Saturday Driftless Trip

I was on my way to Vernon County by 5:00 am this morning.  About half way, I had to pull over and snap the picture above of the gorgeous driftless sunrise.  I don't get a chance to get out there often, so I spent a lot of time scouring maps, looking for access.  There are so many streams in the Driftless that it is just overwhelming.  If you don't know about this unique area, click here for more information.  Of course there was a car at the overpass I parked at, but it was a pleasant surprise to find it belonged to Blake, the writer of Illinois Wisconsin Fishing.

I went a few hundred yards downstream from the overpass and found a lot of eager fish.  These are the nicest ones that I caught.  The third one wasn't so large, but the pattern on it is beautiful!

I caught most of my fish at the overpass, mostly on tan scuds and black Woolly Buggers.  There was a Boss Fight of a brown trout in the pool that wouldn't budge for anything.  I kept tying on bigger and bigger streamers trying to fool him and avoid the smaller fish.  I finally tied on some kind of a bead head rabbit strip leech which fooled a very nice sized sucker.  He really gave me a run for my money!

The fight with the sucker spooked all the fish in the pool, so I moved on.  It didn't feel like I caught a lot of fish, but I think I just got used to catching a fish every few casts.  When I went a ten minute stretch without catching anything, it felt slow.

Let the pictures below be a reminder to PINCH DOWN YOUR BARBS!  I took a size 14 extra heavy scud hook in the thumb half way up the bend of the hook!  I could see the pressure exerted by the hook point squeezing the blood out of the capillaries under my thumbnail.  I'm so glad it didn't go clean through the nail!  I kind of panicked and got the shakes, but I maintained my calm enough to photograph it for your enjoyment.  Your welcome.

Because the barb was pinched down, the hook backed right out relatively effortlessly with only the slightest elevation in pain.  It could have been much worse.

It rained hard on my long walk back to the car.  There was even some lightning.  I headed  to the town of Viroqua to dry out a little.  I bought some flies at Driftless Angler, and had a Two Hearted Ale and a grass fed burger at the Driftless Cafe. Everything in this town revolves around trout.  I loved it!

Driftless Angler

Brook trout mural in the alley
of the Driftless Cafe

Two Hearted Ale in
a mason jar

I visited several other streams I had never fished, but didn't pick the right ones.  They were either dry beds, or sandy bottom streams with no cover.  I wish I had more time, but I had to start heading back.  Hopefully someday I'll get to spend a weekend or more in the Driftless and explore better water.

The Milwaukee Harbor Is Full Of Fish

I drove down to the lake today to kill some time on my day off.  As I walked along the water in Veteran's park, I saw numerous brown trout very close to shore.  I walked back to my car, drove a little ways, assembled my fly rod, and grabbed some "reserve" flies that happened to be in my car.  I walked to Mckinley Marina and started roll casting off the rocks.  It probably wasn't 20 minutes before I was hooked up with a fish.

It took me around five minutes to land the fish.  Not the biggest brown trout I've ever caught, but not a bad catch for a 30 minute outing.

Repost: Fishing For Big Trout And Salmon in The Great Lakes

The salmon run is fast approaching, and this old blog post of mine has been getting a lot of traffic.  I'm doing something I've never done and recycling some old material to help my followers get ready for the salmon and steelhead run. 

First off, I've added a couple new pages, a little bio about myself, and a page with links to the official fishing websites for every state, and Canadian province.  This could be helpful if you're ever planning a multi state or international fishing trip.

A couple enjoys the view on Milwaukee's
north pier

Fishing for salmon and big trout is one of the reasons I love living so close to Lake Michigan.  If you've never seen one of the Great Lakes, they're big!  My Minnesotan wife still calls Lake Michigan "the ocean."  As I discussed in an earlier post, most trout and salmon aren't native here, so the Great Lakes might be a nice opportunity to get out on a stream and catch a nice chinook without going to Alaska.  Fishing out in the lake with a boat is the obvious way to go, but I don't have a boat, and I'm going to assume you don't either.

Mckinley Marina in Milwaukee

What you are going to want to do is find a pier, or some structure that allows you to get out in the lake.  I think the wall provides cover for smaller baitfish, and big fish come there to be treated to a buffet.  When fishing off the pier or even just off a wall into the bay in Milwaukee, I like to use big, heavy spoons that cast far and get down deep.  In my opinion, Acme Tackle makes the best spoons, with my favorites being the Little Cleo, The K.O. Wobbler, and the Kastmaster.  I've caught more salmon on Little Cleos than on anything else, I even mentioned the name Cleo for my daughter, but the wife shot that idea down.  I like the silver and blue ones for salmon.  I've never caught a steelhead, but I hear that orange is the hot steelhead color, and gold is good for big browns.  When fishing the lake, I'll use a heavier one, the 3/4 oz size casts further and sinks faster.  The Kastmaster also casts very far, it's not just a clever name.  With these lures, just cast as far as you can and wait while the lure sinks.  Retrieve the lure just fast enough to make it wobble, you'll feel it.  You can also use Wildeye Swimbaits or Rat-l-traps for trout and salmon in the lake.  There is no telling what else might bite those though.  Fishing in the lake is great fun, the bites might be few and far between, but there's something about sitting along our gorgeous glacial sea all day with a sandwich for lunch, and a beer or three that takes you far away from the world while a million people scramble in the city just a half a mile away, completely oblivious to what a beautiful resource we have.

I found this Kastmaster in some streamside bushes

The Little Cleo is about the sexiest lure there is

My Rat-l-trap has seen some action!

In about mid August, the salmon will start to move toward their natal stream. This time is the best opportunity to catch them in the lake, or even in the channel if they start to swim upstream.  Any change in the weather will make them start to move and then you can try to catch them in the streams.  It might just take a drop in temperature, or a little rain and a few overcast days to make them start running.  I've caught salmon in the middle of August in the White River in Michigan, but this year, I didn't see any salmon in the Menomonee until the end of September.  In the streams, I'll still use Little Cleos in deeper pools, but I may use a 2/3 or 2/5 oz instead of a heavier one.  They move a little more erratically in the current than a heavier one.  I will also use some diving crankbaits in the streams; Storm makes my favorites, and they're reasonably priced too.  The deep diving Thunderstick Jr. and the Hot 'N Tot are the ones I use most.  You will find that fishing in the stream can be very frustrating.  There are days when the salmon are so thick that you could walk across them, but they won't bite a thing, then other days, they'll bite anything!  If you're on the stream and salmon are flying out of the water like ballistic missiles from a Russian nuclear submarine, that is the day they will bite anything.  You will probably get splashed by salmon jumping, and they'll scare the hell out of you, but they are angry at everything in the water.  All you have to do is put something in the water with some hooks in it.  The best days always seem to be overcast and rainy days.  I've had the best luck in the evening on overcast and rainy days; not a really hard downpour, just a steady rain.  In both the stream and the lake, using ten pound test line is probably adequate.  I've seen guys use 20, but that's overkill.  This season, I used 6 pound test and I only had one salmon break my line.

Two Hot 'N Tots and a Wiggle Wart

My Thunderstick, marred by salmon teeth.  Note the
scale just behind the front hook.

This is the first year I've ever spent a lot of time fly fishing for salmon.  I cut the tapered leader down to about three feet and just tied on about six feet of hybrid six pound test.  I used mostly Woolly Buggers, and egg sucking leeches.  I haven't had a chance to use my creation, the Force Choking Leech, very much.  You can find instructions on how to tie it here.  If you're a fly fisherman, you're probably better at it than I am, so I can provide very little instruction.

Egg sucking leech with flashabou in the tail

Kittie examines my fly tying skills

Probably the best looking bead head Woolly Bugger
I ever tied.

Salmon and trout can be hard to catch, but you'll remember your first one forever!  I fished for salmon for a few years before I caught my first one, It was October 1, 2002.  It takes time to learn how these fish work.  I can feel the change in the weather that brings the salmon into the streams now,  an instinct I can't explain.  The clouds look a certain way, the air has something different about it.  It took me years of fishing and lots of luck before I even had a salmon bite.  How bad do you want it?

My First Driftless Trip

I made my way to a couple of driftless streams on Wisconsin's western edge today.  My first stop was Mills Creek.  It was cold and windy, and the water was rather clouded.  I looked around and cast to some likely cover, but no results.

Back in the car to drive twelve or so more miles to Reads Creek.  I pulled off the road, assembled my rod, and walked down from the overpass to the bluest, clearest water I have ever seen, and watch fifty or so trout scatter in every direction.  I couldn't believe the number of fish in this stream!  I found a pool just downstream of the bridge that had a lot of trout in it, and one trout that looked to be between 15-18 inches.  I spent too much time trying to catch that Boss Fight of a fish, and he eventually took off.

I went downstream a little more, there was a tree down in the creek with a pool behind it, full of trout that wouldn't bite a thing.

Back up to the bridge, I made a couple casts with a wet fly, and finally had a hit.  A beautiful brook trout fell for it.

Now I'm feeling confident.  After I landed the brook trout, I had hit after hit, with every trout shaking the hook.  I ventured upstream a little more.  The creek came tumbling over some rapids, and in the pool below, trout were rising and dimpling the surface.  I couldn't see the bugs, I assume they were tiny little midges.  I really wanted to try out one of my hand tied Elk Hair Caddis though.  I chose the best looking one from my box, greased it up, and cast one of the longest, most perfect casts of my life.  The fly landed so gracefully upstream.  I slowly stripped the line back and let the fly drift for what seemed like five minutes, and then, the rise came.  I was dumbfounded, I almost forgot what to do, it had been so long since I caught a trout on a dry.  Eventually, I remembered to set the hook and reel in the fish.  A decent sized brown took the Caddis.

After that, I had many more rises to the caddis, but missed each one of them.  I could have fished for hours and never tired, but I had a long drive ahead of me.  I only fished about a thousand feet of the stream.  Next time I'll know long perfect casts are what these fish rise to more than any particular pattern.  Thanks, Damien for sharing these locations with me, I can't wait to get back.

Brown Trout in Milwaukee

I think all the brown trout in this video were caught in Milwaukee.  I see the US Bank Building, the Milwaukee Art Museum, or the Hoen Bridge in most of these shots.  We have World Class brown trout fishing here in Milwaukee.

The Ides of March

Monday 3-15-10  11:00 pm

I went fishing today, it has been quite warm lately.  My first choice was still frozen over, so I ended up going way out in Veteran's Memorial Park.  The rain and meltoff has clouded the water considerably.  The lake appeared slightly milky.
I found a spot on the rocks and started casting crankbaits.  After some considerable time I was getting cold and decided to cast a final time.  I had on a Storm Wiggle Wart or something like that.  It had rattles, and dove rather deeply.  I retrieved very slowly, and about ten feet out I had a tremendous bite!  The fish shook violently from side to side, then my line broke!  I was pissed, my line had gotten brittle...  Damn Spider line mono filament, I'm switching back to Yo-Zuri Hybrid.
After the fish broke off, it came rolling to the surface in an attempt to throw the hook, It was, as near as I could tell, by the large black spots on what appeared to be an olive background (I have trouble with the color, the sun was setting) it looked to be a brown trout up to 30" long!  My mind probably made it that big in the rush of adrenalin following the bite, it was probably closer to 24", still nothing to be disappointed in.
I later had a light hit on a lure I made from a fruit spoon, or some strange utensil.  The treble hook I put on it was too small to find a home buried in the flesh and bone of the curious fish.  I swapped out the hook for a larger one from a different, less useful lure.  I fished until about ten after six, then came home.

America's High Five

This March, if everything goes according to plan, we will be spending our little girl's first birthday in Michigan.  I am already planning on spending at least one whole day fishing.  I hope to hit the North Branch White River for an opener, and possibly Knutsen Creek a little if it's not closed to fishing.  From there a trek to the main branch of the White, and possibly a strong finish at the mighty Muskegon River.  I caught my first brown in the Muskegon.

The North Branch is out in the middle of State owned land.  Once the two-track ends, there's quite a hike involved in getting to the water, so pressure is light.  It is generally around ten feet across.  Knutsen Creek feeds in at a bend, offering cooler water into a pool that produces fish, if you can keep your fly out of the cedar.  My last trip in Michigan before moving to Wisconsin was spent camping in the forest and fishing this area.  These are some photos from that trip.

Cedars

Knutsen Creek

Bluffs along the creek

A buildup of sticks 

A fallen tree over the creek

Beautiful forest

Viking coffee

We always called this
stuff "snake grass"

The North Branch

North Branch White River

Beautiful river

It got cold that weekend!

Sunrise

The White River's main branch is probably my all time favorite salmon stream.  It's bigger than a creek, but not so big that you don't know where to begin.  I can cast across it with spinning gear with ease and accuracy.  I never caught trout in the lower stretch, it's too sandy.  As you get upstream, you find better trout waters.  Lots of oxbows, pools and uncercut banks.  I've never fished above the Hesperia dam, And I always kept a few miles below it.  I don't even remember the street names, but there was a general store on the corner that sold the best chili dogs and great trout flies.

White River at the Countyline Bridge

The lower stretch of the White, just
a few miles up from Lake Michigan

The Muskegon is an enormous river that is way overused.  I've almost come to blows with drunken tubers who want to offer me their "worms" for bait.  They never seem to take it too well when you tell them that you're fishing for keepers, and their bait isn't big enough.  Usually in the summer months, smallmouth bass are the main target but there are plenty of nice browns in there, rainbows too.  The best fishing is upstream from the Maple Island Bridge or even the Bridgeton Bridge.  There is a rest stop with a scenic overlook that I liked to fish at in Newaygo.  There are about twenty stories worth of steps to get down to the river, so pressure is light, if you get there before the tubers.

I'm so excited to fish in Michigan again!  I've started tying some flies, now I just have to work on getting a new fly rod.  I'll fish with spinning gear if I have to, but I sure hope to fly fish.

Binders Full of Salmon

See what I did there?  But really, the history of members of the Family Salmonidae in the Great Lakes could fill several binders.  Most species that are common here now are fish that do not occur here naturally, while our native species are represented by diminished populations, hardly representational of their former abundance.  One species has even been driven to extinction.  As an angler, I think it is important to know the history of the fish you fish for to better appreciate them.  So I am going to consolidate binders full of history into a few paragraphs.

The only members of the Family Salmonidae that are native to the Great Lakes are the lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), the atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), and the arctic grayling (Thymallus arcticus).
The arctic grayling population was decimated by the logging industry and by the stocking of nonnative species.  They have been extinct since the 1930s.  All efforts to reintroduce this beautiful fish to its native streams have failed.
The atlantic salmon was only native to Lake Ontario but they have been stocked in other Great Lakes tributaries with mixed results.  Torch Lake is still stocked with the atlantic salmon in Lower Michigan, and in Upper Michigan, the Saint Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron is supposed to be just about the best atlantic salmon fishing on the continent.
Lake trout were driven to the edge of extinction by overfishing and invasion of the sea lamprey, but efforts to save the species have been successful, even though their population is a fraction of historical levels.
Brook trout are still found in native streams, and stocked in other streams outside of their native range. They only thrive in the most pristine waters, mostly in the upper portions of the Great Lakes and mountain streams.
I'm not sure, but I think some species of whitefish are native to the Great Lakes too.  Other than those few species, all others are nonnative.

Lake trout with lampreys attached

Brook trout

Atlantic salmon

Arctic grayling

The members of the Family Salmonidae that have been introduced into the Great Lakes are the brown trout (Salmo trutta), the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), and pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) as well as a lake trout X brook trout hybrid that is commonly referred to as splake.
A German guy, the Baron Friedrich Felix von Behr helped introduce brown trout from his favorite streams of the Black Forest to the USA in the 1880s.  They were first introduced into a tributary of Lower Michigan's Pere Marquette River-- And then from there, just about every imaginable body of water in the nation.  In the Great Lakes, we have both stream resident brown trout, and lake run browns.
Rainbow trout were introduced in a similar fashion to brown trout starting around  the 1860s.  We also have stream resident and lake run rainbows.  Lake run rainbow trout are commonly called steelhead.  Steelhead are one of the most sought after fish in the Great Lakes.
Chinook and coho salmon were introduced into the Great Lakes originally in the 1800s, but they failed to thrive and eventually disappeared, probably because of mismanagement.  Again, chinook and coho were stocked in the Great Lakes to fill the apex predator role left vacant by the waning lake trout population starting in 1966.  With the lake trout on the verge of extinction, invasive species such as the alewife ran rampant, and annually, billions of alewives would die and wash up on the beaches of the Great Lakes.  This was not great for tourism.  But you know what is great for tourism?  Salmon fishing in the Great lakes!  Win win!
In the 1950s, pink salmon were planted in Lake Superior accidentally when about 100 tiny little yearling salmon escaped from a pen while they were being loaded onto a plane headed for Hudson Bay.  Then again, when about 20,000 "excess salmon" yearlings were "disposed of" in a sewage drain-- that led into a stream-- that fed into Lake Superior.  The idea was that the small fish would have no chance at survival amongst the predators of Lake Superior, let alone a sewage drain.  Pink salmon are pretty well established in the Great Lakes today.
Splake are raised in hatcheries and stocked in the Great Lakes almost strictly for sport fishing.  They are bred because they grow faster than either parent species and because they are highly unlikely to breed in the wild.  Since they are so unlikely to breed in the wild, the splake population is easy to control.

Great Lakes brown trout in spawning colors,
late summer 2008.

Great lakes brown in the spring of 2008.

Steelhead

Rainbow trout

One of the prettiest chinooks
I have ever caught,
late summer 2007.

I caught this fish in the spring of 2008.
I was never too sure, but I think it's a coho.

Coho

Spawning pink salmon

Splake

It can be pretty hard to identify some salmonids,
this is the guide that comes in the Wisconsin
trout and salmon rulebook.

When I was younger, I believed that the salmon we had in the Great Lakes had to swim all the way in from the Atlantic Ocean-- I just knew they came from the ocean.  Most people probably don't think twice about where the fish come from, or why they're here now.  It's a shame that our native species are so few in our lakes and streams, but we still have most species.  And I'm glad we have the introduced species for now.  Knowing about the history of these fish has made me more appreciative, this is why I practice catch and release the vast majority of the time.  In a later post, I'll talk about catching some of these beautiful fish.  There is nothing like the rush of catching your first chinook in a secluded wooded section of stream in the middle of nowhere.