Borah Creek, Grant County 03/01/08

Page 25 on your DeLorme Map. This is from the very nice DNR access point off of Bluff Road. A picturesque spot with the bluff shielding the cattle and I from a chilly crosswind.

It is such a pleasure to find a DNR access point with no ambiguity to it and a sturdy stile to traverse (see photos). Borah Creek is one of many streams chronicled in Humphrey & Shogren's Trout Streams of Minnesota & Wisconsin. They were more successful on this stretch than I, by the way. They are published professionals. I am a rank amateur.

A spring creek, Borah, and as such was clear of ice, albeit very cold. Like Castle Rock, it was gin-clear. Its trout were plentiful, but spooky. Conditions like this call for fishing perpendicular to the creek, without casting much of a shadow, kneeling a good 5-10' back to avoid being seen. Still, the bluff blocked much of the icy breeze and in the sunshine it was more than tolerable. This section of Borah is quite shallow, non-channeled and will likely be wadeable.

I fished this spot for a lonely two hours with nothing but a large and loud herd of cattle that obviously were late for their milking and weren't afraid to let anyone know about it. In all that time, just two cars passed, locals likely. No fish, despite plying them with orange scuds, prince nymphs and hare's body soft hackles. An unscientific study of stream report websites from opening day seems to reveal that orange scuds were the right call, though not for me. As my dad says, "it's a poor mechanic who blames his tools."

I found it odd that on both Castle Rock and Borah, both well-known creeks, I encountered no other fishermen that day--especially on Castle Rock. Too cold maybe?

Oh, and my date stamp is messed up on my camera. It should read 3/1/08

Castle Rock Creek, Grant County 03/01/08

Pages 25 and 33 on your DeLorme Map. Heading northeast from Fennimore on County Road Q. Castle Rock is also known as the Fennimore Fork.

Castle Rock is a spring creek, which came in handy today. Many of the trout streams I passed on the way to Grant County today were frozen over. Hard to find much fishable water today in the creeks whose springs are less vigorous than Castle Rock. Even vaunted Castle Rock was not entirely free of ice for its duration. In fact, the first truly fishable section was not until you hit Church Road. But it was worth the wait. Castle Rock is a beautiful example of a Wisconsin spring creek; clear, fast water with a somewhat soft bottom and quite a few limestone boulders along the sides, giving it a defined channel.

The photos are from the Church Road section. There is excellent bridge access and no problems with permissions, thanks to the DNR postings on the Northwest side of the creek. The Southeast side of the creek appears to be owned by a game preserve, so I didn't head over there.

Conditions were quite cold without the bright sunshine. In the wind it was downright bitter. This was a snowmobile suit and gloves day, both of which helped immensely because one has to crawl on one's hands and knees to avoid spooking the fish. Castle Rock was crystal clear (see photo) today and the fish were ultra-spooky. I saw six or seven fish of less than 12". No strikes and no fish landed. Still, it was great to get out.

Opening Day 2008

Up at 4:30 for the trip to Grant County. I have the road to myself in the before-sunset peace. Fernando Ortega's Shadow of Your Wings on the CD player. "Grace and peace to you," he sings. Exactly my sentiment after a brutal week at work and the long snowy offseason.

The sunrise tells of the upcoming cloudy day. Overcast skies encourage me for my angling prospects. God has more surprises for me on the way. Two bald eagles, four cock pheasants, several red-tailed hawks and a troop of deer.

Sometimes it's just great to get out there.












Oh, and my date stamp is messed up on my camera. It should read 3/1/08

Aldo Leopold, Western Wisconsin Fly Fisherman

This from the legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold in his landmark book A Sand County Almanac (1949) Oxford University Press, pp. 42-43. Leopold, aside from writing the seminal tome on American ecology, was a pretty fair outdoorsman. His farm, just north of Baraboo, WI was near quite a few of the streams chronicled in Trout Fishing Western Wisconsin. No doubt he fished many. Interestingly, Leopold, in this section of the book, creeled all the trout mentioned. This was before the catch and release ethic really came to fore. Were Leopold alive today, he would most certainly be preaching stream and trout conservation. Enjoy!

Excerpted from “The Alder Fork--A Fishing Idyll”

“Time to be at it now--they will soon stop rising. I wade waist deep to head of navigation., poke my head insolently into the shaking alder, and look within. Jungle is right! A coal-black hole above, so canopied in greenness you could not wave a fern, much less a rod, above its rushing depths. And there, almost rubbing his ribs against the dark bank, a great trout rolls lazily over as he sucks down a passing bug.

Not a chance to stalk him, even with the lowly worm. But twenty yards above, I see bright sunshine on the water--another opening. Fish a dry fly downstream? It cannot, but must, be done. I retreat and climb the bank.

Neck deep in jewelweed and nettles, I detour through the alder thicket to the opening above. With cat like care not to roil his majesty’s bath, I step in, and stand stock-still for five minutes to let things calm down. The while, I strip out, oil, dry, and coil upon my left hand thirty feet of line. I am that far above the portal to the jungle.

Now for the long chance! I blow upon my fly to give it one last fluff, lay it on the stream at my feet, and quickly pay out coil after coil. Then, just as the line straightens out and the fly is sucked into the jungle, I walk quickly downstream, straining my eyes into the dark vault to follow its fortunes. A fleeting glimpse or two as it passes a speck of sunlight shows it still rides clear. It rounds the bend. In no time--long before the roil of my walking has betrayed the ruse--it reaches the black pool. I hear, rather than see, the rush of the great fish; I set hard, and the battle is on.

No prudent man would risk a dollar’s worth of fly and leader pulling a trout upstream through giant tooth-brush of alder stems comprising the bend of that creek. But, as I said, no prudent man is a fisherman. By and by, with much cautious unraveling, I got him up into open water, and finally aboard the creel.”

What I'm tying for opening day

With opening day less than a month away, I've decided upon the flies I am tying and taking. Remember that you must go barbless during the early season.

I am tying four each:

• #14 Orange scud
• #18 Copper Bob
• #18 Beadhead gold rib hare's ear
• #18 Beadhead prince nymph
• #18 Pheasant tail
• #18 Stonefly nymph (pictured)
• #14 Royal Wulff trude
• #14 Pass Lake trude
• #14 Trude (all three tied as indicators)
• #18 Griffiths Gnat
• #18 Black Ant (seems counterintuitive, but anglers swear by using ants early season!)
  
• #18 Blue Winged Olive
• #14 Hare's ear soft hackle.
  

Streamcraft

A treatise on the lost art of “reading a stream,” from an out-of-print title The Boy’s Complete Book of Fresh and Salt Water Fishing (1949) by Oliver H.P. Rodman & Edward C. Janes, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., pp. 70-74.

"We found that in lakes there are certain spots where we are always apt to find fish--the coves, weed beds, bays, and ledges. So in streams there are definite places where fish tend to lurk. This is true to such an extent that an experienced fisherman on his first trip to strange waters can tell almost instinctively which stretches will be productive and which will be barren. This knowledge is called streamcraft, and a thorough understanding of the subject will often spell the difference between success and failure.

This past season, I was fishing a trout stream near a village where I formerly lived. This is heavily-fished water, and by the time I had an opportunity to fish it, in the late season, it had been pretty well pounded. I whipped run after run and pool after pool with both wet and dry flies and when, at length, I returned to the car, I had one nine inch rainbow. I started to take down my tackle and then I chanced to glance at the water below the bridge. It was a flat stretch of uninteresting-looking rapids and I had never bothered with it before. However, it was a warm, bright day and it occurred to me that there is a possibility that the fish might be lying in the rapids. Rainbows in particular, like swift water in the warm weather. I tied on a nymph and waded into the stream. Moving across the slippery rocks to get into position to reach a boulder pool downstream, I suddenly slipped into a hole nearly up to my hips; and as I did so, I saw a nice trout dart from under my feet. By my careless blundering I had ruined a good hole which one would never have suspected was there in a cursory inspection of the stream. I moved more cautiously now, for I began to realize that there might be other hidden pockets in this stretch. There were, too--for from that 200 yards of fast, shallow water I took six good rainbows, as well as losing two and feeling a couple of missed strikes besides.

As I waded along, I discovered pocket after pocket--in clefts between boulders, along the shore and under the bank. Apparently most fishermen had passed by this stretch of rapids as I myself had often done until this particular morning. And so I added a new, productive area to my fishing waters, another chapter in the book of this particular river. I feel confident that when the water is warm another year I can duplicate my performance of the past season.

Along similar lines, was an experience on a well known brown trout stream. I had fished this river for several years and felt that I knew it thoroughly--that being back in the days before I had learned that the more you fish, the less you know. I took and old fisherman along with me on a trip to this stream one day. It was a new water to him, but his experience was so great that he had seen every combination of trout water it’s possible to behold. We left the car beside a ruined dam and I led the way upstream past the old mill pond shrunken now, since the dam had gone out, to a flat sluggish shallow. “Where do we start?” the old fisherman asked. “We have to get above the old pond,” I explained. “This stretch is no good.” “Who said so?” he wanted to know. “Why?” I replied in surprise, “Everybody. You can tell just to look at it.” “Anyway, I think I’ll try it,” he said, inspecting the water carefully. “I’ll be along soon.”

I smiled to myself as I watched him clamber down the steep bank and lay a wet fly on the calm, shallow surface. My smile disappeared, at the smashing wallop which was almost immediately forthcoming from a two pound brown trout. “It was just luck,” the old fisherman said modestly as he held up the husky fish, “but then I noticed some rocks under the surface, and quite often you’ll find a deep pocket behind them where the trout like to hang out.” I knew it wasn’t luck. “There’s a couple more likely spots here,” the old man went on. “Try drifting a fly past that clump of alders and about mid-stream. Let her sink deep.” I followed his instructions humbly and a moment later I was fast to an old soaker of a brownie. Truth compels me to admit that I lost him after a short, furious fight when he parted my leader on a sharp rock. But the point is, he was there and the old man knew he was there. I told him he could smell the trout, but I knew now that it was his deep and abiding knowledge of streamcraft that enabled him to look at this apparently barren stretch of water, which most people passed by, and realize its possibilities.

Fish do not lie in a stream haphazardly. They are where they are for three very good reasons--food, comfort and security from their enemies. The first factor, food, causes them to be in spots where worms, insects, and other favored items of diet are swept along by the current, for while in lakes the fish must seek their food, in the streams, they have only to wait for food to come to them. The second factor, comfort, makes them seek spots where they can keep cool in summer or warm in spring and they don’t have to battle the full force of the current as they lie in wait for food. The third factor, security, places fish in deep holes, under overhanging banks, in tree root dens and behind boulders--dark, shadowy hiding places where they are less visible to preying birds and animals.

Food and security are the two fundamentals of streamcraft and when you find a place which affords both you will practically always find a fish. On the other hand, by fishing in those places which afford neither food nor security, you will only be wasting your time. Stand upon the banks of a stream and you will notice that the current does not flow evenly across. The swiftest flow will be noticeable usually in the middle of the stream or along one side. You won’t find fish in the very center of a swift flow, but, rather, along its edges, where the current dips under a bank or into pools, at a sharp bend in the stream, in the quiet water below big boulders, into debris-littered eddies--these are the places to look for fish. Also in pools at the end of glides and rapids.

There are other spots--caves and boulder dens--which are not apparent to the angler during the high water of early spring. For this reason, it’s a good idea to study your favorite waters at different times of the year, especially in late summer when they are low and such hiding places are revealed. Contours and currents will give you, with experience, an idea of what sort of bottom lies beneath; and you can extend this knowledge from your familiar local trout stream to more distant strange waters. You can, with practice, learn to read a stream as you would read a book.

The remaining factor, comfort, depends upon temperature as it does humans. In the high, cold roily waters of spring, you will find fish lying in the deeper, warmer water, feeding near the bottom. Later on, when the air and the water have warmed to late spring temperatures, the fish become more active, lying in shallower water and moving about freely in pursuit of minnows and insect hatches. Still later, when the waters have warmed uncomfortably, the fish will often come right into the rapids where there is more oxygen in the waters, or else they will seek the cool spring holes around the mouths of feeder rills. Therefore, where you fish depends in part upon the weather and the time of year.

Keep these factors in mind--food, hiding places and comfort--and you’ll be able to catch fish throughout the season. "

Great description of a brook trout

This is one of my favorite descriptions of a brook trout, from Ted Leeson’s 2002 book Jerusalem Creek: Journeys Into Driftless Country. Guilford, CT: the Lyons Press, pp. 87-88.

The indigenous trout of the driftless area is the brook trout, and if its common name accords well with the place of countless little creeks, the scientific designation is more fitting still: fontinalis, “of the springs.”

The brook trout is often said to be the most colorful of all trout species and I will concede that it is colorful, almost improbably so, decked out in the kind of composite chromatics you might expect from a committee of hyperactive first graders turned loose on a box of crayons. It is, however, imaginatively done, and the only species of freshwater fish I know of that would not look out of place among the phantasmagoria of a coral reef. It possesses the most magnificent of tails, broad and square and elegantly proportioned, like the sail of a clipper ship.