the fish to return to the pool.

At the end of the day, I set up camp and then went to town for a great German beer at Chilito Lindo, the local Mexican restaurant, run by a frazzled Asian girl.  I know, odd three-way combination, but it all seemed to work out okay.  Especially since my order was messed up the least by the cooks.  They must have been new.  I returned to camp shortly after and fell asleep to the sound of the Amish horse and buggy traffic driving through town near the campground.

Thursday:

I woke up in the tent to mid 30's accompanied by pretty damp surroundings.  Nice!  I packed up the site then made breakfast of oatmeal and peanut butter sandwich in make-shift cheap plastic water bottle.  That didn't go too well, I don't recommend making oatmeal in cheap bottles.  It kinda shriveled up and didn't mix as well as I thought it would.  Lesson learned I guess.  Oh and the cheap spoons I commandeered the night before from the gas station doesn't work too hot either when they were heated up by the boiling water.

Anyway, I found and paid the nice lady for using the campground and for my new membership to the West Fork Sportsman's Club.  After shooting the breeze with her for a bit I headed fifteen minutes West to fish, where I caught a really beautiful fall brookie that made my trip that measured twelve inches in a very hard place to fish with crystal clear water on a pink squirrel.

I moved on to another river 45 minutes East towards home and had a blast catching a bunch of browns, picking one to two fish out of a pocket of water, then moving up river to the next pocket for one to two more.  I did this pattern of "run-n-gun" a good ways up the river till evening.  When I was at the bridge earlier deciding whether to fish up stream or down stream, I noticed two signs down stream.  The one closest to me stating that it was open to the public for fishing, and the one back further stating "Beware of Bull."  Some land owner had a sick sense of humor.  Since I wasn't armed with a meat grinder or hamburger bun for a Bull-encounter, I thought it best to fish the other side of the bridge upstream.  I jetted home at the end of the day completely happy.   I stopped in for dinner at the St. Paul Fly Tier's meeting at Schroeder's Bar & Grill and reported the great fishing I had enjoyed to some buddies.

Friday: 

After a less then satisfying day at work, I headed up to Peters cabin in Northern Wisconsin

met up within ten minutes of his arrival, we settled in, set up our fly tying vises and cocktails and tied Steelhead flies until late while catching up and swapping stories.

Saturday:

Peter made a great fisherman's breakfast with the added bonus of some good tea that I brewed up.  We were out the door an hour later to our meeting point with Wendy from the Hayward Fly Fishing Company for a day on the Flambeau River chasing muskies.

Peter spent a little time with his special technique of casting flies in the trees, but that didn't slow him down from catching three muskies.  Must be some secret there I don't yet understand.  I caught my first muskie ever.  It was about 32" on a 9wt rod with a big 6" black and orange puglisi fly.  I got to keep the fly in honor of the occasion too!  It was a fun fight and I could hardly believe that it was finally going to happen.  The next thing I knew we had it in the net in the boat and my camera was Peters hands.  Way cool!  The weather conditions were pretty unstable, there were spurts of rain and heavier wind gusts with the sun shining at the same time for most of the day.  Wendy is always fun to spend a day with, and did I mention that I caught my first muskie?!

We returned back to the cabin to pack up the muskie stuff that we used to catch my first muskie, then I converted some stuff over to for Sundays fishing trip to the Brule River for Steelhead.  Once that was done, we celebrated at the local supper club with some cocktails, local micro brews (appropriately named "Mouthy Muskie Light", and the "Crappie Flopper"), animated discussion of various subjects, including each of us writing down on napkins the species of fish we had caught this season.  It was a fun mojo thing.  Peter kinda kicked my ass in that department as my count was 13 different species this year and his count was 23 or 24 species.  For the record though, he did have a minnow marked down on his list.

We moved on back to the cabin and with a little inspiration from our celebrating, some "interesting" flies were tied and then we talked ourselves into retiring for the evening so that we would be ready for more fishing the next day.  And maybe spend some time dreaming of the Muskie that I caught.

Sunday:

With the fading smell of the muskie slime on my hands from my first muskie, we packed our stuff up and closed the cabin down as we were not returning.  We arrived in Brule, WI where we stopped first to look at a potential fishing cabin in town that was listed at an attractive enough price for me to actually think about it seriously.  It could pass for a nice fishing cabin, but it is in the middle of town, which could be both good and not so good.  After a quick inspection we headed to the river to try our luck fishing.

The morning started out slow, but it was beautiful.  We had seen a ton of turkeys everywhere we drove over the past two days and the fall colors were putting on a show for us.  It was perfect fall weather in Wisconsin.  We decided to drive to a different location which proved to be the right thing to do.  Peter landed a 22" chrome Steelhead mid morning on a caddis nymph and I had missed my first take of the season, which made me confident that I was doing something right and that they were in there.

The very few people we ran into said they hadn't had any luck, which wasn't encouraging, but

in the last hour of light of the day on the third stretch of the Brule further down river, I "got on the dance floor" as Peter put it.  I briefly caught and fought a Steelhead long enough for it to launch clear out of the river and spit my fly back at me. I am pretty sure he stuck up his middle fin at me too while laughing at me.  And that was pretty much the end of the action for the day.  We changed out of our waders at the local gas station and headed for home very happy with ourselves.

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