Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween

It was a kinda strange halloween this year. The change in daylight savings observance had the sunset an hour later than previous years and that seemed to put the timing off. Also, the local high-school football team had a huge game to decide if they went to the state final, so many people in the area decided to move the candy-grab to the Saturday evening instead. In the end the whole event was pushed into a window of about an hour and a half.

My kids were very excited this year and it was Natalya leading the charge. Pierce sure didn't know what all the fuss was about but if Natalya was excited he knew it was something he NEEDED to pay attention to. The week before the kids got to wear their costumes to the school halloween party so Pierce was extra certain that dressing up in his costume meant good things were about to happen.


As always happens, I (being the anti-social member of the family) stayed home to hand out candy to the kids while Jessica took Natalya and Pierce out to score their booty. They left all excited and it was great to watch them head off. Apparently Natalya knew exactly what to do and was very polite. Pierce also quickly worked it out and was eagerly knocking on doors, smiling and reaching into the candy bowls to grab himself some goodies. He'd give a big grin but was very business like in the knocking and procurement of the goods. Between the two of them, Natalya and Pierce made a great team and came back home with a huge amount of candy.


Natalya also enjoyed handing out candy to the kids that came to the door but made sure each kid gave the appropriate "trick or treat" before allowing the bowl close enough to their outstretched hands. She had a fantastic time this year.

Afterwards there was quite a bit of sugar to wear off but both kids were plenty eager to run around the house to burn it off. Luckily for us they both went to bed early and slept well. It was a good time for all of us.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Brule: Nothing...nothing....nothing...All hell breaks out .

The Bois Brule River in northern Wisconsin is an enchanting river. Why, I can't quite tell you but it keeps luring me back. Sure, it has fall steelhead in it, but not that many. Sure it's scenic, but not that scenic. Sure it's not as far to go as Michigan or Sault Ste Marie, but it's not that close. People catch fall steelhead here but each fish is hard earned. Hard earned in time, hard earned in the number of flies and lead you go through, hard earned in the cool to cold weather you go through and hard earned in the number of lessons and water you need to learn in order to score the mystical fall Brule River steelhead. Not that I'm saying the aura that surrounds Brule fall steelhead isn't well deserved because the hot ones I've encountered are absolutely amazing. The best of them are truly uncatchable. What I think really separates the Brule fish from all others is the overall fishing experience. You go all day and you might catch one, you go to bed and you get up the next day knowing you might catch one. Hour after hour you go through the motions, casting, mending, stripping and, with regularity pulling your rig from a snag. Almost every time the snag stays put, most times the fly pops off but you also spend plenty of time retying. From time to time a small trout or smolt is at the end of the line, or even a skip jack. However, every once in a blue moon, when you're least expecting it, as you go to pull your fly free there's a head shake and then......................ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

From my experience most times that caos is uncontrollable and there's a jump (or was that two or three or none, who can really tell as your mind is in complete shock), a blistering zig and zig and another zig and then you're left with a limp line and your indicator sliding down to the bottom of your drift in a melancholy sort of way as your heart empties, your throat dries, your quivering hands fumble at your reel and your mind attempts to process what the hell it has just witnessed. It's not your minds fault as you have just spend hours/days lulling it into a zen-like passive state where everything moves in a relaxed and tranquil way and then shattered it like a broken mirror. As things start to come into focus the quiver in your hands becomes a tremble in your knees and you start to curse yourself for "blowing" the fish but as you try to work out what you did wrong you realize - that fish was just too damn hot! That's probably the best part of fall steelheading in the Brule, those fish that are too hot to handle are out there.

Having gone through the mystical properties of the river and the fish I should probably bring you back to earth with the reality of a couple of "on the ground" fishing trips to the Brule. The first trip was a late night excursion where I left just after midnight on a Thursday morning, fished the river hard all day, and then drove back that night (five hours each way). Needless to say I stopped a few times on the way for short sleeps and then put a few more miles under my belt. I was there for first legal light and was on the water as soon as I could see.

The water was low and the day started off badly. I had just gotten a brand new Lamson Litespeed reel to go with my 6 weight Sage SLT and I figured it was perfect for the Brule. I charged off into the first good hole and as I stripped out line for my first cast the spool dropped off. I couldn't believe it! When I'd changed over the reel from right to left-hand retrieve I hadn't tightened the screw tight enough and it was now jammed in the spool. I had to head back to the car and grab my 7 weight rig.


Within a half hour my indicator slipped ouwards in a funny direction and when I set a silvery flash rolled at the waters surface and zipped away. At first I thought it was the real thing but it didn't take long to realize it was just a jack of about seventeen or eighteen inches. That might not sound like that much less than a 22-23 incher (adult steelhead) but it's a totally different creature in terms of girth and weight and general appearance. Fifteen to twenty minutes later and the same thing but this time the fish must have been laying up under a submerged log. I was thinking it was just a matter of time but then the sun came up above the treeline, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was hot.

I fished hard, up and down the river. Every now and then I'd get a smolt or small rainbow trout but nothing better than eight inches. I didn't stop for lunch, I didn't stop to drink, I just fished and it was great. Come evening I wandered down to my favorite hole. I plumbed it and plumbed it and got another small (15-16") jack that really didn't do much. I headed back to the car, talked for a couple of hours with some other fishermen then began the drive home.

The mode of transportation on the first trip

Although I had to be back home on Friday I had another chance to head up Monday morning and I jumped at it and with gas prices a little lower I took the steelhead mobile. There had been reain and snow over the weekend and the skies were grey when I got there. The water was up but not muddy and things looked great. I was sure I was going to get into fish. I was on the water around 4pm and with the dark clouds that didn't give me much time. I fished the holes down to "the ledges" hard throwing every combination of flies I could think of. There was nobody about, it was cold and the odd snow flurry went through. One thing that was noticeable was the number of smolt I was catching. In the short time I landed probably a half dozen or so. Finally, as light began to fade I reached the bottom pool and on my first drift through the broken water at the head of the pool my line stopped. I pulled up only to discover the familiar resistance of the bottom. I yanked hard and popped both flies. It was dark, I was getting cold and only had time (and enough feeling in my fingers) to tie on one fly - you don't think I'm going to tell you do you what it was do you???.

I roll cast it out again and it landed in the same spot as before. I let it drift and again it hung up in the same spot. I cursed, yanked with more might than I should have and this time there was a violent headshake and line streamed out of my reel. The sound of the reel is about all I remember in the haze but I did see the jet-black shape of a decent steelhead come well clear of the water a couple of times in the space of a second or two, then........................I hate that feeling and no matter how many times it happens I can't get used to it. I stayed until I could barely see the end of my nose and my frozen fingers felt like slabs of steak. I knew I'd missed my chance but I just couldn't leave.

I headed back to Brule to buy something to drink then found a nice place to park the jeep and went to sleep. It was only 7:30pm but I went to sleep no problem. Despite being so cold outside I was cozy in the jeep. I did head back down to the river in the middle of the night. This was planned as I figured warming the jeep up in the middle of the night might help stave off the cold a bit. I don't know if it worked or not but I wasn't cold at all.


Come first light there was a few cars about but they didn't last more than a half hour in the freezing conditions and frozen guides. I headed downstream and at the head of my second hole I strolled into the water to about knee depth (it felt good because I'd fallen on my knee the evening before and it was hurting a bit), busted off the ice from my guides and stripped out some line. I still had some cobwebs in the eyes and brain and couldn't focus clearly in the low light. I wasn't too commital in my casting and was happy to just get the fly out there. On about the fifth drift the fly stopped and I slowly took up the slack in the hopes that I could dislodge the flies without busting them off (my fingers were too cold to tie on another fly) and the snag came up a little. I set a little harder and then the head shook and it was on. A sharp zip, an airborne jump and then a hard run down to the bottom of the pool. With the line easily on the spool and the first few crazy seconds of the fight out of the way I began to settle down. The fish boiled towards the tailout and then took off downstream I chased and fell repeatedly on my sore knee, on the other knee (which incidentally is sore now as well) and slipped into the water at least once. Below that first set of rapids was a long, slow pool but it was fairly shallow with a number of trees and snags. I was nervous the whole time and with each blistering run my heart was in my mouth as I feared this was the run that would result in steelhead liberation.


Fortunately I held it together just enough to bring the fish to hand. I was shaking like a crazy man and I fumbled around in my jackey pockets desterately trying to find the camera. It took waht felt like an eternity so I snapped a shot of my silver prize and went to work reviving it, which didn't take too long. I didn't bother too much with pictures because I figured I was going to have a stellar day with plenty more fish. As it turned out that wasn't the case. About an hour and a half or so later I again hooked up, this time with a more colored up fish. This take was more subtle and the fight more subdued, still a good fight but not the maniacal insanity of the hot, silver bullets. Having said that, I didn't get the fish to hand because when I had the leader to the end of the rod I thought the fish was done and instead of taking it into the quiet water to land it, I decided to grab it at the tailout. When I went to tail it, the fish spooked and ran downstream. As it did that the knot between the line and leader caught in the top guide, the rod doubled over and my fly dislodged. No fish. It was probably low twenties but had the nice pink hues of a fish that had been in the river a while.


I fished an hour or so longer before the lace on one of my boots blew out in the sticky mud along the trail.......and that was it. No more fish, no more fishing and it was back to the jeep for the drive home. On the way home I stopped at Wild River State park to check it out. It looks like a great place to take the family next summer and it looks like it also has some good cross-country ski trails as well. Oh well, back to work tomorrow for as long as that's going to last.


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Friday, October 17, 2008

non glamourous fish from a non-glamourous river

Considering I missed my chance to chase pink salmon on Minnesota's north shore I figured I needed to take my chance to chase the big king Salmon running the eastern Wisconsin tributaries of Lake Michigan.

Although the Sheboygan River isn't the prettiest of these streams (it runs right through the city of Sheboygan) I know the river well (and how to get to it) and it's the first place my buddy Ted ever went to catch anadromous fish, so it has some sentimental value. It's funny just how excited we were to catch a few mangy, crusty black salmon back then and now almost can't lower ourselves to fish for them.

I left home at just after midnight early Friday morning and made a couple of hours (until I made the small town of Oxford) before I stopped for a bit of a sleep. I didn't sleep well and I was developing a bad sore throat and had a terrible headache and really bad muscle cramps. It wasn't fun! After an hour or so I was back on the road and made it to a small gas station just west of Sheboygan Falls where I did fall asleep properly. There was plenty of time till legal fishing time so I enjoyed my hour and a half or so of slumber. I made it streamside by twenty to six and once I was rigged up and ready it was perfect timing to begin fishing.

As I waded out to my favorite hole I saw a few fish moving through the shallows so I knew the fish were in. The water was low, making my hole a little less appealing than it normally is. I fished it long and hard though but didn't hook a fish, but every now and then a fish would move up through the shallows above me. There was one angler working a good hole above me and another guy that was shamelessly patrolling the shallows looking to snag the easy pickings.

After some time I decided to move downstream and started to notice fish moving about on redds and in the broken water. There were two distinct populations of fish in the river, the black fish and some clean, almost ghostlike, shiny fresh fish. Of course there was plenty of dead and decaying fish in the shallows and the gulls were working overtime picking out their eyes. If I had to guess I would say the recent rains and cooler temperatures pushed some fresh fish into the river from the big lake.


Without so much as a bump I decided to fish to a salmon that was sitting up on a red but wasn't spawning. I ran a number of flies past him and eventually I noticed a slight head movement. I set the hook and the fish began to thrash his head and run. It was a typical king salmon fight with bulldog like runs and stubbornness. When it came to hand it was relatively fresh but had some scraping around the tail and peduncle from digging redds. I'll never know if the fish was lined or it ate the fly (it certainly didn't move to grab the fly) but the egg pattern was wedged in the front corner of the mouth.


There were a number of redds in the shallows of this particular stretch of river and all had fish moving on and around them but I didn't notice any actually spawning or making redds. I also noticed that the only fish I could hook were the fresher ones. It didn't matter how many times I ran a fly by a darker fish there I just couldn't get them to eat. Of course you'd foul the odd one but it wasn't easy because there wasn't too many fish around and they were moving about contentedly. Although I'm not a firm believer that king salmon eat in rivers (although I do think they'll swipe at a ESL when the males are fighting with one another) but because I could not hook the darker fish in the mouth with anywhere near the frequency of the fresher ones I am reluctant to say I was just lining them. I managed nine decent salmon during the morning and I was quite bored with them after just a couple of them. Behind the redds was a nice deep run and I spent quite a long time (nearly two hours) probing it in the hopes of hooking a brown or steelhead. I didn't hook one, but as I fought one of my kings I did see what I swear was a decent brownie. Unfortunately, that was the only brownie I saw all day.




Around lunchtime I headed back to the car to eat some lunch and relax for a while. The overcast sky and drizzle persisted (although it was very noticible how the redds would empty and the signs of salmon would completely dissappear the moment the sky cleared even a little bit) so I headed back down. In the morning I had forgotten my cell phone and I'd intended sending a photo message to my buddy Vincent so I brought my phone down for the afternoon session. But wouldn't you know it, when I got back to my spot there was another angler there (I'd had the river pretty much to myself for the later part of the morning) and a light breeze started. I couldn't put my finger on it but the atmosphere just felt different.



Just then I got a call from my friend Claire and as I sat to talk I started to see fish move up onto the redd I was sitting by. The the female began spawning and soon males flocked in by the dozen. Soon there were fish everyhwere, mainly black river-pigs, but it was hard to imagine so many fish had been in the river that very morning. I guess they were all just hanging around in the deep, still pools. As I sat and chatted the whole area became alive with fish moving and spawning, chasing one another around and fighting and spooking one another through the shallows. I also noticed another element, anglers were showing up with large spoons and trebles eager to snag the salmon in the shallows. It was hard to watch the slow wind-stop-quick wrist snap-slow wind-stop-quick wrist set routine. The thing is these guys were so full of high fives and things when they got a fish I couldn't believe it. It was hardly a challenge and not sporting at all with there 30lbs monofilament line.

With the fish now actively spawning and so many crusty fish in a small area it became almost impossible to get a drift without fouling a fish. They weren't eating and I spent at least half my time fighting foul-hooked fish and retying flies. This was the kind of "fun" I'd forgotten that goes along with king salmon "fishing". I did manage at least one (one for sure) fair hookup on an olive woolly bugger but ended up loosing that fish after ten to fifteen minutes or so.

One thing I must say is that the general size of the salmon this year seems to be down a little on what it has been in past years. I know the prey base is down out in the big lake and that is definately translating on the size of the fish returning to the tributaries. Of course, the fish in Sheboygan do seem to run smaller than those running the Mantiwok but still, I didn't see even one of those bruisers over 20 lbs, even from the dead fish lying around.

With a long drive ahead of me I quit fishing around four and called home before hitting the road. On the way home I stopped by River Wildlife on the Kohler property and took some pics. The fall colours were in full swing and the place is nice, even if it is full of rich, pretentious dorks. As I drove home I wondered if it had been worth it to come chase kings and decided a day (or half day) of king fishing is OK. The problem is that the drive is so long and I've come over to find the river empty or too hot, or too high, or too low, or so choked up with crusty, black fish that you couldn't get a fair hookup to save yourself, or so full of anglers you couldn't get a five foot section of river to yourself. Of course, next year is twelve months away but I think the chances of getting a decent day fishing with kings just isn't worth the risk. If they fought like steelhead it would be different, but they're just a totally different fish.

The drive home was along one and I stopped for a bit of a sleep in Ripon and then a meal and toilet break in Mauston. Still, for the cost of two tanks of gas it was a good trip for me, probably the best fishing for kings I've experienced in terms of hooking fair fish that were relatively fresh. One things for sure, it was FAR better than the king salmon trip Ted and I took in 2007.


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Sunday, October 5, 2008

Big Time Fish - Big Horn River

It was a long summer with more downs than ups but the weather is beginning to turn and fall is slipping down upon us. Hopefully the change of seasons will also bring other good changes (hopefully a change to a new lab) and even if things turn out to be the same old thing in a different setting, at least it will be a different setting! Anyway, I digress. With trout season ending in Minnesota on September 30th Ted and I figured the best way to see out our trout season was to head to Montana, and the river he chose was the Bighorn River. He'd fished it many times before but for me it was my first time.


The drive is about fourteen hours if you can drive straight through and for us that meant an early start. I was at Ted's place right on time at 4:00am which is about a half hour from my place. We pushed straight through to South Dakota's Black Hills and stopped for a meal at a Pizza Buffet place and the delightful town of Spearfish. This place very much enamored me with the early fall colors, black hills as a back drop and a gorgeous, productive trout stream running right through the center of town. Of course the first stop Ted had us stop was the trout hatchery where we saw some monster brood stock in the grow out ponds. We then checked out a few stretches of stream with well manicured parks and a pleasant crispness to the air. What a great place!


When we finally got into Fort Smith it was getting dark and we were tired. We elected for a cheap motel room to rest our aching bones, bought our licenses, then headed down to the afterbay dam to try our luck. Like a fool I hadn't organized very well and didn't have any indicators on me so had quite a bit of trouble nymphing. This may or may not be the reason I wasn't hooking fish but during the same time Ted landed six or seven including a 17 inch rainbow. Within the hour the darkness (and tiredness) draped over us and we turned in for the night.


Now for whatever reason I didn't sleep very well at all that first night, tossing and turning and worrying about things back in Minnesota and when I did sleep I had the weirdest dreams so I didn't have any trouble with the early start. We raced out to the campground and secured a boat for the day, bought some flies, then set up the tent and our camp.

Back at the dam our drift boat was waiting and we were soon drifting the upper three mile stretch of the river. It wasn't long before my indicator dropped and I had my first brown trout. It was about nine inches or so but at least it was a start. A little while later we drifted towards the "meat hole" and this time when the indicator dropped an explosion erupted. A feisty seventeen inch rainbow leapt and ran through the heavy current until ending up in the net. My first decent Bighorn rainbow.


We anchored the driftboat and waded the "meat hole" hole for a good few hours and I experienced the coolest thing. As you waded the shallows you'd dig up some bugs under the rocks as you walked which resulted in a whole mess of fish (between say fourteen and twenty-four inches) sitting directly downstream of your legs, constantly sipping morsels being disrupted in the current. In fact, if you didn't move your feet for a while the fish would actually bump your legs to get you to move. It was truly amazing. Now you might think this would make them easy to catch but the opposite is true. These fish get fished to every single day of the year and they are crafty and wise. Even when you could finally fool one of these fish most were too strong to land.

The entire run was full of fish though so normal nymphing was as good an approach as any. In such big, strong water and such big, strong, wild fish it isn't suprising that even when you could hook one of these well educated fish (and that wasn't easy) the struggle had only just begun. Most of these fights began with a blistering run, a big leap clear of the water then a big head shake followed by the soul emptying numbness of a limp line. But the big fish were plentiful and you seldon needed more than a few moments to regroup and get refocused on the task of hooking up again.


The sun has high and bright in a cloudless early fall day and from what we saw on the water the fishing wasn't red hot for anybody but we were hooking up quite regularly. In fact, it was this spot that produced my biggest rainbows of the trip.


After a time we moved on down the river to a spot where I immediately encountered some good brown trout feeding in the shallows by some back channels. I hooked up with five or six in five to ten minutes but only brought two to hand, one around that sixteen inch mark and one at nineteen.



In the next hour I had a few more hits but that things slowed down quite markedly. A little further downstream I hit another good brownie from the boat and we soon anchored up for our first session at the "five dollar hole". Almost immediately after landing that first fish I hooked up with another nice brownie that took me way downstream and deeply into my backing. The angler downstream of me informed me he saw it as it swam past him and assured me it was well over twenty. Considering the great fight I had no reason to doubt him but when I finally got it to hand one fly was in its mouth while the other was in it's tail - no wonder it fought so well.

It wasn't long before Ted was also into the action and he began to consistently hit his stride. He was definitely outfishing me in terms of hookups. This spot (if my memory serves me right) was mainly rainbows but there were a few brownies mixed in. Ted got one very good rainbow from this stretch as well, either at or just below the twenty inch mark. We pretty much finished out the evening at this hole before making our way to the pullout and heading to "Polly's" for dinner. It had been a very full day and I don't even remember crawling into my sleeping bag but I know I slept like the dead.


The next morning saw us floating the lower eight miles of the Bighorn and is unfortunately where my memory becomes a little hazy. I could feel my mind and thoughts getting a little scrambled and mixed up and I struggled to keep myself together. It was a very frustrating feeling! Anyway, once in the boat everything was fine and I could just focus on doing what was needed to catch fish. As it turned out today was going to be a good day, not because I caught a lot of fish, but because I learned a very caluable lesson that I think will be very important in helping me catch more fish in the future. Actually, it was a very frustrating day fish wise for me as I had to watch Ted hooking up left right and center and I couldn't get more than the odd fish here and there, or even worse, I couldn't figure out what we were doing differently.

It started off well as I banged a nice brownie from the boat at the first nice hole we drifted through. We anchored up and almost instantly I had another brownie. Then it started. Ted began banging them. We switched positions, flies, leaders (and that did help) and everything else we could think of but that just wasn't it. I mean, I was still getting fish and it would have been great had I been alone, but when you can see there's something you're not doing quite right you NEED to find out what it is. The longer it takes to figure it out the more obsessed you become!


By midday we found a great hole full of rainbows and Ted was banging them and I just couldn't hook up - at all by this point. I was trying everything and was out of ideas. Nothing was working. This became the norm for the day. Admittedly though, there weren't too many rods bending on the river, but Ted's and some of the guide boats were doing OK. Despite the fishing being slow (Montana standards but still stellar for Minnesota) it was impossible not to enjoy the river. It has a character very different from the Madison and the rivers of that area. It was a wonderful evening and I was still getting fish from the boat (the first clue as to my problem).


After an evening of contemplation, and watching the vice-presidential debate at "Polly's" while enjoying a nice meal, Ted and I began to figure out my problem. Although my drift was good, in that it was dead drifting, I was not mending upstream hard enough to have the flies coming down well ahead of the leader and strike indicator. This probably doesn't matter as much on some streams but a stream with the kind of angler pressure as the bighorn the fish become well educated and to trick them you need to be better than in other places.


On the third day we decided to hike up to "five dollar hole" and wade fish for the day. For some reason the fish just weren't as aggressive as they'd been and both Ted and I found the fishing much tougher. Ted found himself a small pocket of rainbows and locked in on them, with some good results. We didn't do very well in the morning so had a few hours break in the middle of the day, then went back in the evening. That is when Ted found his fish and he did quite well. In fact he hooked and landed a 23 incher, but I left the camera in the car. In fact, I didn't even see the fish close up because another couple of anglers came to help him out with landing it. I did get a few fish but apart from that small pod of rainbows, none of the dozen or so anglers in the area were getting more than a few fish here and there.

After another long day we enjoyed a nice bottle of Bryan's "Krajicek estates" wine with our meal at "Polly's" and I don't know if it was the long days, the over-abundance of sun, the lack of water, or my mental state, but I was pretty drunk from my share of the bottle. It was a good kind of numb though and made for a good night's sleep.

The next morning it was overcast and we thought that might get things going. We hiked back into "five dollar hole" and took up our usual positions. The fishing was slow. My recollection is very hazy at this point but I did get a run of brownies ranging in size from small to medium. I also got one final decent (I'm going to say big because we have no proof anyway) rainbow that we lost right at the net. That would have been a great photo to end the trip on but it was not to be. We didn't fish too long as we had a long drive ahead of us and it seemed much longer coming home then heading out.


We ended up stopping at a cheap motel somewhere in South Dakota, then after a meal at a McDonalds where the craziest, most condescending to farmers, freaky speaking Ronald Mcdonald displayed for us. That will teach Ted to push random buttons! The trip back was tedious and my thoughts were really wild and all over the place. My stomach was knotting up and I was just not a happy camper. Still, it was no relection on the trip or the fishing. It was good to learn the valueable lesson that mending upstream enough to get a drag free drift isn't as good as mending a little harder to ensure the flies are presented to the fish before they can see any line, shadow from the strike indicator or anything else. That is a lesson I'm sure will pay off big time in steelheading.


All in all the fishing was exceptional with plenty of big fish and regular action. It was amazing to see the big trout zipping in and out right behind, and sometimes between, your legs but not touching a fly as you ran it through. The weather was nice, the campground was quiet and uncrowded and my only complaint is that I wish it were a lot closer. Still, I would probably never go to work if it was closer. I mean, where else do you not bother taking photos of seventeen and eighteen inch fish because they're not that memorable!
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