Time: 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Location: Lower end parking lot of Duck Egg Vernon County Forest

Fish Landed: 2

Bad Axe Creek 06/04/2014 Photo Album

The antidote to fly fishing runoff blues in Colorado is traveling to an eastern location that does not experience the bloated streamflows associated with high elevation warming and subsequent melting snow. At least that was my theory when we planned a trip to Minneapolis to visit our son Dan, who has a summer internship with Emerson Electric in the land of 10,000 lakes. I read several articles about the wonderful fly fishing in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, and I decided to sample this experience. As it turned out, Dan needed to fly to Houston for training, and given his absence, it was not difficult to persuade Jane to spend a couple days in Viroqua, WI.

As noted in my previous post, I met my new Instagram friend Danny Ryan at a coffee shop in Denver, and he graciously highlighted four or five streams that I could visit on my two day stay. As the streams and rivers in Colorado ballooned to dangerous levels, I clung to the knowledge that I would have a few days in the Driftless Region to partially quench my thirst for fly fishing in flowing water. Or would I?

When I checked the weather map on Monday morning, the day before our scheduled departure, I noticed that Minneapolis had received 2.9 inches of precipitation. I related this to Jane, and she quickly opened her Weather Channel app and found a warning that the Kickapoo River was expected to reach flood stage by Wednesday June 4. This was the very day that we planned to canoe on the Kickapoo River! My mood instantly plummeted to one of deep despair. After all the planning and excitement, I was now forced to accept the reality that heavy rain and consequent flooded muddy streams would likely scuttle my fishing plans. With this news, was it even worthwhile to lug my fishing gear from Denver, CO to Minneapolis, MN and then ultimately to Wisconsin?

I decided to call the Driftless Angler in Viroqua, WI where we were staying for two days. Viroqua is near the epicenter of Driftless fly fishing, so I concluded that they would have up-to-date knowledge of the stream conditions. Unfortunately when I called twice on Monday afternoon, no one answered the phone, and I left two messages. Since the shop closed at 4PM, and I needed to decide whether to pack my fishing gear before our flight Tuesday morning, I tried one last call just before closing time on Monday. Much to my surprise a person named Sandler answered the phone, and he was quite optimistic that I would be able to fish in area streams by Wednesday. He admitted that some rivers would remain high and muddy but also felt confident that there would be some clearing and even a few stream options with near normal conditions. On Tuesday morning after I was already packed, Matt, the owner of the Driftless Angler, also called in response to my messages, and he echoed Sandler’s comments.

As Jane and I boarded our Southwest Airlines flight on Tuesday morning, I remained quite apprehensive about my prospects to land any fish in the Driftless Region, but I was now committed. We spent the night in Bloomington, MN near the airport, and on Wednesday morning we began the three hour road trip to Viroqua, WI. We had reservations for two nights at the Hickory Hill Motel, and I planned to fish Wednesday evening, Thursday morning and Thursday evening, and I saved the afternoons to bicycle and canoe with Jane.

The aftermath of the recent rainstorm was beautiful with mostly clear skies and high temperatures in the low 70’s. The landscape was lush green with tall grass and leaves everywhere. We stopped at a rest area in the southeast corner of Minnesota called Enterprise and took a brief hike to an overlook where I could see a small stream below, and the water was crystal clear. Could I dare to think that I would encounter similar water in Wisconsin?

We continued on and crossed the Mississippi River at La Crosse and then drove southeast to Viroqua, WI. Here our first stop was the Viroqua Food Co-Operative where we bought lunch and some breakfast supplies. Next we found the Driftless Angler where I purchased an annual Wisconsin fishing license and trout stamp as well as ten flies. As it turned out, I could buy an annual license for only $1.75 more than a four day license, so I took advantage of the deal even though the likelihood of returning to Wisconsin is rather slim. Matt, the owner, was running the shop on Wednesday, so I pumped him for information and recommendations on flies. He suggested a local favorite, the pink squirrel, so I bought five of them plus two gray scuds and three black woolly buggers. I was looking for pine squirrel leeches, but they were sold out. Matt then opened the same Driftless Region map that Danny gave me and highlighted five possible destinations for me to fish with a pink marker. Did he choose a pink marker to somehow reinforce the pink squirrel idea in my brain?

The streams recommended by Matt coincided almost exactly with Danny’s suggestions with a couple additions. Matt mentioned that the West Branch of the Kickapoo and Bishop Creek were likely still muddy, but he offered no such information on the other locales.

Next Jane and I visited the Blue Dog Bike Shop (also the Brew Dog Coffee Shop) along Main Street in Viroqua. We wanted to rent bikes to ride in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve during the afternoon, but we quickly learned that the bike shop did not rent bike racks, so we did not have a means to transport two bikes from Viroqua to the Reserve. We decided to abandon riding in the Reserve and attempted to rent bikes to ride in the Viroqua area, but the shop closed at 3PM, and we were faced with the logistical dilemma of having to move two bikes and a rental car to the motel which was two miles south of town. We eventually gave up on the entire idea of biking and decided to visit the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and simply hike some of the trails.

We departed the bike shop and checked in to our room at the Hickory Hill Motel and then changed into hiking clothes and made the 16 mile drive to the Reserve just north of LaBarge, WI. We checked in to the visitor center, and a helpful man at the counter suggested a hike from the center where there was no trail charge. We enjoyed a one hour loop and crossed the muddy Kickapoo River along the way, and this caused more concern regarding fishing prospects for Wednesday evening. Once we completed our hike, we returned to the motel, and I reviewed the map and decided to sample Bad Axe Creek. I only had an hour or two to fish, so I chose one of the closer streams to minimize driving time.

I arrived at the lower parking lot of Duck Egg County Forest and parked in a U-shaped turnaround next to a small equestrian park. By the time I put on my waders, rigged my rod and doused myself with insect repellent it was 6:30PM. I ambled down to the stream by the bridge and encountered brown water that was quite opaque thus providing resident trout with limited visibility. For this reason, I decided to tie on a black conehead leech and a pink squirrel. I reasoned that the black and pink were colors that would contrast with the muddy water in the stream.

I had never fished Bad Axe Creek, and now the brown water made it very difficult for me to read the depth. There was a nice run that angled toward the opposite bank and then ran along the bank for fifteen feet, so I began drifting my fly combination along the seams on either side of the main current. Much to my surprise when the indicator was halfway down the run, it darted sideways, and I hooked and landed a feisty nine inch brown. Perhaps I was being too negative, and the fishing wasn’t bad in spite of the discolored water?

I moved further upstream to a location where the water was extremely deep. I discovered this when the woolly bugger got hung up, and I waded to the far side to dislodge it. Suddenly I was standing in water above my waist, and this scared me a bit. Unfortunately the conehead fly proved to be too heavy, perhaps because the bead was made out of tungsten, and I was constantly working to dislodge my flies. I abandoned the conehead bugger and tied on a pine squirrel leech, but this also got hung up in a deep area, and I broke off both flies. I now took the time to add another section of tippet and split shot and then knotted on a chocolate San Juan worm and an egg sucking leech with an orange head.

After an hour of fishing these flies subsurface I still had only the nine inch brown from the very first section to show for my efforts. I decided to make a radical change and switched to a Chernobyl ant with a beadhead prince nymph below that and then a salvation nymph on the point. All three of these flies are dark in color, so I hoped that they would contrast with the brown water. By now the bugs were quite a menace as they covered my neck and face despite the presence of a heavy application of bug spray. The only positive was that they did not seem to be biting insects.

Finally in some slow moving water off to the side of the main current I noticed a fish rise, and then I observed a few small blue winged olives in the air. This prompted me to clip off the prince and salvation and to tie on a soft hackle emerger to imitate a blue winged olive. After a few casts, I lifted my flies to cast again, and as I did this another nine inch brown grabbed the soft hackle, and I landed and released my second fish of the evening.

I fished the Chernobyl ant and soft hackle emerger for another 15 minutes, but the light began to dwindle and the upstream path began to disappear, so I decided to experiment with some streamers in a nice deep hole. I determined that this would be my end point, but I wanted to try some old school flies that I felt would contrast with the turbid currents. First I tied on a black-nosed dace, but that did not produce any results. Next I discovered a slender Mickey Finn in my fleece pouch and decided to give it one last try. The red and yellow bucktail with a tinsel body should contrast nicely with the dark water, but alas it also failed to entice any trout on Wednesday evening.

Because I was in an unfamiliar area, I did not want to risk stumbling back to the rental car in the dark, so I called it quits and followed the path through the woods to the small parking lot. The gnats continued to invade my ears and nose, but I’d managed to beat the odds and land two small brown trout under challenging conditions. I was prepared to give fishing one more chance on Thursday morning, but I was pretty much ruling out another evening outing as I drove back to meet Jane at the Hickory Hill Motel. At least the Driftless Area did not totally shut me out, and I could claim that I landed a couple trout in Wisconsin.