This past week has been a bit absurd to say the least. After many hours on the road and in the air, I finally arrived in Northeast Wisconsin last Saturday and met up with Andrew Drasch and Tim Fischer to do a little exploring on the Menominee. We'd heard it was a great smallmouth fishery that should be picking up right about the time we rolled in. It was and it did. The first night sitting around the fire, organizing gear, and fantasizing over the next day's fishing had the three of us so amped up that I don't think anyone got any sleep.
Day one started with three or four smallies and two nice pike in the first half hour and the fishing kept up consistently enough that we didn't get back to our basecamp until almost 11pm. While most of the action was from the smallmouth, there were plenty of smaller pike in the mix, so the 40lb. shock tippet was a good choice to avoid losing our perch patterns.
We spent the second day on what the Wisco boys call a flowage (the rest of the world calls it a lake) created by one of the many dams on the river. Pounding the shore with baitfish patterns was the ticket for smallies in the two to four pound range as well as small pike and even a muskie.
Working our way into a weed-choked slough that seemed perfect for largemouth, I tied on a big hairy topwater pattern and started drawing strikes in the patches between weeds. After a few fish clobbered it and didn't stick, I cut the weed guard off and proceeded to nail two bucketmouths. The violent strikes that these fish destroy a fly with are impressive to say the least, which would probably account for my big shit-eating grin in the pictures. The larger of the two was not at all happy about my fly invading his space and put on quite the show when he decided it was time to destroy.
Not long afterwards, Andrew decided it would be a good idea to break my 8 weight on the biggest smallie of the day and we got mocked by some good ol boys zipping by in a little outboard. Quote of the day goes to one of these goons, apparently totally boggled by our motorless driftboat: "Dude's rowing!" Our lack of motor notwithstanding, we appeared to be having a hell of a lot better day than those guys. Pulling off the water long after dark once again, we were already formulating our plan of attack for the next day.
We decided to head back to the same stretch of river for day three and fished it a bit more effectively, focusing on the areas that produced well the last time. It paid off big, with pretty consistent smallie action in the morning and a bunch of lively pike through the afternoon and evening.
After such good fishing and spending three days with two world class ball-busters, I had a bit of a hard time getting back on the road to head to Idaho. Little did I know just what we were in for, but more on that later. I feel I should point out that in the slideshow over on the right there, I appear in a picture with a baitcaster. I admit it, I went there. After three days of throwing an 8 weight nonstop 50 to 75 feet on every cast, my wrist just couldn't take any more and needed a break. It didn't take long before I was back on the flies, I got bored with not catching anything on it. Bait is sissy.
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