A good day in the Driftless area

This week I had the pleasure of serving as a fishing host for a couple of Trout Unlimited (TU) members as

TU is holding its annual meeting in Middleton. I was lucky enough to have two seasoned anglers and great guys placed with me.

At first, I was a bit less than optimistic about our chances. I arrived in Westby on Monday afternoon and, while I was able to coax a few fish into biting, was less than successful on the Timber Coulee, where I had planned on taking my guests. Low water and high angling pressure had made the fishing quite difficult throughout the area and, being late September, the fish definitely knew how the game was played. To make matters worse, I managed to walk right into a barbed-wire fence late in the day and turned one leg of my Simms waders into a colander.

I fixed my waders and headed out early Tuesday morning to see if things were better on the Bad Axe. While the fish were still quite selective, I managed to catch a number of nice fish on streamers and scuds. Later in the day, I headed over to Coon Creek only to find it quite silted due to stream improvement work being done on Spring Coulee Creek. I decided to go upstream from the work as I assumed the fish would migrate there to avoid the turbidity. They had and I caught a number of really nice browns

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I picked up Paul and Michael the next day in Richland Center and made Reads Creek our first stop. It took a bit to find fish that weren’t spooky, but when we did both gentlemen caught fish on scuds. As I mentioned above, both are experienced anglers and excellent casters which really made my job easy. About noon, we decided to see if the hopper bite was on. It was lunchtime and, being limited on time, we did what every hard-core angler does … we turned my vehicle into a rolling restaurant and hit the road.

Paul’s first two casts into Coon Creek yielded fish, the second a beautiful 14 inch rainbow. (A rainbow is a rarity in the Driftless area and, when I heard him yell that he had a rainbow on, initially thought he couldn't tell the difference between a brown and a rainbow. When I told Paul that, he said his ichthyology students would have enjoyed that comment. Paul is a retired fisheries expert and knows his fish.) He disappeared upstream as Michael and I found a different stretch for him to fish. Michael’s first fish was a 14 inch brown and, by the time I got back to Paul, he had a huge grin on his face from the fun he had been having. Michael put another fish in his hand in the limited time we had before I had to get them back to Richland Center. Despite being a short day, I believe they had a very nice introduction to the Driftless area. I know that I had fun fishing with them and couldn’t have asked for nicer guys to spend the day with.

Every angler and conservation-minded person should be thankful that there are groups like TU. Its members are dedicated and volunteer their time and money to ensure that waters are protected and restored. TU was founded on the principle that if you “take care of the fish, then the fishing will take care of itself.”  Based on my day with Paul and Michael, our waters are in good hands.