The earliest we’ve floated our favorite river here in the north of Wisconsin is July 12. While fishing wasn’t by any means incredible last July it was a good day. The question we’ve had is, “What about late June?”. Today we found out.
Granny and I loaded our Outcast Striker Raft last night. We made lunch and packed snacks. I went as far as to tie a big colorful smallmouth bass streamer on my 6-weight and a musky fly on my 9-weight. We left the house at 5:20 am and soon we were blowing up the boat and pushing off from a beautiful northwoods wilderness setting.
All our adventures to this river have been experienced with swarms of mosquitoes. It hasn’t mattered whether its July or August. We always get annihilated by mosquitoes, gnats and horseflies. Hands down Granny gets the worst of it so she was buttoned down to the point you couldn’t tell it was her under all the getup. Interestingly however, the bugs weren’t bad. Only a few horseflies here and there.
By mid-morning both of us peeled off our layers of clothes. We eliminated them not only because the bugs weren’t around but also because it got hot. Over the weekend we had extreme 90° plus heat. Today wasn’t that bad but it was still in the 80°s and there wasn’t an ounce of wind.
Theres one problem with no mosquitoes and hot weather, usually the fishing isn’t that good. Well, today was an example of this. Normally fishing here Granny and I move a musky or two, catch four pike and about a dozen smallies and many of the smallies are huge. Today we didn’t see a musky, landed zero pike and I believe seven smallmouth. Granny did not get a big smallie to the net. I should mention that to go along with no bugs, the water was high and slightly off color.
It wasn’t like we didn’t catch any good smallmouth however. It must have been my lucky day because I managed four good ones. Nothing in that 19” plus department but they were like the one here in this picture, every bit 17” and fat with crawfish.
We had a fantastic non-fishing experience today also. If you read this blog you know I’m sort of a turtle nut. In the last ten days we’ve come across two large spiny softshell turtles up on land. Each was likely laying eggs so we try not to bother them too much. But the softshells are a sight to behold so I got close enough to nail a nice photo. This guy put on a show by casually sneaking away from us. First with the usual slow turtle walk. Then its pace picked up and when it was within 30 feet of the water, it took off so fast it was incredible. High speed turtle!
Despite being spoiled here in past trips with absurdly excellent fishing, today was still decent. Anytime you can net four chunky smallmouth is a good day. And what’s better, have an epic fishing day yet get destroyed by bugs or a mediocre day in a t-shirt and shorts where you can pull over and enjoy a Leinenkugel on occasion with your lady? As I get older – perhaps the latter!