Fall is in the air. Bob Butler and I met at 5 AM in pitch dark. A month ago, we didn’t need headlights at 5. We drove an hour dodging deer the whole way to our boat launch on the unnamed river. Even at 6 AM, though dawn was breaking, it wasn’t easy to see. We launched and did our shuttle. We pushed off just before 6:40 AM as the sun attempted to burn through the thick fog.
I took the oars first and insisted Bob toss his 9-weight with his musky fly. August is premature to expect a musky bite but because of the crisp feel we thought an early musky was possible. Instead, it were the smallmouth that took a liking in the 8” long sucker fly imitation.
While we didn’t exactly spank the smallies on the musky fly, we had lots of interest. Enough that after an hour of chucking the big fly rods without even a pike sighting we backed off to our bass rods. I fished a black woolly bugger Clouser like fly on my 6-weight. I stripped and flipped all the deep runs with my Sonar fly line. We still didn’t catch a lot, but the ones we did catch were very nice fish. I love the dark cheek streaks!
Gorgeous smallmouth all day long were not today’s highlight for me. Yeah man, they were fun, but we had an amazing wildlife day as well. I won’t even touch on the birds but keep in mind Wisconsin is part of the Mississippi Flyway. Our birds are incredible. But amongst numerous whitetail deer we saw a porcupine drink and best of all, a medium size black bear cross the river. The phone camera doesn’t pick him up without a magnifying glass but he was closer than he looks.
I had to record a podcast tonight with Rob Snowhite who guides Northern Virginia and Washington DC. With this in mind Bob and I needed to be off the water by midafternoon. 3 PM was about perfect for a day that started by waking up at 4:17 AM. But you got to milk it – every dang minute of this fantastic journey!
Granny is off the next few days and though I know we have work to do on our fixer-upper, I bet we’ll go fishing too!