Fishing has proved to be more difficult than I had expected on the tribs in southern Wisconsin the last couple weeks.  I have been out three times in two weeks, and one of those days I fished almost sun up to sun down covering all my favorites spots without ever seeing the indicator drop or feeling the tug on my swinging flies.  After two days in one week with similar results I was starting to question my favorite local lake-run trout fishery.  On day three things were looking up.  The water was just the right color and flowing at the perfect speed on some of my favorite runs.  A thick layer of fog blanketed the river late into the morning providing that extra sense of security for the migrating trout.  About six hours into fishing and I’m scratching my head again…. How could this be?  The salmon are complete zombies and almost done spawning, and we had a good bit of rain that spiked the river to almost 1000 cfs, so where are the brown trout!?  I had some success a few weeks  back in the worst conditions possible, and now things look so perfect and I can’t buy a fish.  As my brother and I were nearing the end of our outing he finally found a brown willing to eat an egg.  Getting my hand on that tail was a great feeling, even more so because Mike has had some terrible luck losing most of the big fish he hooks, so getting to see him finally get some grip and grin photos was especially rewarding.

Over this past weekend Mike and my brother-in-law Conor were back at it with much better results.  They each landed a fish or two and missed a handful more.  My guess is that last week when I was struggling the water temps were still too warm, and that this last weeks overnight low’s finally put the water in that lower 60 degree range where brown trout become more active.   Just a guess but it makes more sense when I think about the unusually warm October we had.  Anyway it’s good to see some fish being caught and I’ll share some more photos soon.