The Gamiest Fish and Lost Pictures

It is hard to write about exciting fishing adventure when the photos of the trip disappear...not to mention the disappointment of the fisherman/photographer. That is exactly what happened to me yesterday, but here's the rest of the story...

I spent two wonderful days exploring NW Wisconsin with my friend Harold. We fished the small weedy spring creek for native brook trout on Saturday, with the lightest rods and dry flies. Yesterday, despite of all the tornado warnings in the area, we sneaked out several times during the afternoon in his fishing boat out on the lake Wissota, to chase ravenous smallmouth bass. Harold lives on the lake and knows its intricacies inside out. We concentrated our efforts on the rocky stretch known as "the bass alley." The fishing started slow and I got the first fish on the black & brown Clouser minnow, after switching from the traditional stop-and-go retrieve to the hand-over-hand, saltwater style retrieve.

The wind was dying and dark clouds were signaling the approaching storm. We drifted further downwind, and the fish were turned on. We were getting hits every several casts. I was using my "warmwater special" I built last Fall on the vintage Lamiglas blank. It handled precise casts required to place the fly tight to the bank, literally inches from the shore rocks. After several more casts, I switched to the floating fly-a version of Gurgler I tied some years ago (top photo). This combination of fiery colors and rapid movement fish found just irresistible. Perhaps the diffused light under the dark sky enhanced the fly's effectiveness. We snapped many photos of big, healthy bronzebacks. The short glass rod proved to be an incredible fish fighting tool-very easy to manipulate when the fish stubbornly sounded under the boat. Eventually we got caught in the quickly approaching rain and furiously ran for the dock.

Finally at Harold's home, we started downloading fresh pictures and quickly found out the terrible truth: the compact flash card from my camera was dead! All the pictures were gone, the memory failed irreparably, even though we were watching them just minutes ago on the camera's display.

I guess things lake this happen to everyone occasionally, so this part of the story will have an old bass picture of the fish I took three years ago in Waterloo creek in NE Iowa (left-first photo), while fishing for wild browns in August. The fish took a dead drifted leech imitation-it was an accidental catch on the prime brown trout stream. I will hopefully fish soon with Harold again, but it is hard to forget nice shots of beautiful gamefish lost forever, taken in the almost unreal stormy light.

Backtracking now...several days ago I visited my favorite trout stream (left-second photo) with a friend, and spent an exciting afternoon wet and nymph fishing for wild brown and brook trout. Fishing upstream, I took a single fish on a surface fly and switched to nymphs, fished upstream dead drifted, on the greased leader. In fast water pockets I used large Czech nymphs for quick short-line action, but this particular stretch of the stream has only several sections where this technique works well. On my way back, I experimented with single and multiple casts of wet flies. The system with three flies (two droppers and the point fly) proved to absolutely deadly in comparison to the single fly fished first thorough the same stretch. Sometimes two fish would smack the flies on the swing, even though there was no major hatch going on. The fish showed no preference to the particular pattern, and I believe that multiple wets create an illusion of artificial hatch, which can sometimes turn the trout on.

Even though I am not a big fan of tandems and multiple fly rigs, since they hinder casting, this was an exciting and eye-opening experience. I did use straight line connections (no loops) and short droppers, which helped reduce the tangles. Glass rods and wet fly fishing techniques are really made for each other.