My friend Jesse and I decided to cross the border in observance of Wisconsin's free fishing weekend. We've been putting off exploring the Wisconsin territory of driftless trout streams but free fishing was a great excuse. We decided to check out some more well documented waters and weren't disappointed.
Not only were the views great but we landed quite a few trout. Fish sipped bugs from the surface as we geared up. Jesse fished mostly with a Rapala and I used the quill bodied mayfly emerger in size 16. The first run gave up a few decent trout and it was on!
On the first stream I landed around 1 1/2 dz fish with most between 10-12 inches. Jesse and I moved on from the first stream after an hour or so. Next we hit a larger stream from a bridge. Jesse got a good one!
After a quick pic from above Jesse released this guy to fight another day. A short time later we headed to an access point further upstream.
This guy took the quill mayfly and dove beneath the undercut pictured behind me. After a great back and forth battle on the three weight he came forth for a quick pic. This section of stream also harbored brookies!
After landing a bunch of medium browns and little brookies I tied into a slightly larger brook trout. He didn't put up a great fight but it was a blast to watch him come up and sip the fly from the surface.
In all we fished four streams and landed fish in each. I landed at least 30 trout and Jesse landed a bunch as well. I plan on getting a Wisconsin license to fish Central Wisconsin over the fourth of July and maybe I'll find time to explore more of the WI driftless too.
Good to see others getting out and exploring new waters. There is some great water to be fished in Wisconsin. You guys look to have found some rather nice ones!!
ReplyDeleteJustin, thanks for reading! I was impressed with the quality and quantity of trout water over there.
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