My last weekend with Ed.

Saturday morning:

So for our last weekend hanging out together before Ed moves to Texas for his new job, we started off early Saturday morning.  We started off with breakfast over at the San Padro cafe in Hudson.  I highly recommend it to anyone and will be back there again.  We basically found it by accident as we were fifteen minutes too early to the nice cigar shop we wanted to check out called the St. Croix Cigar Company which had a large variety of products from my current favorite cigar brand, Perdomo Cigars. We were very impressed, and the guy behind the counter seemed to be an encyclopedia of cigar knowledge.

 

Then we moved on to River Falls to check out both the Kinni Creek Lodge fly shop and the new Lunds Fly shop out of curiosity and to maybe get some insight on what the fish have been hitting on.  We eventually did make it to fishing.  We started out fishing Lost Creek and worked our way up on the Rush river to El Paso.  Ed borrowed one of my bamboo rods to see what fishing one was like and I strung up another for myself for the weekend.  We had some success with sulphur parachutes #18 and comparduns #18, and white parachute BWO's.  Word on the river was that others had good luck using caddis patterns, but I did not have any success using them.  The trout must not have appreciated my artistic interpretation of the caddis flies I tied.

 

Saturday evening:

The reason for our fishing up to El Paso, WI was that our club was celebrating its 60th anniversary and the dinner was being hosted at the El Paso Bar & Grill.  We had a great turnout with many members and their spouses and significant others.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time.  Denny even set up a banquet table with some old club memorabilia, which I thought was a very nice touch.  To save us a lot of driving a few of us spent the night at the local Super8 motel; which sadly has been the nicest motel room I've had in a long, long, long time.  But it's not my fault, it's the fishes fault for not having better places for me to stay at when I go visit them.   



Denny's Table





Amy, Angie, and Jen



 

 

 

 



 

social hour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning:

Ed fishing bamboo for brookies

Sunday morning Ed and I had breakfast with Yoda and his saint of a wife, Sandy.  And we were off again fishing the Rush river.  The trout pretty much took to Sulphur parachutes and comparaduns, white post parachute BWO's.  Ed mentioned that it was kind of fitting that we fished at the Stonehammer bridge to catch his last Wisconsin trout before moving to Texas as it was the first place he caught a trout on the Rush when he moved here to Minnesota.  We had rising fish and the fishing was good until the bikini hatch broke out.  We had six girls in two piece bikinis and one guy in shorts trying to float the river on little black inner tubes.  While the scenery was appreciated as they all modeled their swim suits very well, they put the fish down dammit.  The last gal who was a little behind the rest of her group was not so impressed with the decision to float the 40 degree water and said she would rather be fishing with us then floating in the cold water.  I told her that this was the first time in the ten years of fishing this river that had seen anyone try to float it.  Too bad, I didn't have an extra set of waders for her.  Anyway, Ed and I adapted and we sat on the bank of the river and lit up a couple of cigars and waited for the fish to come back.  It didn't take too long and they were back rising. 

 

Sunday afternoon:

After a good morning on the river, we left for lunch at the Silver bridge in Martel.  The club was having one of our monthly fishing outings and grilled brats with sour kraut were on the menu!  I think we had around 15 people or so attend.  After lunch, one of our newer members, Eric, was showing us his new Tenkara rod he bought the day before at Kinni Creek Lodge.  While showing us how to fish it on the section that goes by the park, he hooked five fish.  They all got off before he could land them....but he's still working on figuring that part out.  :) 



And that was our weekend.  Not bad if you ask me.  I wish Good Luck to Ed and his girlfriend Angie on thier new chapter in thier life in Texas, even though I warned them numerous times that Texans live in Texas.

Doe and a fresh fawn

 

 

www.critters-corner.com

A good weekend

Friday night Jen and I had a dinner date with Ben and Amy at a little Russian Restaurant called Moscow on the Hill.  It was pretty fun, the foods were good, the staff was fast, and several vodka shots tastings were had.  They had more choices of vodkas and specialty drinks then there are pine needles on a tree.  My main entree was a pork dish with apples and almonds inside it, and it was very flavorful.  Jen ordered a salmon fillet with dumplings on the side.  She raved about the dumplings.  I tasted the salmon and thought it was the best I'd ever had in the Midwest.  The appetizer was very good as well, it was a smorgasbord of things, and surprisingly, we all were digging the beat salad the most.  I' would definitely do it again.

Saturday morning Jen and I ran around picking up the house a little, wrapping presents, and last minute shopping.  Ben stopped over after his shopping was done for the day, and we set up to tie flies around the kitchen table for the next four hours.  We did take a brief break with a quick visit to the Fly Angler down the road, as I needed some more hooks and beads for the pattern I was tying.  We just plain enjoyed the day, a couple of cocktails (our friends bourbon, spiced rum, and crown paid us a visit), tied a few flies, had Christmas music on in the background.  Later on in the evening I did some consolidating of my many random post it notes listing flies to tie and made a consolidated list that was more manageable to read then my various chicken scratches on yellow squares.  Overall, I'd call that a good day.

Sunday we didn't leave the house.  I made a hearty breakfast, we paid some bills, spent some time  on both the wisflyboard and then on the Flytyingforum websites, opened our stocking stuffer gifts to each other, and then I was back to the fly tying bench with football on in the background and VH1's top 40 videos of the year.  Inspired by a fly pattern I saw online today and by the theme of the flies I'd been tying the past week or so, I came up with a neat pattern.

Hook:  TMC 3761 #12
Thread: 8/0 Olive Uni-Thread
Tail/shuck: 2 strands of pearl accent flashabou
Body: Ultra-wire green (size brassie) and Ultra-wire copper (size medium)
Thorax: Black UV Ice Dubbing
Hackle: Hen English soft hackle