I guess the driftless area is hit or miss right now depending on where you’re fishing. I had limited time to fish this past Friday so I headed for some new places in the southeast part of the driftless area closest to where I live. Fishing new water is always exciting and can be very challenging. The curiosity of what lies around each bend in the creek sometimes distracts me from the good looking pools and pockets right under my nose. The day started off strong, landing a beautiful brown and missing another within the first twenty minutes. Both on a woolly bugger. Unfortunately, those were the only two bites I had in the few hours I was able to fish. I did get a nice photo of the chunky little brown…
Left my wet wading boots in the back of the truck…..oops!
Justin headed farther west than I this weekend and found himself in the middle of a thick caddis hatch. A simple tan elk hair caddis with a good presentation was producing fish all day long. Those are the moments that trout fisherman dream of….. casting dries to a pool boiling with rising fish. From my experience, the insect hatches on the small spring creeks in Wisconsin seem to be fairly isolated to specific spots on the creek. There could be flies hatching in one riffle like crazy, but you might not see them anywhere else on the creek. Where as some of the larger western rivers I’ve fished you’ll see the same fly hatching along most of the river. Sometimes in Wisconsin it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.