Arrival time ~9am. Airtemp in the upper 20′s. With frost on the ground Carl and I began the morning hike downstream passing up over two miles of creek. I didn’t bother to stop once to look, the goal was to get to the starting point, a remote area that requires a serious hike from either direction to get to. This translates to a place where few frequent, the trout haven’t been pressured and the area is left untouched (for the most part). Places like this, far from roads, houses, people…they are rare and should be treasured. As we hiked downstream avoiding the temptation to glance at the water we were to see as our day progressed, the morning sun came out taking with it the frost and my need for an overcoat. January and I’m hiking the creek in a fleece because my traditional winter gear is simply too much for the almost 30degree airtemp at ~9am.

Once downstream I gazed upon large water with darting shadows, the shadows of trout, white suckers and the rosey cheeked creek chub. Due to the large water and not having fished this creek before I opted to swing a streamer. I fish a streamer in situations like this if the trout respond, my third roll cast saw a smaller brown chase the streamer almost to my feet, a good sign that my SMB would take fish this day. A couple casts later I had the first brown of the day on the line only to have it shake my barbless hook at the last moment. Minutes into the day of fishing and I knew my choice of fly was going to pay off. I’m not suggesting that nymphs wouldn’t have worked but given the size of the creek and not knowing the depth or location of the trout fishing a streamer was going to be the best choice for me. Upstream a bit I spied from the bank a larger shadow, clear blue water with big cover boulders piqued my interest. I opted to sit on it a bit, adding a splitshot and working my roll cast out a good forty feet I let my fly dead drift until my line came to a halt. I missed one but with the next pass my line went taught, a bit of a run and a fat splash showed a nicer 18 and a half inch brown trout, a Dogger. What a way to start the morning, second trout to hand pushing 19inches.

After releasing the larger fish I sat on that spot for quite a while repeating the same process landing two more and missing more than that. The slow lethargic strike was difficult to detect but the fish were eating the streamer and so it continued to be my fly of choice. My fishing partner Carl fished upstream from me and was doing quite well with his streamer choice, we continued to work the creek up enjoying the beautiful conditions. Further upstream the wind began to pick up a bit but not enough to make me put my coat on, we sat and watched for any rising trout. A few scattered midge were spotted hovering over the creek but by 11am we’d only seen a couple trout surface. I kept the streamer on for the next hour, by 12pm we came upon a run/pool system showing regularly rising trout. We crept up low and sat in the brush watching the trout and the midge, we swapped our large streamers for longer leaders and #20 flies. The wind made things difficult, as did the clear low water but Carl’s approach resulted in a fooled brown. I tried for another further upstream but was unsuccessful, even an attempt with a #20 Miracle Nymph was fruitless. Although a handful of fish were rising regularly they were hesitant and I opted to move upstream and put my streamer back on.

The beautiful day was made as fish chased down my streamer, a handful more came to hand and many were missed. No ice in the guides and sun on my shoulders, I can’t stress enough how wonderful these places are and the excellent weather was the icing on the cake. The rest of the day was much the same, following the winding creek upstream we ended up where we started the morning, fished out by 3:30 or so I was content to call the day successful and every bit as satisfying as any other day in the peace of the Driftless Area. Good to take full advantage of good airtemps and low wind in January, it can’t last forever.

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Hit the creek on a mild January day to fish for spooky natural reproducing browns and brookies in low water conditions. Airtemp felt brisk on arrival but compared to last year it should be looked at as a heat wave. It’s weird walking around in waders, crossing the creek whenever simply because the conditions allow for it. This is January in Minnesota of all places, weird is an understatement. So the day began with a mile or so hike downstream to location A, a sexy run with a deep center channel holding both Rainbows and Browns. We arrived early enough to watch the sun crest over the bluff to take the layer of frost away. Seated in position we waited for the sun to top the trees, hit the creek and hopefully make the midge begin to emerge. After fifteen minutes the sun wasn’t moving fast enough and we opted to try small nymphs. A #18 BH Pheasant Tail was trailed by a #20 Miracle nymph, pretty standard winter rig for this time of the year.

An unexpected guest in the form of an 8 year old boy with a spinning rod approached our initial spot and tossed his spinner in the creek, a bit of frustration ensued but rather than scold the young man we moved on further upstream and allowed him to work his home water. With a longer leader and a single additional split shot even spooky fish were hitting the #20 Miracle nymph. A #8 SMB was employed for a bit but when the trout showed no signs of wanting the larger meal I switched back to the small nymphs. A most satisfying moment came when several small browns were nymphed up from a slow section where every cast sent the pod of fish scattering, making long casts to get the flies down at the right point to fool trout that know your there is one of the things about winter trout fishing I love. Small as those trout were they were every bit as enjoyable to catch knowing the challenge I was presented with.

Further upstream a #8 Hairball was employed for a brief time but seeing the trout ignore it forced my hand and the small nymphs came back into play. Sershen working upstream of me with a #20 PT was stalking a large brown when I landed a handful of smaller fish on the #20 Miracle nymph. As I was preparing to send my flies far upstream with a long cast the cry for aid was heard, my rod was immediately abandoned. My flies hooked one of my gloves as I tore off upstream to grab the net for my friend, I dropped my glove en-route and stood with the net readied as he moved it out of a thick swatch of water cress and away from a structure that would have most certainly caused his 6x line to break. With one quick motion the beautiful female was brought to hand. A 20 on a #20, what a beautiful thing. The lesson to take home here is that if the trout don’t want your streamer or larger nymph work the flies they are willing to take, even the big ones will eat a small meal. With the trout released we lay on the bank adrenaline still pulsing through both of us. What an awesome way to wrap the afternoon up. Maybe thirty more minutes of fishing was had, came across a large buck decaying in the creek, I plan to come back and attempt to remove the portion of the carcass I want for home. The last notable event occurred after a couple bad casts resulted in a tangled mess of my two nymph rig, knowing the day was basically finished I opted to cut my line back to my 3X tipped and put on a #8 SMB, sending it through a run a charge and quick swipe from a most beautifully colored brookie was seen, the fish tasting hook spit my fly before I could set the hook and instead of disappearing it remained holding less than five feet from me. I jokingly sent my fly to it again, nothing but it didn’t run for cover. Another attempt caused the brookie to move and look but not take, another attempt and it hit lightly but not enough to get a hookset. Again it remained holding, three more attempts and it moved on my fly one more time but didn’t hit. Finally I gave up and enjoyed watching those bright white fins from the bank. What an excellent way to end the day.

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Winter season in Minnesota. Goddamn have I been waiting for this, for some reason the urge to get back to the creeks I know grows each off-season and with this year’s non-stop Iowa fishing I want it even more. Fishing in Iowa is nice and I enjoyed exploring new creeks but the Minnesota water I know has been sorely missed. This is the beginning of the season, of the year, of the hatches, of the new creeks and the old favorites. It is another year being a Driftless bum, what a beautiful thing. The snow hasn’t shown up and tomorrow we will be fishing in the wind but we’ve got a plan and if the will is there… I want the snow but I’ll take fishing in Minnesota again, I’ll take it and smile. To a new year and a dozen #20 Jujubee Midge flies, all of which will likely find their way to the creek in the coming months. If your heading out tomorrow, good luck, may the wind be at your back and the bugs be active.

p.s. I’d like to thank Carl for the blocks of wood/cork holding two seriously strong magnets, I could not get a single hook to lay stuck down like other magnets I’ve used. This is a seriously awesome thing and it’s usefulness (especially with smaller hooks) speaks for itself. Never again will I struggle to find a hook ready to meet my vice. Note: the last picture stinks due to poor lighting, I spent time on and off knocking these out today finishing after the good afternoon light had set.

It’s going to be cold, shitty ass weather. Starting at 7am and fishing until the cold gets you, you run out of flies or 7pm hits. It’s the PetFly SmackDown coming to an Iowa trout stream near you. This year featuring a potential snow storm, ice and rain. Not to mention the opening weekend of Iowa gun Deer season (don’t forget your blaze orange). Tie your flies, pack your boxes, grab your gear and hold on to your ass. Here we come Iowa look out for the Hairball, this year we are gunning for the win.

Notes:

• Source water temp: 48 Degrees
• Only specific rocks contained large numbers of snails.
• Sow Bugs, Snails, and Cased Caddis were the macro’s of quantity.
• Easily the largest cave emitting source of coldwater I’ve seen to date.
• Brown trout present in large numbers.
• Awe struck imagining how old this formation is.
• Seeing this surely trumped catching trout.
• We live in a sacred area, never forget that.

Standing at the foot of a bluff, watching thousands of gallons of cold, clean, 100% pure trout water pour from a twenty foot wide pool emanating from a hole in rock wall to travel past my feet downstream. We were in another world, another time. It’s one thing to fish, to have trout streams and to see random springs that help feed oxygenated cold groundwater to a system, it is another thing to hike to the source, to stand there imagining who else has stood looking skyward. I imagine this may have been someone’s home long ago, ideal hunting grounds, natural shelter and a limitless supply of clean water. Making the primal part of me want to cut ties, throw my iPhone against the rock wall and never leave. Thousands of years have passed and this is the same, still pure, still feeding a creek and the trout who reside here. This feeling is why we need to protect our resource. Cold, clean water does not just pour from the ground everywhere, thank you Karst.

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Fished another Sunday in Iowa, since Liz and I ended up purchasing a year license it only made sense we would use them as much as possible while the weather holds out. Arrival time: ~12:15pm, Departure Time: ~5:30pm. Airtemp was in the low fifties, the wind was calmer out of the WSW at ~10mph. The creek was a bit off on arrival but clean enough for me to spot trout hanging on redds. Trout were sipping something small on arrival, likely midge but with the recent Baetis seen Liz opted for a #18 BWO, second cast in and she was making it look easy. We hung around attempting to take a couple more on a dry fly before moving upstream but nothing was having the larger flies. I switched flies up a couple times, took a couple small Browns on a #18 Bead Head Baetis nymph I tied up for situations like this. The creek, full of weeds, full of spooky trout who bolt for cover when they see a larger or heavier nymph hit the surface are sometimes best presented something very small despite the difficulty detecting a strike. I lost three or four easily to late hooksets. I also fished the “safety” of the #16 Pink Squirrel for a while and took a handful of fish ranging from 10-13inches. Something about the fact that the trout just can’t help but hit that thing makes me want to fish it less, like it’s laced with some kind of trout chum they can smell from a mile away.

Upstream scoping the riffles I watched one trout rise, then another and another. Shortly after a #18 BWO flew past, I dropped the nymph instantly and swapped to the #18 BWO pattern again. I watched the riffle for another ten minutes, four different trout in four locations rose but they didn’t lite up the way I was hoping they would. There would be no major BWO hatch for us. Thinking I could pull a couple out I made close to two dozen casts with only one botched hookset on a 6inch Brown to show for it. We moved upstream and I looked at my flies and put on one of a couple dozen newly tied #8 Sprinkle Me Baby’s. Something about fishing this fly, I have so much confidence in it and my ability to fish it well that it just made sense. Trust Your Gut.

Working the later portion of the afternoon I was roll casting to deeper faster water, swapping a split shot for none and back again, working the weed lines and the dark spaces between them, the BNT were coming to hand quickly. I managed over a dozen in the first hour with a few misses between. They smack this fly so damn fast sometimes it’s hard to set the hook and make it stick. We got upstream to find a couple nasty deep looking pools, faster current feeding the far side. My gut… my gut was telling me to hit each with a down and across approach letting my fly sink then rise at a steady rate as the line tightened up. The second pool gave up the reason why I trust my gut, a nice 18inch Brown. He hit deep and I didn’t know what I was in for until he gave me a big flying leap from below, this was the Iowa Brown I’d been looking for these last few trips.

Upstream all of a hundred yards and I see one of the biggest, gnarliest beaver dam’s I’ve come across in my Driftless career. Standing close to five feet tall just pouring trout water from a weak portion in the center. We hiked upstream and spied dark deep trout water but few fish. I was concerned that their might not be much around but if there was something it might make the last fish look puny. I dropped a couple bombs in the creek but saw nary a flash, my gut was telling me to move on. A guy can spend all day casting into the darkness and get nowhere, I’m guilty of it from time to time but the day was growing short and with it the light so we moved on. Out of the beaver dam and into one of the sexiest pieces of trout water I’ve seen in Iowa. I was concerned that after the beaver dam it would be kaput, pitiful creek, I was dead wrong. I tossed a fly down under a boulder offering some excellent habitat for any trout and landed two smaller browns that proved there were fish above the beaver dam. This was motivation to keep going, Liz was doing her own thing, figuring her cast out and working a streamer, I was content to dissect the creek for the spots I knew would hold fish.

I got to a riffle with a bunch of overhanging branches, took one look and knew there had to be something tasty laying in wait. The first cast was too far up the riffle and got stuck on a rock, my fly came back covered in creek sludge. After a quick clean up I made a second attempt and planted my fly on the smallest of the overhanging branches, the sun was going down and I didn’t see it until it was too late. Something was on my side, my SMB popped off the branch instantly. My gut said one more… it was right again. By now I’m thinking, damn I should be telling Liz where to put her fly but I didn’t want to stand over her shoulder being overbearing. I landed the brown and sent him back to the creek with just enough daylight to work upstream another couple hundred feet. The sun was gone, the sky was lighting up with pink and orange colors. I saw one last spot that just screamed for a fly, first cast and a fat, I mean gutty fat holdover Rainbow came out. The picture doesn’t do the gut justice but damn I was taken back a bit. By this point the ground was looking black, I left the headlamp somewhere not in my gear and we were forced to hike over a mile back as the very last of the light left us.

Additional Notes:

• Watched a Bald Eagle fly overhead at less than a hundred yards.
• Observed a noticeable change in the creek vegetation above and below the beaver dam.
• Spent fifteen minutes chasing down an evening Caddisfly.
• Watched over a dozen deer silouetted by the sky chase through a herd of cattle down a bluff side.

Slide Show

Liz and I hit Iowa on Saturday and came across a spectacular emergence of fall Baetis. We parked the car at ~12noon and observed consistent rising almost immediately. The creek was running clear and maybe just a hair low, the air temp was in the low 50′s but a strong sustained wind of 20+mph was felt the entire time we were on the water. Despite the wind we opted to take advantage of the rising trout and put on dry flies knowing full well that casting a tiny dry in high winds can be a potential recipe for disaster. On a whim I stuck on a #12 Stimulator simply because it happened to be right at my fingertips, the second cast produced a ~13inch brown that sipped my fly. Convinced that as long as we could battle the wind, dry flies would be the best way to fish the afternoon. Several #18 BWO’s were seen drifting from the riffles many of which became trout lunch before they could take flight.

Liz needing to work on her backcast and dry fly presentation took the challenge of the wind in stride and opted to fish a #14 Adams at first. We chose that fly simply because it was a bit bigger and easier for her to see, it became painfully obvious after a dozen or more good presentations that the trout were not having the larger dry flies. We followed the dry fly creed and downsized the fly and went darker with a #18 BWO’s I tied in my fishing infancy. Most of the #18 BWO’s in my dry fly box looked pitiful and would not pass any sort of test, however, I did manage to find a couple that were worthy of placing in front of trout and it became clear after only a few presentations that the trout would accept these imitations.

Many of the rises we observed were in slower slackwater areas that posed a greater challenge with respect to dry fly presentation, we scanned the creek as we hiked upstream looking for a section of faster broken water with trout steadily rising to concentrate on. As we hiked I looked for specimens to document when I bent down near a small patch of water cress. When I knelt down became clear that we had arrived at the tail end of the hatch, looking at a one square foot section of watercress just downstream from a riffle I observed over fifty male and female Baetis duns sitting in the safety of the cress. The trout continued to rise and I sent Liz upstream to fish while I hung back to document as many Baetis mayflies as I could.

Moving upstream I saw exactly the spot I was looking for. After watching a faster broken run for a couple minutes I witnessed several rises in multiple spots, off to both sides of the seam, in the tail end of the run as well as splashy excited rises coming from the head of the run in the fastest water. I knew if she could get her fly up far enough without spooking the trout they would crush her imitation. I sat back and observed, she almost got hung up in a tree but working a side arm cast we avoided the first challenge. The second issue became the largest to overcome, the 20+mph wind. Despite her best efforts to produce a decent backcast the wind would blow hard and rather than allow a tight loop to form used to propel her line forward the wind caused the line to blow back at her taking all the energy out of line and rod. She kept getting her fly blown into her rod, tangled on the tip or at the fly line/leader connection. Frustration was mounting. I continued to assist her any way I could, often just untangling her line quickly so she could attempt another cast. After ~30minutes she hadn’t gotten a decent cast and thus presentation to the trout, she was stubborn and determined to sit there as long as the trout were rising. A few minutes later a colorful brown rose for her fly but a lack of line management failed to produce a good hookset and the trout was “quick-released”.

Her frustration continued and mine was building, I knew if we could just get one trout to hand she would relax and things would move along more smoothly. It took another ten minutes of trying and one more poor hookset before she nailed the first of a handful of nicer sized browns with the #18 BWO. After the first came to hand the second, third and fourth followed steady suit, all the while I sat back and sipped my coffee. We continued fishing to those rising trout until she had moved up the entire length of the run and either caught or put down every trout showing it’s face. Frustration turned into accomplishment, working a small dry fly in the strong wind was a good test of reslove. It should also be noted that even a 6inch fish would have been enjoyed but she managed to take two trout over 13inches with one pushing 14 and a half. I watched as it rose quickly thinking it was smaller than it actually was, not until it lept from the creek and came down with a deep smack did I have any idea it was as nice a fish as it was.

By this point the BWO’s had run their course, the trout ceased rising and we moved upstream. I stuck on a #8 Hairball and we proceeded to search close to a mile of new uncharted trout water. We never lingered long at any one spot but made a cast to almost every place that looked worthy of attention. I picked up a dozen browns and two rainbows within the first quarter mile of creek. We observed a dogger chase down my fly only to spook near the surface before it committed. We fished upstream until ~5:30pm then turned to hike out, I made a handful of casts as we did so but felt the day was a resounding success and as such I was content to enjoy another beautiful fall sunset rather than continue tempting trout.

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