Once upon a time, October was considered the last fly fishing month of the season. And to tell you the truth, the places I’ve spent most of my life, New England as a kid, Wisconsin during college and in the Yellowstone/Jackson Hole region back in the 80’s and 90’s, it was. November was too cold to fly fish. If your hands didn’t freeze your rod guides did. And we ice fished on Thanksgiving as a tradition. But over the last 25 years it’s gotten warmer, and now a days I’m starting to think the entire month of November has become a legitimate fly fishing month.
Today in Northern Wisconsin it was partly sunny with no wind and temperatures in the low 40°s. It was a gorgeous day to fly fish. The only thing holding me back from jumping out the door when Bob rang was my vicious work load that includes preparing for Fly Fishing Shows, packing for upcoming international trips, yardwork and typical house chores. But I thought about it for about 30 seconds, then said screw it, “Let’s do a short day and see if we can find some pike”.
I met Bob at 11 and we towed his drift boat not too far from town. By noon we were hucking musky flies into all the deep troughs along decomposing weed beds and sunken trees. I know I said “pike” above, but it doesn’t matter how small a pike is or how big a fly you throw, the pike will eat it. So with this big tan Mike Lodge tied GT fly that has been crushing it for me for a month, we were covering both pike and musky.
It didn’t take long for the pike to show up. And they weren’t all deep. As Bob was rowing us along I made casts to good looking protruding logs and browned up cattails. It didn’t matter that some of these spots were a foot deep. I plowed through the pike and landed five. Three were nice size like the one you see here. One leapt from the water and we watched his whole body sail through the air like his distant cousin the blue marlin. He landed right on top of my fly even though it 6 inches under. An awesome fish!
While we enjoyed some of the best pike fishing of the year, we didn’t take our tactics off a chance at musky. Before bringing your fly from the water for the next cast, you always do a Figure 8. Often times musky follow and you can’t see them. A quick zigzag of the fly often gets them to bite. Bob does this technique after every single cast.
We fished hard until 4 PM. While the pike bite was on fire at the get-go, they slowly disappeared. And the muskies were nowhere at all. There was one odd sighting however, painted turtles. The latest I ever remember seeing turtles in the north county is mid-October on a rare 80° day. We saw at least a dozen swimming together on a particular mud flat. I’m guessing they have congregated for hibernation and were enjoying one last look at the sun before a five month nap. Nature is so damn cool.
Despite November becoming warm enough to fly fish these days, the one thing that will never change in November is that the days are short. The sun is ridiculously low in our sky and now its dark by 5. And as always, it makes for full day of sunrise or sunset. However you want to see it.
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