Ya ya, that's me...been a pretty lousy week for fishing, the rain and snow left me bummed and the river's over their banks. The walleye bite has slowed some on pool two I understand, but frankly I've not been since the cold snap. However.....
I got a chance to fish SW WI last weekend as well as help with a massive tree planting project on the West Fork fork of the Kickapoo River, the family farm of Paul and Bernie Hayes. They are the parents of fellow angler and good pal Ben, the guy who taught me all I know about great lakes angling. We were fortunate to have great weather last saturday and the rain sunday held off till we were done and ready to fish, speaking of....
What an amazing area, every time I'm there I'm really in awe of the amount of water and lack of anglers for the most part. We fished the Bad Axe out of Viroqua and the west fork on the Hayes property. The Bad Axe was tough, we had high skies and warming temps and I'll be damned if a 3wt felt foriegn in my hands after chucking big flies and sinking lines all spring. Ben managed one decent fish and lost another, I reckon I got one as well. Pretty river, looked to be heavily impacted by last summers flooding though. The west fork is amazing to me, every hole beckons you to the next, "c-mon it says, there's another sweet hole just up the bend", a fella could get caught up in that and I did. We fished streamers, small leeches and buggars on saturday night and got about 20 in an hour or so. They were fiesty 11-15" browns and a number of brookies as well, they seemed to be in pods at places.
Saturday night was Bowling and Spotted Cow night at the lanes in Westby. Lo and behold who should stumble in but Dan Boggs from Janesville WI. Dan is the president of the Blackhawk WI TU chapter (of which Paul Hayes is a member long standing) and he joined us for bowling and even volunteered to help with some planting the next day in exchange for a TU donation and a couch to crash on. Thanks D! As an added bonus, Dan and I got out on the same west fork beat, this time with larger muddlers and had similar sucess. it was great to fish with Dan again and I look forward to my next visit to the area, what a place!
High waters look to be the norm, although I did see the kinni and rush were dropping pretty steadily after the storm on the 11th. The willow is blown wide open, it's got a huge drainage and lots of lowland topography so I expect it'll be a couple days till we can get out there again. I'll be focusing quite a bit of attention on the Rush and Kinni for the next couple weeks with some trips on the books, looking forward to nice weather and good fishing.
Hot tip of the week: crappies on lake Mallillue (sp?) around the dam from shore and by boat. good reports of numbers and some slabs to be had as well. may try to get out this week and stock up for crappie tacos!
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