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...

End of days...

...are here.  Wisconsins trout season is over...now, I know there is the tributary fishing on the great lakes and...Iowa.  I hear Iowa is pretty good with their year round season...but, unless I bag a buck early it is unlikely.  I've fished the tribs and like Travers says...its about the environs.  The Root river and its factory slag for gravel was the last straw...I don't care how big the trout and salmon are.  I'll take Wisconsins part of the driftless...besides, deer hunting runs through the end of December and I can wait the two months until March.

The year 2014 will go down as one of the better years...other than the demise of brook trout on most waters.  They try to blame it on global warming but its the brown trout...they just took over.  I suppose that was to be expected when much of the driftless restoration simply favors brown trout.  There is no special technique or structure to favor brook trout...other than an all out protection of them in brown trout  favored water.  And, higher limits for the browns.  Its not like most fly anglers are keeping any, anyways.  The problem as I see it, is the few that do keep trout are keeping the larger ones.  Some protection on larger fish through a slot or one per day limit is needed...I was always in favor of slots for size limits.  The future of our part of the driftless looks like increased bag limits and extended season...After the great blue winged olive hatch yesterday, I might be able to put up with two more weeks of fishing in October.  Strictly catch and release, though...big fish in particular but all trout are susceptible this time of year.  Remember, catch and release is a management tool, not a religion.  It works both ways...

Like an earlier post...the good old days is now.  With numbers of 5-7000 trout per mile on some of these spring creeks, stunting is to be expected.  Its why I don't fish those waters...finding larger fish is simply a matter of finding less of them.  And, after all these years I feel a pretty good handle of those places...all streams have them.  Focusing on those waters has made the year one of the better ones...I also find less anglers.  Although I did run into one yesterday who also fished downstream sections and said he had caught trout as long as his arm all summer and particularly the last couple of weeks.  Throwing jerk baits...which I can believe were taking bigger fish.  There is a lot of water and its only getting better.  I only hope it doesn't turn into too much of a good thing which always seems to turn into more and smaller fish.

Anyways...I finished out the season fishing almost every day the last couple weeks.  Even if it was only walking out back with Otis...the dry fly fishing was as good as I have ever seen it.  Bigger fish, and more of them.  Here are some of the more memorable trout from late summer through the last days of the season...