In Eagle, WI there is a spring fed pond or two which are open to fishing for trout starting in January. The 10 day forecast was looking pretty grim so Anthony and I decided to drive through rain and snow knowing it would be the last day we could wet a line for the foreseeable future. I rigged up with a 9.5′ leader with 4x tippet to a small bead head nymph and ran a 15″ dropper to a size 20 Ray Charles with 5x. The Ray Charles is the only pattern that seems to consistently produce a few fish on this unforgiving little spring fed pond during the Winter. We only had a few dips of the indicator for our efforts and I managed to bring 2 of them to hand. Anthony got a trout or two to chase a small streamer before we left but they just wouldn’t commit. At the end of our short outing all that mattered was we were fishing, the coffee was hot, the snow was pleasantly falling, and a half dozen trout were interested in our offerings…we were in Paradise.
