I rowed my boys Howie and Numzie down a river today. If my friends are fishing hard and making at least the occasional competitive cast, I’ll row all day long and that’s what I did. It was the coldest fishing day of the year. When we pushed off my phone read 24° and the rod guides were freezing. But the sunshine was coming so mentally the cold was tolerable and sun finally started doing its job around 10 am
At 10:30 am is about when the fellas could actually perform. Prior to that the hands weren’t exactly functioning. It probably helped that we devoured more than half of the Angler’s Bar and Grill pizza we grabbed to go after dinner last night. It was delicious and when you feed the monster calories like this you get warm fast.
We moved one very nice musky around 11. The heavily striped toothy critter followed Howies fly titled, “Hmmm”, to the boat. Three years ago Howie would get weak knees and nearly faint when a big musky appeared. These days the experienced veteran goes into a figure-8 that few muskies can resist. Unfortunately this one did but on a cast 30 minutes later the fish ate the same fly. But Howie missed him. These days we can all laugh and shake it off.
The good news is that less than an hour later came another chance for Howie. Honestly, the rivers are so low this fall here in Wisconsin, it’s hard to find good lies for big fish. I was gazing at a protruding rock as I rowed downstream. The opposite side was somewhat appealing but something about that rock told me it needed a cast. Howie made his presentation and delivered. I was on the oars for yet one more musky – four in one week!
No doubt the musky was our highlight. But there was a close second. Near the end of our float a bull elk bugled (yes, we have elk in northern WI). The bull was close but we couldn’t see through the dense Great North Woods forest. I pulled the oars under my knees and the boys stopped casting. We slowly drifted motionless. Then sure enough, we could see the bull spying on us from top of a hill. He too was motionless. Then we spotted at least five cow elk. Sure, when I lived out west in the Yellowstone area, I saw bugling elk often in October. It’s a beautiful sight. But it’s a big deal to experience it here in WI.
The boys will head up to Lake Superior tomorrow for big browns, coaster brook trout and splake. I begrudgingly need to let them go without me because I’m behind on my work. Blogs, a writing assignment and packing for an upcoming hosting job for Yellow Dog are just a few of many things to get done. My big task is being 100% prepared to deliver a speech about conservation to Minnesota Trout Unlimited in Minneapolis on Monday night. It’s a custom talk and its going to be a cool one – but there’s finetuning to be done.