Yesterday reminded me how much I love this Wisconsin fishing. So much so, that even though its only early June, I feel like a may not get enough. So today, Granny and I launched the Outcast Striker raft at one of our favorite early season haunts, then tonight I attempted to hit the brown drake hatch on the Boise Brule River with friend Tim Nolde and a couple others.
What this means is I got my moneys worth today. I had the coffee made at 4:40 am this morning. Granny and I left the house at 5:15. It’s a short drive to the launch and by the time the Striker was inflated and ready, it was only 5:50. Granny was casting before sunrise in cool foggy conditions.
Fortunately, the sun managed to break through. It took some time because there’s still lots of smoke from the Canada fires. And once that water warmed, the fish came out. We landed at least six pike today. All were small like what you see here.
While I did most the rowing today for my lady, she did grab the oars so I could rack up a few. Every day requires to at least some casts for a few fish. I landed exactly two pike, a smallmouth bass and my first musky of the year. It’s a tiddler but my wife rowed me into a musky nonetheless!
Granny saw that musky and I was back on the oars. While she never got herself a musky she caught several more pike and a bunch of smallies. The smallies were small, ranging from 8” to this one here that was about 13”.
It was a fabulous morning that ended with taking off the river at 2 pm. We booked home and I ate some lunch then took a nap. At 4:30 Tim fetched me from my house and by 5:30 we were canoeing downstream to meet up with friends Damian and Doug on the famous Brule River.
I was perked up and ready to go after my first stroke of the paddle. There were very few rising fish, but we weren’t expecting the hatch till after we had dinner on the river. I took advantage of a couple early risers. I landed a miniature coho salmon and botched a beautiful brook trout. The brookie was a fatty and perhaps 14”. I must have thought I was still in Belize because when he took off I clamped down on him as if it was a snook and he broke my 4X tippet. What was I thinking?!?!
We headed downstream about a mile and paddled into a slough where one of the famous cook shacks stands called “Hidden”. Damian and Doug had the fire stoked and soon we were watching Doug work some cooking magic. We had scallops as an appetizer followed by huge steaks with broccoli and asparagus. We chased that filling meal down with Spotted Cows and a homemade blueberry cream pie.
We packed up dinner at about 8:30 and the way you do this is you paddle your way back upstream to the car fishing pools and to rising fish along the way. But the temperatures dropped fast and the drakes didn’t hatch. There were the miscellaneous mystery rising fish here and there and I landed a small rainbow, but that was it. I should also mention, not only were the mayflies not present, but there were no mosquitoes yet again.
We got to the cars around 9:45 pm. The long afternoon and evening was by no means a loss due to the fishing not going off. The evening birds were incredible including veery’s, white-throated sparrows, barred owls and of course, the whippoorwill which is the common night bird in the area. As you can imagine, this 17 hour fishing day has me tired. Tomorrow will be a day off to catch up on things. But man do I love this!