Friday, August 29, 2014

When it comes to fishing, Michigan is king.  Plain and simple.  If all the fishing was contained in Lake St. Claire, we still would have the best fishing.  Still there is some awesome fishing next door to us.  Wisconsin has the Driftless area.  A small stream trout fisherman's paradise.  It is enjoying a banner year.  When the likes of Lefty Kreh and Dave Whitlock sing the praises of northern Wisconsin smallies you know you have a great fishery.  Hayward and its mighty muskie mania is legendary. 

So, lots of good fishing in Wisconsin.  Lots of it is famous, you know what I am talking about. 

This is not that type of story.  I wanted small stream USA.  County fairs, cow crap, no paths along the banks of the streams and feisty fish.  Opening a Gazetteer it is harder than you would think.  Smallmouth are listed as being in a fraction of the rivers in Wisco.  So I asked around- made some calls and headed out. 


The fishing was great.  Plenty of willing fish, destroying poppers and big enough pike to shred mono tippet.  There were enough decent fish to make the fishing worth it.  Cows, domestic ducks, crows and chipmunks were my companions.  Great conversation though I am certain the cows really enjoyed seeing me get my fly out of trees. 

After spending some much time tying my flies, organizing my pack it was totally refreshing to head out with a single box of flies in my pocket, some tippet and hemostats.  Nothing else- car keys hidden, camera in the car and the bloody cell phone turned off somewhere in the car. 


I drove through some towns.  Ate at an A&W- remember those.  Root Beer (on Tap) out of a frosted mug it was brilliant.  Small town tackle shops that had never seen a fly fishermen in the shop.  And the tail end of a county fair.  The fishing was great, people were friendly and grass was soft to sleep on.  Now if I could just figure out how to do this all the time life would be so choice.