The last week or so the weather has finally started to resemble spring. Saturday morning Andrew and I geared up and headed for the Driftless to get our first fix of the year on small stream trout. Upon our arrival at the first creek we noticed the run-off had stained the water more than we had expected. So, instead of trying our go-to nymph patterns and dry flies we decided the conditions were perfect for throwing some meat. We both had success with woolly bugger variations so didn’t bother trying much else. No big fish for the day but a few beautiful, wild browns were brought to hand, and a lucky few brookies fought their way to freedom before we got a photo.