It would be an unusual fisherman who doesn’t dream of finding an undiscovered river. And if not a river then an unknown spot on a known river. And if not a spot, then at least going out on a day when you don’t see anyone else other than your best fly-fishing friend.
Such a man is Rick. Rick and I have fished some of the best-known areas of the country; from New York suburbs where you’re as likely to land a sunken shopping cart as a trout, to Vermont and the Catskills, to Colorado, Montana, and beyond. Over the years these trips have become an annual event although in reality, we fish several times over the course of a season. Considering many places allow you to fish 12 months a year the term “season” is not precise.
There was a time when we’d buy a 3- or 5-day license for other than our home state. Nowadays, we get a full year’s license because 1) who knows, we might get back, 2) having hit senior status, they cost us less, and 3) fishing is our post-career “thing.” If not now, when?
We’ve been reminded of a certain fragility in recent years. There’re heart issues, cancer watching, esophageal stuff that translates to eating blander food – not an easy thing to do when fishing in the southwest – to say nothing about scrambling up and down steep banks and long hikes to get to pristine pools
Covid, ironically, has been a good thing for us. A couple of years back we were outside of Bozeman, when a call from Pippa came in. She was about to go on a two-week cruise to see the Greenland’s melting glaciers. I say about because though asymptomatic she tested per the tour company’s request and came out positive. Most everyone I know would have let that slide, either not testing or feeling fine enough to go. Not my wife. She said that I’d have to stay in a motel or with friends I didn’t want to stay with; I had a better idea. I extended the stay in Montana and found no argument from an otherwise argumentative Rick.
We returned the following year when HE got it. It was a mild case fortunately, but enough to lay him up for a couple of days leaving me to fish solo and forcing us once again to extend the trip. To be sure, the fishing wasn’t great but just being in rivers around Bozeman is reward enough. We spend a few hours on the Firehole in Yellowstone, bear spray at the ever ready, though the massive traffic would have kept any self-respecting grizzly at bay. The traffic was at a standstill for a good chunk of time, the static passengers left to stare out at two aging men standing in the river. When we caught cutthroats, small but plenty, we got horns a honking and cheers from the watching cars. It was one of the very few times I didn’t mind being close to so-called civilization.
The Driftless, too, was a destination trip but for a destination that doesn’t inspire a lot of trout hunters. It lacks the drama and beauty of the Rockies. The rivers are way too small for drift boats. It’s not within an easy few hours of a metropolitan area like New York City. Accommodations are sparse and those that are there are spartan. The range of decent places to eat narrow. And while I’m on the subject the creeks those too are narrow; in a lot of cases, you could almost straddle a stream to cast though you wouldn’t as that would spook the population of entirely wild fish.
I mean, who would fly to Minneapolis in the middle of May, drive south for several hours, to go to the small corner of the world where Minnesota meets Wisconsin and nudges up against Iowa? We would, you betcha.
What comes to the imagination is prairie converted to corn and soybean fields, flat, treeless, and if not for irrigation rather dry. Hot in summer, frigid in winter, tornadoes at random. Sometimes the imagination couldn’t be more wrong.
The area is like an old Northwest Mayberry with a Scandinavian flare. Take the town of Westby – population 2,348 though Lars and Caroline were expecting twins any day now. Westby was full on preparing for Syttende Mai, Norway’s Constitution Day. One can imagine a northern version of Aunt Bea replete with apron and a hairdo dried in one of those space helmet contraptions preparing rommegrat (a Norse cream pudding) and strul (an ironed cookie) alongside Jello-molds filled with coleslaw or tuna casseroles with three types of cheese.
This is not an area most people would think of for trout fishing. Too bad for them, too good for us. The Driftless area is totally unlike the broad band of a Midwest dominated by muddy, warm, rivers and lakes that host the bass-tournaments, muskie and walleye dredgings, that are the dominant fishing style from Cleveland to Des Moines, St Louis to Duluth. (I’ll give some credence to Hemingway’s Upper Peninsula if you can get there and if don’t lose too much blood to the mosquitoes and black flies.)
The Driftless is unique in the region. It’s the part of the northern states that didn’t get smooshed by the last glacier. Glacial drift – sand, gravel, and clay deposits left by the melting ice – doesn’t exist here. Hence Driftless. Instead of the freestone rivers that depend on rain and snowmelt of their water, the special feature of the Driftless is the underlying limestone, a porous stone created from compacted shells over gazillions of years.
Being porous, the substrate is in essence a giant aquifer. This aquifer supplies the creeks and rivers with a more or less constant supply of water at a more or less constant cool throughout the year. Thus, trout don’t suffer the slings and arrows of heat or drought and thrive. Too, water that passes through the limestone is rich in calcium carbonate that supports macroinvertebrate abundance providing the trout with a steady and diverse diet. There are a lot of trout in these; they’re fat, they’re wild and they’re wily.
There are other spring and limestone creeks in the US. And they’re go-to destinations in part because the popular ones are close to big cities – like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York – and in part because they are so bloody difficult to fish it’s a badge of honor to say you caught trout in them. The trout, too, get smart with all the traffic. A boot landing too heavily on the bank, the shadow of a casting arm, or the mild splash of a poorly landed fly will send fish deep into undercut banks from which they won’t emerge for an eternity. Or maybe an hour, but what fisherman has that sort of time?
The fish in the Driftless are wary no doubt, but less educated. Rick and I can vouch for that because over the course of several days even we managed to defy our inabilities and catch trout. A lot of trout.
The Driftless holds other charms as well. The folks are folksy, friendly, helpful, not inclined to yell at you if you inadvertently cross their farm, and always, ALWAYS, offering up a friendly wave from the car, truck, or tractor.
I don’t recall seeing a single “no trespassing sign” around the creeks. Not one. They must exist, I’m sure. The only ones I did encounter were wrapped in plastic at a Tractor Supply Company. It isn’t the east coast, after all, where a few badly raised fisherman park where they shouldn’t, leave a mess behind, and kill more trout than the law allows if the law allows them to kill trout at all. They spoil it for the rest of us.
Inevitably, Rick and I brought our arsenal of rods – three each – but used only one. Mine was an ancient Thomas and Thomas 7 ½’ 3 wt, given to me by another friend for a birthday (I was in my 20s) and he’d just landed a particularly large bonus – it would prove to be one of many – for his trading prowess at Goldman Sachs. I use a double-taper line under the belief that it cast dry flies with delicacy, though Rick had no problems on his weight-forward lines proving I talk a good story, but don’t know what I’m talking about.
Between the fried this and that, BBQ joints, sporadic fast-food spots I didn’t know still existed – Arthur Treacher’s? Really? – we managed to find a couple of co-ops that offered up not only vegetables that were not frozen, but local bread, cheeses, and, OMG, non-fat plain Greek yogurt. They also sold beer, wine, and spirits, leaving us with a hole in our wallets but several evenings’ enjoyment. In a region of the country largely made up of big if not to say huge farmers, solid Lutherans, of Scandinavian stock, these co-ops were the place to meet the outliers. We saw some black people, a couple of suspiciously LGBTQ types, skinny – a rare quantity – hipsters and probably curious locals looking in surprise at the concentration of diversity. There was a Mexican section, an Asian section, a vegan freeze, but, alas, no Kosher aisle. So it goes.
I mentioned eating spots. One BBQ place had a sign, “Smoke Meat, Not Meth!” which is both good advice and a suggestion of a problem in this part of rural America. One place we ate at was Culvers. It looks like a throwback to the 1930s, but is a chain only created in the 1980s. What attracted us was the custard they advertised on a sign that must have used half the town’s electricity. I’m not sure of how custard differentiates itself from soft ice cream, but it was rich and delicious. Rick chose a small dish, while I opted for a waffle cone, freshly pressed, for another $1. Hey, we’re on vacation.
We were both curious about something called a “butter burger” which sounds like it was concocted in a Harry Potter story. Curious, yes, though not enough to order one as we knew fully that you can’t super saturate your intake of cholesterol. FYI, the butter burger is fried in butter, topped with a pat of butter, then slid between two buns both of which had been spread with butter. Another time perhaps.
Also, we had books on fishing the Driftless up the wazoo. Such guides can be tedious to read and tend to focus on where to park as much as how to fish the creeks question. YouTube was worse. I came across a series of narcissistic men, they’re always men, showing off their catch but revealing little else. Then there’s this phenomenon of what Rick calls “rock and roll fishing” where the footage is accompanied by loud, awful, music, and a hand gesture called the Shaka. I had to look that one up. You’ve seen the Shaka, it’s where you hold your pinky and thumb in the air as if to say, “Yo Dude!” Its origin is Hawaiian, popular among surfers, and irrelevant on a trout stream.
Maybe it’s my age but the heavy-metal music and “Yo Dude” attitude is not to my taste and the videos weren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. The books were a bit better, but only just because you need a magnifying glass to read the maps and no self-respecting fisherman would reveal the best spots anyway.
So, we hired a guide.
Erik Helm bills himself as The Classical Angler and lives up to the title. Leaving aside fishing prowess – for which he deserves the highest marks – he’s also something of a philosopher, writer, definitely a fine instructor, and kindly lent us a bamboo rod for a bit more of the classical approach. On his blog he wrote, “If angling is the contemplative sport, as Mr. Walton would have us understand, that contemplation should not be on the destination, but upon the path that led us there. Let that path not be the easy one nor the commonplace, but one of inner discovery and learning, for that much the better when the fish is finally brought to hand.”
I never thought of fishing quite that way, but, you know, he’s right.
People ask me if I enjoy it even when I don’t catch fish. Like any decent fisherman I reply that I always catch fish. That is, of course, a lie though no more egregious than when I tell another fisherman how many I caught and how large they were.
But I do enjoy it even when I don’t catch fish and Lord knows that happens as often as not. It’s like a mindful meditation. I’m so focused on the river, the bugs, the nature that all other things leave my mind. And the simple casting just to cast has a soothing rhythm that puts a smile on my face just thinking about it. I’ve heard about something called Forest Bathing, a Japanese thing about immersing yourself, “focusing on sensory engagement to connect with nature” according to one website. Well, I’m river bathing without getting wet. Fly fisherman have been there for centuries. Everything old is new again, like the suits I bought 20-odd years ago and, aside from the sheen on the seats, should soon come back into fashion
I mentioned lying about the number and size of my catch. I didn’t have that chance with Rick since we were constantly on top of one another. The creeks we fished were narrow, clear as gin or vodka depending on your preference, and the fish see you before you see them which is to say spooky. We occasionally saw a car parked near enough these rivers, but never jumped a claim. That’s beyond the pale of good behavior. Anyway, there were plenty of streams. Also, and this is a simple reality, most fisherman rarely walk more than a hundred yards from their car. Laziness I suppose. Rick and I were ready to walk beyond the “zone.”
The first stream Erik took us to was one of the least attractive ones we hit. It was too close to a road, the banks were treacherously steep, and the fishing, frankly, sucked. Oh, we caught fish, but had to really work for it. Erik blamed the weather; grey, overcast, and the bugs didn’t get active until the day’s end. The flies were nothing special, which is a good thing. We used Adams, elk hair caddis, traditional nymphs; bugs we could recognize and, importantly, use when we parted ways.
He showed us a technique that I’d not encountered in my four decades of fishing. It’s like an ancient technique called dappling where you essentially tease a fly on the surface as if it’s jumping around. Think about a Mexican jumping bean. We used an elk hair caddis over a short, shallow, agitated section that immediately flowed into a deep hole. You dance the caddis over the “fall” and, bang, trout waiting at the bottom surge to your fly.
It makes sense; how come I never thought of it? Not only can you see the fly, a critical aid when dealing in low light, agitated water, and the myopic eyes of a 60+ year old, but you know fish hold deep in holes to await the moving smorgasbord of insects drowned, damaged, and otherwise vulnerable in the rough current. And the fish aren’t subtle. I didn’t catch many with this technique that day – I was too surprised to see it work so well – but I did it for the rest of our trip with success.
Notice I didn’t mention the name of the river. I want to protect his spots and there are so many good rivers that you hardly need my input. That said, we were close to Viroqua and Westby and within spitting distance of at least a dozen coulees, aka streams. I’m revealing nothing a guide book wouldn’t reveal when I tell you we fished Spring Coulee, Timber Coulee, Coon Coulee, Rullands Coulee, Bohemian Coulee, and Erik’s Coulee. Okay, I won’t tell you Erik’s Coulee’s real name; it was too good.
The next day we hit a smaller stream with less steep embankments. Maybe Erik heard my companion’s groans trying to get up and down the first day’s precipices. They were hardly precipices, but I don’t want to insult Rick unless it’s to his face. The weather, too, was better and the bugs were coming off early. We hit stretches of river you could, literally, hop across and cast into parts you couldn’t imagine would hold fish. But they did and we landed small, but feisty, browns on conventional rigs – dry/dropper – with conventional flies.
An unusual aspect to the streams in the Driftless is how deep the troughs can be. You tip-toe upstream to avoid spooking the fish in water no deeper than your knee when you suddenly see a dark image ahead. If the sun is right and you sneak low around the edge you might see 20, 30, even 40 trout, some huge, hugging the bottom. If they’re all stacked like that it means they’re spooked, or the sun is too high. And when I say tiptoe I mean it. Guide Erik moved like a sloth to avoid pushing water ahead. Bow waves he called them, quite the nautical term. Even then these fish would hunker down for a while. We patiently waited until they started rising again and made gentle casts starting at the tail of the pool and glacially working forward. I never used anything but that Thomas & Thomas 3 wt and didn’t go heavier than a 6x tippet.
There’s a beauty in light rods. Even a 10-inch brown felt like a keeper striped bass though given my prowess with salt-water fishing I can’t say I really know what that would be like. But I’ve got a good imagination. A 12-inch brookie bent the rod like I’d seen salesmen at Orvis do to demonstrate something to newbies. I’m not sure what they were trying to show, or what neophyte anglers thought of the display, but it did get oohs and aahs. I don’t believe they do that anymore. Maybe it’s a liability thing like if the rod snapped and sent shards of carbon fiber darts into unwary observers. That Orvis and others offer very long warranties suggests accidents can happen.
After that second day we were on our own. I admit we went back to a stretch of a coulee Erik had shown us and replicated the stealthy stalking he’d advised to a degree Yeah, we spooked fish in our leapfrogging from pool to pool and riffle to riffle. There wasn’t much rising anyway, and our caddis/nymph combo failed pretty miserably for a couple of hours. Eventually, we got the stalking down and enough cloud cover drifted in to help things out.
We hit a long, narrow pool quite a way in and OMG it was happening. Flies were coming off like one of those Catskill hatches you read about but don’t actually believe take place. They were a mix of caddis, Sulphur’s, light Cahills, teeny things you couldn’t really see and chasing them were scores of fish. The rises varied from aggressive to very aggressive, would settle down to trout lightly sipping emergers. After taking turns catching we thought we’d exhausted the pool, only to see it all start up again. I know, at least I think I know, you’re supposed to move on after a while, but the fish didn’t seem to mind. In between the action, we sat, ate a bite of sandwiches squashed in our vests, and that rest gave the fish a breather too.
Not too far away was a highway and we heard obnoxious music emanating from someone’s over-amped car with windows down. It was a moment. We looked at each other Rick and I and realized we hadn’t heard the road until that moment when our minds were on lunch instead of fishing.
We’d been in a Zen state, so focused on fishing, so mindful of that that we simply blocked out the intrusion a hundred yards to our east. Such a state just happens when you’re casting well, and you know it even before your line gently lands. You’re targeting one trout amongst dozens rising and watching the spot where the tiny fly you can barely see must be until, bam, it’s taken.
I don’t know how many we caught in that pool – twenty, thirty, at least – before we agreed it was time to discover what’s was ahead. Ahead, was a still narrower pool up against a limestone wall. The Zen state was still with us as we simply observed whispering “this has got to hold fish.” A couple of rises confirmed our instinct.
It was getting late, we’d just finished lunch, and would have had an epic day if we simply stopped and gone back to the cabin. But who knows what tomorrow brings; rain, 90 degrees of heat, Covid again? We pulled fewer fish, to be sure, but they were some of the biggest on the trip; a 12-inch brown in tight conditions felt enormous and, yes, we got a couple of 12 inchers.
It’s funny that. You read in the literature about trophy trout, pounds at a time, bigger than your thigh, and I’m sure they exist. But in the serenity of the driftless, with delicate casting, and teensy flies, a 12-inch fish sat well with us. And Rick’s 14-incher from this pool even better.
Over the next few days, we went to different creeks and the fish were generally quite cooperative. I met a large gathering of Tenkara fisherman who belonged to a national club I never heard of who swamped one of the streams. These were older guys, a number from Texas, and had all the delicacy of old, white, male, Texans, who voted for Bud, or is it Greg?, Abbott. In short, they stomped loudly, splashed a lot, and I had to help one guy out of the 12 inches of water into which he slipped on the watercress. They eventually left, with little success, but I hung out to let the pools settle down.
There was good cloud cover, the temperature a bit cooler in the 70s, but only intermittent hatches and still fewer rises. Being relatively early in the fishing season my fly box had some semblance of order – flies arranged over the winter by type, size, color, and all that. Of course, it wouldn’t take long before anarchy set in, and new flies tried to find a spot. I have more flies than I’ll ever need and tie a lot but never enough to cover the cost of the vise let alone materials. I also feel obligated to buy from local fly shops especially if I’ve sucked their brain for ideas on places to fish.
What do you do when you don’t know what to do? The books say try an attractor fly that doesn’t look like anything in nature but supposedly gets a trout’s attention. I used a teeny, size 20, Royal Coachman and was grateful for its upright white wings which I could almost see at the end of my 7x tippet. Wow. I caught six inside of an hour, and you’ll have to trust me when I tell you they were all 14 inches or more. Or maybe 10 inches, but, hey, I didn’t have a ruler and what fly fisherman ever does when they boast about the length or weight? Round up, I say, round up!
The Royal Coachman worked wonders but, alas, not Royal Coachmen. After a few trout had aggressively devoured the poor thing, it was no longer fishable, and I had no more. I switched to other flies, all smaller than 18, and fortunately the fish were not overly selective. I hiked well upstream looking for holes but by then the sun was out fully and the fish went on a hunger strike. I walked back through a pasture that now had a lot of cows and calves meandering in the narrow arrow between the river and a barb-wire fence.
I like cows. I like the smell, their sympathetic brown eyes, and curiosity about me. We have a bond, cows and I. They usually keep their distance, just following me with their stares, but these cows were a bolder lot and approached me at a surprising trot while the calves followed. I thought maybe they were protecting the young or, being Midwesterners, just friendlier than those I’d encountered elsewhere. It was the bull that disturbed me. At least I think it was a bull, what with horns and muscles and bulk. It followed rather too closely. I wasn’t inclined to duck underneath to confirm it was in fact a bull. I retreated to the river. He followed. Then into the river. The bull paralleled my route all the way to a turnstile I thankfully crossed over.
I repeated this visit the next day though no cows were in sight. I caught several small browns, but desperately missed my Royal Coachman. So, I called Rick back at the cabin. He’d stayed behind to rest, straighten up (or so he said), and catch up on things internet-wise. I told him of the number of fish, the empty stream he’d not yet tried, and hoped he had some spare Royal Coachmen. I drove back, got him in, and returned to the still empty creek. There were some huge fish in a deep hole you could see from a bridge that crossed the river, but access was limited and even our shadows spooked them. I estimated some were 20 inches at least. The fact we didn’t catch any should lend credibility to their size.
He had a better day than me which was fine as I’d dragged him out, promised trout, and he did well. Later we moved to a larger coulee surrounded by timber (a hint to the river’s name by the way) where he continued to do better with some very decent fish. I used the dancing caddis Erik had taught me and managed to raise several big browns, and land one. It was nearly as much fun to watch them rise to the fly as catch especially with Rick cheering me on.
In a brief interlude, we went up towards Lanesboro, Minnesota, which is a funky hip town whose home waters include the Root River. Nearby we met up with two members of the club we belong to, both doctors at the Mayo Clinic, who took us to their private water. We promised to withhold the name of this miraculous stream lest we reveal a gem. The fish were big and one of the docs said he’d caught a 23 incher in a hole we’d been frothing up to no avail. “Surprised, you didn’t pick one up,” he said. I hope that was a joke.
They took us around Rochester, dined with their enchanting wives, also doctors, and I felt very safe lest the massive steaks they served gave me another heart attack. The very fine red wine and single malt probably helped move the cholesterol through the multitude of stents in my coronary arteries.
The subsequent fishing was more of the same which is not to say bad or boring, but just relatively mundane. So much so, in fact, that we rather welcomed a day of torrential rain that kept us indoors reading or watching films on Prime. We weren’t so much bored of fishing as caught up. That’s a very fine term under the circumstances, no?
The final day was uneventful; fish yes, but without bragging rights of size or number. That’s not a complaint, just a lazy day of fishing which won’t get us published in any journal but is satisfying to fisherman who’ve been at it as long as we have.
You won’t see The Driftless at the Fly-Fishing Film Festival. There aren’t any high-end lodges with gourmet meals and keen guides pushing drift boats into dramatic rivers. The hills aren’t snowcapped. It doesn’t have the historic context of the Catskills. Nor are there gazillions of fishermen within an easy drive.
And that’s kind of what makes The Driftless so special.