I grumble about an early morning once in a while, but for the most part I love them. My alarm was set, but as usual I was up without it by 4:15 AM. Today Bob and I met at 5:45 which meant a before daylight departure from home of around 4:50. I look forward to a slow – no traffic – drive with a Yeti full of pressed coffee as daylight kicks in. And with most Wisconsin rivers looking like this at sunrise, you can understand why.
Neither Bob nor I have been here before and when you don’t know what lies in a waterway you need to take caution. I packed up my handy Outcast Striker Raft and Bob and I had the inflatable out of the truck and on the water in minutes. Hands down this little two man raft has been the best addition to my paraphernalia in years.
It was a bluebird day with a twinge of fall in the air. Mornings have been cool this week but todays was the coolest. It’s the first morning we started fully dressed in fleece.
After we completed our long gravel road shuttle we pushed off. This is one of the smaller rivers and has a ton of rocks and shallow runs. There are muskies and I think later this fall we might go full effort for them here. But today was about learning the water and catching smallmouth bass. I had my 6-weight Winston and was prepared to bounce some Chernobyl’s along the bank and dredge a Tequeely along the deep banks.
Fishing was on. It turns out this river is loaded with smallies. The only issue was there’s so many that its hard to find a big one. While we probably landed 20 or more, very few were larger than 10”. I think when we return in the fall for muskies, I’ll be fishing a fly that resembles a 6” bronze back. Such a fly ought to do the trick!
Our float wasn’t a long one – probably a little over three miles. While there were plenty of deep holes, much of the float was shallow fast runs. We did the float in five hours and pulled the raft shortly after noon.
It was a great day and slowly Bob and I are learning the WI waters. There are so many its truly unreal. This has been a blast of a summer with plenty to go!
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