With all the holiday activity finally settling down I found some time to head west and fish some spring creeks in the Driftless Area. Most of the spring creeks in Southwest Wisconsin stay free of ice through the winter months, and now that the early season begins the first Saturday in January we have 2 more months to chase trout in the dead of winter. Sunday, I returned to a creek I fished last winter and had a very similar experience. It started slow with maybe only 2 bites in the first hour or so, but when I got to a certain pool I had success with last year I was confident that something would happen. I let my friend take the first few casts. He stripped a white woolly bugger through the pool a few times with no trout showing interest. I stepped in and dead drifted an olive bugger with a ray charles dropper. I think it was my first drift and a small brown took the bugger. Only a drift or two later and the indicator dropped again. This time I set the hook and saw a large white belly roll in the bottom of the pool. After a minute I scooped a 16-17 inch brown into the net (which also ate the olive bugger). I believe it was a female that had spawned only a month or so ago based on the length and lack of girth. The rest of the day brought a few more browns and one brook trout. Enough to reset my winter fishing blues and keep me focused until my next day on the water.
