The hardest thing about departing Idaho wasn’t saying goodbye to my beloved Henry’s Fork, it was leaving 34 years worth of friends.  What eased the pain was that lucky for us, we have a lot of friends here in Wisconsin that we left 34 years ago for Idaho.  Most all were our Northland College pals back in the day.  My old college roommate, Howie, has been on the blog much recently, but today I fished with Tom Smedley.

Tom and his wife Janelle live here in Hayward.  Tom was a year ahead of me at College, however he fished and hunted so much he ended up graduating with my class.  In college (1983-87) we fished together a bunch and I learned a ton about ice fishing for walleye and pike from Tom.  Tom and I had big plans for fishing this summer but instead he’s been helping fix up our house.  Tonight, we finally got on the water together.

Tom can toss a fly rod nicely as he demonstrated this evening, however he’s like most fly anglers, he keeps his fly rod in the quiver except for when he’s trout fishing down in the Wisconsin Driftless.  He’s never thought much about hucking a 9-weight fly rod for muskies.  For Tom it makes more sense to chase down one of North America’s largest and most elite predators with the well-proven muskie baits and rods.

After we launched Tom’s tricked out Skeeter fishing boat on one of his favorite lakes, Tom hurled his giant lures and muskie baits on sturdy rods while I flung big bushy bird and animal parts on a single hook.  Muskie fishing is slow even on a good day so we packed a few beers and enjoyed a good time catching up.

The lake we fished is a beauty.  Its Toms favorite so the name won’t be mentioned.  It’s no secret with locals however, there were other anglers, party boats, jet skis and water skiers.  I’m not crazy about sharing the water with any of these, nevertheless it’s all part of Labor Day weekend.  I don’t think it affects the fish too much.  Human folly is part of their lives just like ours and any fish alive these days has adapted.

Tom knows this lake well yet his prime spots weren’t producing.  That’s muskie fishing.  It was a good two hours in before the first real action.  Tom had a hammer handle pike latch onto his 8 inch long spinner lure!

Though small, the pike got us excited.  A bit of action never hurts.  We ended up landing four pike in the next hour including this handsome hard fighter on my big muskie fly.  But that would be it.  We fished until 8 PM and then packed it up.

I’m heading for a fishing adventure with Bob Butler tomorrow then that’s it for WI fishing for a week.  On Wednesday I fly to WY and next weekend I’ll be fishing the Jackson Hole One Fly.  I got invited to fish for Team Yellow Dog.  Seems like I’m getting a perfect mix of fishing this year!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing