A word...

...about google plus.  J'adore...milujem...kocham...mi piace!  I love it... I have never had a facebook page and  just spent a lot of time on several flyfishing websites.  And, my local friends don't want to read or see from me what they know and live.  But, what I've always suspected...the driftless area being world class, has come to pass.  Many Americans are now recognizing that also and I hope they are seeing a driftless life from a view outside the magazines and websites.  Well, other websites.  But, all I've done is show pictures of the kickapoo valley and have been welcomed into some of the best communities.  They seem to like what I share...I am truly overwhelmed.  I now have friends from all across the planet...for the price of my backyard.  No...for free.  I've been shown so much more than I've posted.  My debt is large to many...Ivan for welcoming me, Tom for showing me around and my grandmothers homeland.  JC and Gilou...Didier Luy...mes amis francais, have shown me graciousness that I knew from my high school French teacher...she would be proud.  And, three years have finally paid off.  Et Mervete...elle m'a montre la beaute et l'elegance a nouveau .  In detail and a larger picture...with style.  Je suis amazed.  Merci mes amis!  Pardon me for only knowing one other language...well somewhat knowing.  But, thank you to all.  Thank you google plus...

For some that may not know...you can traverse quite a journey through my looking glass that is google plus.  My own pictures scare me some...a life in photos.  But, thats what this blog was supposed to be...'A driftless life'.  That looking glass of mine can become yours by simply clicking your way to the Alps or south America or Russia or Japan and Europe...and, here are some photos you missed by waiting for them on this blog.  Although I promise to keep Bosstownbob going.  Just so I can ramble on like this...

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...

October...

...is moving right along.  One of my favorite months, its almost half over.  My daughters birthday was the first and my fathers is the thirty first.  Halloween...it was always a big day and not for all the saints.  Funny...but, I see so much of my mother in my daughter and my wife and my sons and I have  turned into my dad.  I see him in the mirror...when I'm brave enough to look.  I'm in the october of my life...a wonderful time for the knowledge gained along the way.  Knowledge of the future, too.  But, why fear the winter when its october...a lifetime of living in the now has taught me nothing if not to enjoy the Octobers...

The days are beautiful...each morning taking kids to school has clouds hanging on the hillsides and a deep fog over the kickapoo.  I have to remember to turn my lights on before I get there.  Sometimes it is as thick as soup...another good thing about October,  Soup...yesterday it was cabbage soup from our garden.  It was good to enjoy our labors over the summer especially since the racoons got most of our sweet corn.  In just two nights...and I shot five of them and one skunk.  October.  Wyley and I went up to our treestands.  I saw three and he drew his new PSE bow on a big doe but it didn't give him a good enough shot.  That made me proud.  I've taught my kids that hunting was a part of life.  We respect the deer and last year didn't take any.  We could of...after hunting big bucks all season we had fat does in our sights but for one reason or another we just didn't.  Not the least reason was they had made it that far.  We missed the venison all year...

This year new bows have us fired up...and there is a youth gun hunt this weekend.  Wyley can shoot a buck with his rifle.  It would be his first deer but he kind of wants to get his first with his bow...like his big brother two years ago.  That was a big deal...I was in the woods when HW took his nice 8 pt buck.  I saw the buck walk over to him, heard the arrow hit and the deer crash.  Five minutes later he walked over to me and tried to act like nothing but he was walking too quickly for the deer woods and when we made eye contact it only took a second for him to give me a pumped fist.  It was the best buck.  October...

Trout season went out with fireworks, too.  I always knew it would come back...even when others thought I had lost it.  Its been back for a number of years now...only I prefer to go alone.  Flyfishing for trout has been with me for fifty years and will never leave.  Its just that I've done it with different perspectives.  Losing two sons will change that perspective.  They fish with me every time I go out... as my two young sons and daughter do.  Its good again...but, a perspective without fear.  Other than the death of another child.  The same perspective that allows me to hunt deer and eat the occasional trout and feel right with the world.  Its the October thing...

Fall in the driftless...

is a beautiful time of the year.  Fishing, hunting, and gathering are all part of the season...a good friend stopped by yesterday and brought some ginseng seeds to plant on our property and look for root.  He stopped back after a couple hour walk with some in his bag...we talked about hunting and fishing and family.  He's married to my wifes cousin...everybody knows everybody in the kickapoo valley and we had some catching up to do.  Its what we do in small towns everywhere.

Hunting will start in earnest, soon enough...I don't like to burn out on bow hunting too early.  Our stands are up and bows ready...I'm hoping one of my sons gets a buck first.  I like to wait and look them over.   Besides, there is still fishing to do.  And what better than to close the season on your home water.  Bob Hunt, longtime head of Wisconsins cold water resource, once told me after catching 50 trout with a friend on our land, that this stream is the best naturally reproducing small stream in the state.  Indeed, conditions are so optimum that tiger trout are often produced.  Tonight I caught multiple year classes of trout to prove it.

School and other obligations kept me off the water, yesterday...I've been fishing enough and nobody was feeling sorry for me.  So I got out today in the late afternoon...the sun was putting on a light show with the multi colored leaves and making havoc of my angling when trying to see in the reflections.  I still caught some fish...you see, I was in my home valley fishing just downstream from our farm.  I could see our hillside for most of the time.  Its a beautiful valley and I never feel it necessary to put the fishing first, though sometimes I do.  But, this afternoon it was the show...