Last trout of 2011

[Further North]

It's 2:45, and this clown we're in a conference call with won't STFU...

I'm supposed to have been gone 15 minutes ago, I have about 20 minutes worth of stuff to do before I can leave and I'm stuck on the phone with a sales guy and a customer's artist from New York who just loves to listen to himself talk.

2:50...we're winding down...but NO, he wants to discuss the difference between two blues so close that no one...NO ONE...will ever care. I make a note and pass to the sales guy: I do not what this jackass here for a press approval...I'll wind up in jail.

2:55...we finally get off the phone...I buzz through some stuff I should probably have spent more time on, but I'm an hour late now...

3:10...in the truck, on the way, should be on the creek by ten after four, or close.

3:25...Traffic jam...in Menomonie. Apparently there's a football game at UW Stout tonight and the entire state is coming to the game...

3:50...out of Menomonie, stuck behind a milk truck on HWY 25 going south. No passing lanes for about 11,000 miles...got around the milk truck, turn left on 10...just a few miles now:

It's way hillier in person...

4:23...pull up on the creek, take a desperately needed leak behind truck....walk back to bridge to check the creek...can only see two trout where we saw two dozen on Saturday...what's up with that?

4:30...waders are on, can't find box with Clouser minnows in it...[PoorWordUsage]???

****************

Cue the way back-music, and the fog machines...

This story actually starts Tuesday night, in the rain, on a creek in Chippewa Falls that sounds like the first part of a donut shop...scratch that, it starts at 7:10 on Tuesday morning with a call from my friend Paul who wants to go chase grouse this weekend. We set up a plan to talk later and work out details, but nail down Saturday AM...

...I'd planned on fishing Friday, the last day of trout fishing in Wisconsin, but Paul wants to get an early start, so I decide to bag Friday and get out during the week...and tonight looks like my best chance...so despite the rain, I gear up and hit the creek after work. Kinda frustrating, as I proceed to lose a Clouser and a wooly bugger in the first 10 minutes - I stick the Clouser in a tree under water right below the dam, and the bugger when I force a backcast forward to fast and hear the "pop" that tells me to slow the hell down and to use a heavier leader...I move to a big pool below some rocks, toss in another Clouser and on my second or third cast get hit hard...then nothing...I strip back an empty leader. This happens three more time in 10 casts, so it's apparent there's a pike or three in this hole.

I change to a heavier leader, and a bigger Clouser and stick two pike...realizing on the first one that the jaw spreaders are back in the car, so I have to use my forceps to open toothy-boy's mouth...works OK, but it's hard to hold the fish and the rod, open the jaws and pull out the fly all at the same time. I need prehensile toes. Or something...

So I give up on the pike, and move up to the next hole...and then I get stupid...I try to take a shortcut across a section of deeper water even though it's been raining for three days and the creek is moving faster than last time I was here...and I mange to find a hole that's deeper than I want it to be, lose my balance for a second and the stronger current tips me over...and down I head...I've got the rod in my left hand, so I shove my right hand in the creek to catch myself, misjudge the distance to the rock I can see, put too down much weight too fast and...OW!...that hurt. The wrist smarts a little...but works OK...I catch some browns on the way out, take some aspirin when I get home, feed my face and off to bed. The wrist should be fine in the AM.

About 3:00 AM, I'm wide awake with a throbbing wrist and a cranky disposition. When I get up in the morning, my regular watch won't fit, so I wear the fishing watch to work, where I take more aspirin and hope this gets better...it does, but not enough, and Thursday night I go downstairs and see how holding the Poli feels...not bad, not bad at all...so I'm thinking I can hunt Saturday, no problem...and sorta without thinking about it I snap the gun up visualizing a hurtling right to left crosser...and sonofabuck...darn near drop the gun...seems that whatever I did doesn't like that last little movement in the gun mount. I try it again and realize I'm not going hunting Saturday...so I go call Paul.

Just for giggles, I grab the 4 wt. when I get upstairs, and find that I can actually cast pretty well...and the pain in the wrist actually seems to help with my cast because it I break my wrist it hurts enough that I concentrate more than normal on it and my casts are actually better than normal...so I start re-arranging my Friday in my head...

If I can get out the door by 2:30, I can be on the water by 3:30 PM...I can squeeze in 3 1/2 hours before it gets dark...

fade to black...kill the music...

****************

So I'm down to the one small Clouser still on the rod and am puzzled by the apparent lack of fish...but I head in any way...I'm still cranked up from rushing to much and flub the first several casts, which would have scared anything out of the pool under the bridge...so I make my way up to the first bend where we saw a bunch of trout Saturday...nothing...and I'm getting more frustrated with my casting because I'm trying too hard to cast for distance when I don't have to and making a mess..then I stick the last Clouser 20 ft.up in a tree....then snap off a red and black wooly bugger on something underwater...then finally settle down...but still no fish. I get to the beaver dam that we found Saturday, climb out of the creek, walk around...and find the problem: Someone, or several someones, have been in here a lot since Saturday...the grass is all trampled flat, the brush I hid behind Saturday has been cut down and the area generally looks like the scene of a party...I toss a few casts in the beaver pond anyway...but I'm wasting my time and I know it.

So I head back to the car and drive up the road to the next place the creek crosses a road. I've never fished it before, but it can't be any worse than where I was, so in I go...It's a little narrow, and brush choked, but livable.

I'm still ticked off, so my casting is all over the place and I figure out it's time to sit down and take a break...but push it some more until I stick another bugger in a tree...so I decide to switch gears as the streamers haven't' been working anyway...Hopper/dropper combos worked OK in the shallower sections Saturday, so I decide to try that.

It takes me a while to change leaders, tie on the hopper, and rig the dropper, and sitting on the bank while I'm doing this cools me off a little...looking upstream I see a couple riser and I push harder than I should again and manage to stick the rig in another tree, but I get the hopper back, just lose the nymph.

I tie on another one take a bunch of deep breaths and get myself in the zone. I start looking at where I'm casting and skip the spots where I know I'll have trouble and stick to places where I can at least roll cast to get my confidence back up. This works OK...and the first fish of the day takes the hopper in a little riffle. I take his picture thinking "this could be the last fish of the year".

I let him go, and fish another pool...no fish, but I can finally feel the water calming me, and I'm finally in a good rhythm when I round a corner and find a perfect little spot...

The main stream enters on the right through a riffle, and what looks like a smaller on comes in on the right and they form a nice deep pool at their junction...and there's plenty of room behind me, and there's nothing encroaching the sides....

My first cast pulls out this fish

...my third or fourth gets this guy:

...and many casts and fish later, I realize it's time to go home after one more and get this brookie to close the season.

They all hit the nymph under the hopper, and were a fun way to end the season.

Stuff I learned:

• I'm not as young as I used to be. 20 years ago, I never would have fallen on Tuesday night...and I if I had, I would have caught myself...and if I hadn't...I never would have put all my weight on my wrist...you get the picture...and I wouldn't have still been hurting 3 days later...
• A sprained wrist is a good way to stop from breaking your wrist on your cast...but I don't recommend it to others.
• A sprained wrist hurts when mounting a gun with an English stock...but not so much with a pistol grip...should have checked that last night...but there's no way I'm toting an 8 lb AyA in the grouse woods...and I woulda missed the fishing if I'd have figured this out last night.
• Don't rush into, or force having fun. I've learned this a thousand times in the past and will have to learn it another thousand in the future...but I know it right now.
• You don't have to kill every cast, just like you don't have to try to hit every golf ball over the moon. I haven't learned this one a thousand times yet, but I will...and another 1000 after that...I gotta learn to have more than two speeds: "Off" and "Full speed" just don't work for everything...
• Fishing is good for the soul.
• So is hunting, but that'll come next weekend...in the meantime, I gotta take the dog out for a run before she kills me....she's giving me that look again....
• Little trout may not be as exciting as big trout...but they may be more fun, and the smiles they give you go all the way down inside.

[reinhard1]

i enjoyed reading your story. great stuff. good luck.

[OnAFly]

Great read. Lose fly->Cast quicker hoping not to back into that tree again->lose another fly. Yeah, I've been there a hundred times