Number 46...

...no, not another psalm.  An unnamed stream but for that moniker in the old white Wisconsin Trout Maps book.  A feeder to a great creek I've posted some pics of fishing this year...another ghost town.  The first time I saw 46 I crawled up to the bank and looked over...to 100 brook trout.  We took turns catching them after exploring the meadow on our own...but, still catching them two at a time.  Doubles have been my thing ever since.  I love fishing two nymphs...

A large piece of land is public and this stream is on the gps of many an angler...the main stream gets fished hard but number 46 and its meadow still looks the same as it did 30 years ago.  I once guided five guys from Kentucky on a trout and grouse hunt here.  They flushed more grouse in one day than the all of them had flushed in their lives back home.  I think they each went through a box of shells...the highlight was peering over the edge of number 46 and seeing a five pound brown trout.  Trout and grouse...and, turkeys.  This public land received the first batch of turkeys that were from Missouri traded for Wisconsin grouse.  That law of nature that says something restored to its natural environment replenishes with over abundance until balance is reached, was true of the turkeys and the trout of the driftless area.  I only hope it works for the once abundant grouse...

Driftless late season...the good old days!

Driftless trout fishing is winding down.  Probably a good thing...I can't get enough of it.  The fishing is fantastic...and, as one of our fish managers says...now is the good old days.  The fly fishing for trout is the best I've ever seen it...I would even go out on a limb and call it the best spring creek fishing on the planet.  And, I've fished the spring creeks of the paradise valley...many times.  Today, as many nice trout came to hand in two hours as in a full day at Armstrongs, Nelsons, or Dupuys.  And, that was fee fishing...this is public water.  I've seen two other cars the last five times out and they were together and throwing spinners.  Ten miles of one of the best driftless spring creeks to myself all summer...you all have seen the pictures...just has me shaking my head in wonder as the west fork and timber coulee get pounded.  And, I've spent years guiding on both...

Now, you are probably saying I'm full of...myself.  And, you could be right...I feel pretty good after the afternoon rise and then watching my 14 yr old play football for his middle school.  He caught his second TD pass in two games today and another 40 yard pass he ran down to the two yard line...so you can hopefully pardon my strong opinions.  The rise ended just in time for me to get there to see the kickoff...

A bluebird day... trout were just starting to come up as I entered the water.  They were in shallow riffles and undercuts, sometimes in only inches of water...casting accuracy and careful wading were at a premium.  As they always are...but, my trude matched the bwo's perfectly and had few refusals.  My apologies, these pictures don't do the fishing justice...

The hex was on...

...I love that line.  I've told and written this story many times but lost the original.  It remains the same and since I just got in from fishing in the back yard and caught four little browns while my two youngest sons played baseball...I thought I'd share it with you.  But, I should be fishing...two on the first three casts and could have been more but Otis was with me.  He doesn't understand resting a hole and thinks he's my gillie.

It was probably 30 years ago but the visuals will never be forgotten.  Usually the hexagenia hatch has very little of that.  Even with a flashlight those big browns are all about the rise and the fight in the dark.  This night was different...now, the big flies either come or they don't.  And, its a guessing game.  Down here in southern Wisconsin it is earlier than up north and I've recently heard of accidents caused by so many they have to bring out the snowplows to clear bridges and stretches of roads.  The first week of June is hex time on Black Earth creek outside of Madison and it was my closest place to find them.

I had grown up dreaming of the hex hatch on the Mecan in central Wisconsin...the box of big mayflies next to the cash register at the local sporting goods store told me the hex was on.  It was years before I got to explore that river but my very beginnings of success at flyfishing come from there.  Somebody finally let the cat out of the bag and told me BEC had hexagenias, too.  And, it was only 10 miles from my house.  Fruitless, would describe my early ventures at dusk chasing the hatch...it was the hatch not the trout.  The trout would come up if the hex was on...Years later after some success on that driftless stream where I had fished for trout like religion...I finally saw the light.  Literally...I had found a place to access away from the dozen or so cars that would park at every bridge looking for a sign of anything.  It was not known hex water and I would cross the stream at an old cattle crossing and walk along a cornfield downstream to a slow, silty stretch behind a chiropractors office and the back yards of a couple of houses.

I approached the slight slick of a riffle just above the flatwater...my timing was good and just a little light allowed me to get a bearing on things before it went dark.  I just stood and watched along the bank and waited.  At first, nothing...like so many times before.  I'm always prepared for nothing when chasing the hex.  Then, something...big, too.  Fluttering over the opposite bank...it was hard to see for the light coming from the houses on that side.  Then another...and another...I stepped off the bank into the the water to get in position.  I heard a rise...ploop.  Then, a small fish made a showy rise trying to gulp the almost 3 inch long mayfly...the big ones just suck water.  Ploop...

As I was stripping line to cast, some folks from the houses with the backyards on the other side of the creek, came out and made some noise while having a beer and I was sure they would ruin my hopeful fishing.  To make maters worse, they lit a roman candle.  Then fireworks...on the water, too.  Hexes were everywhere...in the air, on the water, and being taken by trout.  Big trout...and their rises reflected in the most brilliant light show I've ever seen.  The hex was on...

I cast to risers in reflected reds, yellows, blues, and brilliant whites...and, caught trout as long as my arm.  All the while, the revelers carried on...Big trout take time to play but I muscled them to take another.  I knew this couldn't last.  I hooked big browns rising less than a rod length from me and others in shallow water over a pod of nymphs rising from the silt.  All in the brilliant reflections...

One extra large brown took me downstream into some willow lined water away from the silt and my Hardy screemed 20 feet of line...it was enough to make the light givers take note.  Someone else had been part of their celebration...without them knowing it.  Now they did...and stopped.  No more fireworks...no more hexes, and, no more trout.  But, forty five minutes of a once in a lifetime event.  The hex was on...

A case for caddis...

On my way to the store yesterday I stopped by an old trout fishing haunt...The floods have drastically changed the runs and pools.  I fished anyways trying a hendrickson first.  Nothing...not even a show.  I switched to a Lafontaine antron emerger and had immediate success.  Caddis seem a staple of driftless streams and I've found I can often fish a tandem caddis rig right through a hatch...and catch bigger fish in the process.

Now, I've learned from the best of the west...Dan Bailey, Bob Jacklin, Ross Bruner, and the guys at the old Wild Wings shop in Bozeman, among a slew of guides and western trout bums.  True trout bums...not the wannabe trout bums I see so many of now in the driftless.  How can you be a trout bum on weekends?  But, the one thing in common I learned from all of them was nymphing with a point fly and dropper.  Not this dropper thing tied into the bend of a hook, either.  The dropper is off the tag of the surgeons or blood knot.  The heavier tag coming down from the leader to the tippet.  The bottom fly is the point, the tag fly is the dropper, and another fly further up would be the 'bob' fly.  I seldom have fished a 'bob' fly but so much for czech nymphing being new...There is little new in flyfishing except marketing techniques.

We'd throw bitch creeks with hares ears on the dropper on the Madison...catching trout mostly on the BC and whitefish on the hares ear.  Go fiigure...you'd think the trout would be up and the whitefish with that sucker mouth looking down, but that was not the norm.

Way back in '79 we stopped at Dan Baileys in Livingston for a trip to Nelsons spring creek.  Stocking up on flies I let my local friends pick out the flies we would need.  Standing there silent, Dan came over and handed me a half dozen Peeking caddis and told me to try them.  Once at Nelsons we split up and I fished under an old tree that provided shade to a riffle and pool much like a driftless stream.  My friends went out into the sun and the flats to fish to risers.  After a couple of hours they returned with tales of tough fishing and one or two rainbows each.  I was smiling after a half dozen large browns on that Peeking caddis.  I'm still not sure they believed how well I did.  Hell, I was in Wisconsin the day before.  What could I know.  Then I told them about the peeking caddis.

On my return to wisconsin I caught many trout on that fly...in fact I'm sure it has taken more trout for me than all the pink squirrels in the entire driftless for everyone else.  Pardon the hyperbole...but, the Pink Squirrels inventor, John Bethke himself in my kitchen, told me the ps is nothing but a cased caddis.  Green, pink, or cream, they all work,  In deference to John I do tie some with pink collars.  My first double on trout was on a pair of brook trout taking a pair of peeking caddis.  My second double was the next cast and another pair of brook trout taking the tandem PC.

It was a few years later that Gary LaFontaines book 'Caddisflies' came out.  I bought it and read it.  At the same time a Museum of American Flyfishing banquet at Blackhawk country club in Madison had a box of caddis tied by Gary Borger.  In the box was several dozen Lafontaine emergers.  They did not fish well here in the driftless...too much material, more for a western river than our spring creeks.  They would tend to float.  A little less material and I soon had emerging pupa catching trout.  In fact the first time I tried my prototype it produced 15 fish in 15 casts including one thrown over a large log and a fish chasing it right out of the water as the fly lifted over the log.  I still can't believe that brown trout hooked itself on the fly while it was out of the water.

Well, it wasn't too long before I came to the obvious conclusion...the lafontaine emerger had to go on the dropper above the peeking caddis.  The larva on point and the pupa on the dropper...both in the proper place in the water column.  Same as out west but with spring creek inclinations.  The first chance to try it was Black Earth Creek outside of Madison.  A pair of beautiful BEC browns took at once and I had my first brown trout double.  But, I was the one hooked...on that tandem rig.  I fished it like religion...through hatches, all season long...flat water risers, riffles, upstream, down, and down and across.  All worked great.  It is still my favorite way to fish in the driftless accounting for a dozen or so doubles a season, although I remember last year getting 4 or 5 in a single day.  Fishing with author Kevin Searock years back we discussed this and he fished a tandem rig tied to the bend of the hook.  He mentioned never catching two at a time.  I said the movement of the dropper on the short tag makes it available to other trout.  In line affects that movement.  So, he switched to my tandem caddis and immediately on his first cast had a double on, losing one at his feet.  We felt bad until his next cast produced another double, this time landing both.  My case was proved...