I’m pretty sure that those of us who are blessed with children have attempted to share the joys of our sport with our children. If you’re like me, the results are definitely a mixed bag. My eldest son loved the ‘time with dad’ that we spent together on trout streams, and even though he was given plenty of tackle and opportunities to pursue trout on his own, it never ‘took.’ My younger son had the same attitude, with the same result, until one day, in his early forties, he sent me an email.
Now Matthew loved hiking, snowboarding, climbing mountains, and had chosen to live in Denver, pursuing his career as a videographer, where he was close to all those things. It seemed he had hiked into a secluded mountain lake, and while setting up his camp noticed that there were fish rising near the shore. When he returned home, he sent me the propitious email that asked: “Could I catch those rising fish if I had the right equipment?” Needless to say, a complete pack-rod outfit was sent to him by me the next day, and a few days later he sent back photos of several nice Rainbow trout. Since then, he has been fly fishing almost everywhere he travels.
Here comes the best part! I had fished in the West quite a bit, and Matthew and I arranged to spend a week or two together every Fall, fishing in Yellowstone Park, the Paradise Valley spring creeks, the mountain lakes, and living very cheaply at Chico Hot Springs resort just across the river from Emigrant, MT. Matt has an old Toyota Forerunner that he has put at least two new engines into. I would fly to Bozeman, he would meet me there, load up my stuff in the truck, and after a brief stop at The River’s Edge Fly Shop for licenses and banter, we would drive over the mountain to the Livingston side, and then south on 89 to Emigrant, the only ‘blinker light’ on the road, turn left at the general store/gas station/laundromat/liquor emporium, cross the Yellowstone river and proceed to East River Rd., turning left to Pray, then turning right at the dumpsters. The road to Chico Hot Springs Resort, although straight as an arrow, was occasionally closed to car traffic, while it was being used as a runway for small planes to land.
We used to stay in a double room on the second floor of the Main Lodge for $60/night, with a bathroom down the hall. It was handy to the pools as well. I just checked and the price per night is now $85. The food at Chico is outstanding. We particularly liked the breakfast buffet. In certain years we forsook the Yellowstone area and Chico for the Bighorn, where we stayed at Cottonwood Camp. Here are photos of Matthew and his proud dad on the lawn at Chico, and of Matt watching his strike indicator intently as he pursues the Browns and Rainbows of Armstrong’s Spring Creek.
Hi all! Hope everyone has had a great summer! From a fishing perspective, it has been pretty good. Water levels haven’t been too low and I don’t want to jinx it, but we haven’t had any punishing rain events. We have had some Canadian wildfire smoke and I think the only solution for that will be winter. Hatches of BWOs, Caddis, Sulphurs, and Tricos have been solid where I have been fishing and I hope you found the same thing.
The effort to remove the dams on the Kinni continues to move in a favorable direction. The Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE ) open house on August 15th drew a big crowd, with most in favor of removal of both dams. The ACOE is still working on the feasibility study which they hope to have done this fall with a public review in the winter. Fingers crossed that they deem it a doable project to take on!
Another environmental issue we have been keeping tabs on is a proposed Ridge Breeze Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) located between the Rush River and Plum Creek. The chapter supported a 6 month to 1-year moratorium on Pierce county CAFO expansion in order for the county to determine if their application process was stringent enough to ensure that the two watersheds would not be negatively impacted by expansion of the herd. Unfortunately, the moratorium was voted down at the land conservation committee level and never made it to the county board. We are also keeping a watch on what I am calling the “zombie biodigester.” After being shot down in Hammond, Roberts, and just a couple weeks ago New Richmond, word is that it is stumbling and crawling to Ellsworth next.
On a more positive note, we had a couple of summer BBQ/fishing outings. Our Sulphur Solstice in July at the Ellsworth Rod and Gun Club was well received (it was nice having the air conditioning in the bar that day!). Matt Janquart and Dave Drewski helped organize the event and we enlisted the help of Ben Belt and Ben Topple to help with the food prep and guiding new anglers. In August we held Phil’s Full Moon Fever at Phil Kashian’s home and vacation rental. Phil and his wife Kay were great hosts! In conjunction with the event, Pat Houlton held a night fishing clinic using streamer and mice patterns and some nice fish were caught! Pat suggested a euro nymphing clinic for next year, so keep your eyes open for that. Both outings were a great way to stay in touch with chapter members in the summer months. We offered mentored fishing for individuals wanting some instruction and it resulted in some anglers catching their first trout on a fly! The River Falls Fly Fishing clinic was another success thanks to yet another year of guidance from Mike Alwin. We also did a fly casting clinic at the New Richmond library. I’d also like to give a shout out to all the WiseH2O anglers out there who continue to monitor our area streams all summer long, as well as those who helped Kasey with shocking and fish counting!
The upcoming chapter year will be another busy and fun one. We will kick off September with our open house/gear swap at Rush River Brewery starting at 6 pm on September 7th. Be sure to invite a friend! We will be back at Junior’s on the first Tuesday of the month from October through May. The speaker list is not finalized yet, to talks from Josh Boser on spey casting, Tim Stieber who is the Resource Management Director for St. Croix County, artist and guide Bob White, a summary of stream restoration projects and results of fisheries surveys from Nate and Kasey and the annual banquet. We are also expecting to include a macroinvertebrate update from Kent Johnson and Clarke Garry to answer if our perceived diminishing hatches on the Kinni are real or imagined.
There will be plenty of opportunities to pitch in and make a difference this year of course: Randy’s work days, TIC/BIC, Pheasants Forever Youth Day, Stream Girls and RF Fly Fishing Clinic just to name a few. Be sure to watch for email updates and consider volunteering. You will have fun and make a huge impact! As always, if you have any questions/comments/concerns please email me at driftless23@gmail.com. Looking forward to seeing you at a chapter meeting, volunteer event, and streamside!
Over fifty years ago a friend who was stationed in Montana while serving in the Air Force invited us out to go back-packing and trout fishing in the Rocky Mountains. Ron introduced me to fly fishing on that trip and Montana has been a preferred destination ever since. During the 1980’s he worked for US Fish and Wildlife and I went out once or twice a summer to camp and fish with him. We fished most of the storied waters in SW Montana but I became particularly infatuated with the Boulder River and Rock Creek.
Calling Rock a “creek” is an obvious misnomer. Its current discharge is four times that of the lower Kinni; when you look at it for the first time the word that pops into your brain is “river.” When I fish out west I prefer tent camping but this year for a couple of reasons we rented a cabin right on the river a few miles above its confluence with the Clark Fork of the Snake. As much as I like roughing it, I am moved to admit that the cabin experience was pretty comfortable. Breakfast and dinners indoors, lunch and happy hour on the front porch, a comfortable bed for a refreshing night’s rest, good friends to fish with and quick access to miles of one of Montana’s premier trout streams totaled up to a fine week’s experience.
Fishing, as we like to say, is always good. Catching, on the other hand, is frequently a different experience. Only two or three fish were caught in the first couple of days. I saw one trout rise on Sunday and another rise on Monday and not another the rest of the week. John at Rock Creek Mercantile said fishing has been tough this season due to a late spring and higher than normal water for late July. He recommended fishing nymphs in the morning and dry flies as late as you can in the evenings. We followed his advice. But we also fished afternoons. We fished nymphs, dries, streamers and wet flies, all without success.
On Wednesday morning, July 26, we drove downstream to fish some braided water that we hoped would be promising. After gearing up we spread out on the near bank keeping ourselves within sight of each other. After spending an hour or so fruitlessly fishing various dries upstream I reached one of our fishing partners who reported having the same success as I did. There were a couple of braids coming into this stretch from the opposite bank and it was abundantly clear that the water was too deep and fast to cross at that point. I cut through the underbrush to get above him thinking I might find safer water to attempt a crossing. So I was upstream and around a bend from him when I found a spot between a couple of riffles that looked wadeable. I started across and at about the half-way point realized that a) the water was deeper than it looked and b) the gradient was a whole lot steeper than I figured. On local streams I’ve waded knee deep, thigh deep and waist deep for decades, never having a problem with gradient, only that unseen rock that trips me up and causes me to curse. We have gradient; Rock Creek has Gradient.
Half way across in thigh deep water is an impossible place to turn around. When you’re in that deep you have no choice but to move forward. So I tried to keep going, trying to do my Tai Chi step by planting the downstream foot, shifting my weight to it and then pulling the upstream foot forward while angling downstream to mitigate the force of the water. Finally the rocks underneath my downstream foot gave way, I attempted an awkward pirouette and I went down, waders filling with water and my feet pointing downstream. I actually laughed, thinking to myself, “So this is what getting dunked is like? Huh.” I had visions of steering myself into calmer waters so I could crawl out.
Then I saw the log jam. In milliseconds I thought about the time my dog, Rickie, swam across this same river and got swept into a log jam, went under it and popped up on the other side. In the same milliseconds I thought about hanging on to that first log, a futile attempt since my waders were full and the force of the water was too powerful. I hit that log, went under it, surfaced ever so briefly, and then went under another pile of brush and logs before coming up for air. There was no time to be afraid. My eyes were open the whole time; I could see bubbles and parts of the log jam. I also swallowed some water. In those milliseconds under water I was thinking about how the hell I was going to avoid drowning. I wound up standing on a rock or a log, chest deep and wedged between a couple of logs, gasping for air. After several minutes I freed myself from the logs and after pulling myself upright on one of them, and with the help of the other angler, I was able to crawl across the log jam to the bank.
I lost my rod and reel, my hat and glasses, a couple of boxes of flies, some accessories and my wedding ring, a family heirloom since it was my grandfather’s and had my grandmother’s initials, A S, engraved inside. I don’t remember what we ate for supper that night, I was still tasting river water. John at Rock Creek Mercantile told us that in the prior couple of weeks three people had drowned: one on the Blackfoot, one on the Clark Fork, one on Rock Creek and his body was found several miles downstream. They say that only the good die young.
Having recently retired I now have a little more time to reflect back on some of the things I have accomplished in my life. During this time of reflection I have come to the conclusion that the best ideas I ever had, I borrowed from someone else! That is how my favorite fly, the Purple Prince Charming came to be.
Several years ago Fly Tyer Magazine featured a fly pattern called the Prince Charming. I have always been a big fan of the standard Prince Nymph, so this fly caught my eye. As I recall, the original Prince Charming had a stubby marabou tail and an olive tinsel body. It had a wire rib, white goose biots for the wing and also quite a bold thorax with dubbing and several wraps of hackle. After studying the article and the step by step instructions, I tied some up and they looked okay, but I saw the potential for something better.
Since the fly was “just okay”, I borrowed that pattern and asked myself how to make this fly better. First thing to go was the marabou tail, which I replaced with Zelon. Next the abdomen, where the olive tinsel was out and replaced with purple stretchy floss. The wired ribbing and the white biot wings were fine by me. For the thorax, I did away with the dubbing and just made three full turns with standard dry fly hackle. That is how the Purple Prince Charming came About
.
In the past couple years, my Prince Charming family has grown and now includes Red, Olive, Hot Pink, Chartreuse and Copper. I will fish these flies from early spring through the fall. I encourage you to tie some up and give them a try.
An assessment of Elevated Riparian Optimization (ERO) structures on the South Fork of the Kinni, Hay Creek, and Cady Creek, 5-years post installation
By Loren Haas
Hungry water is copious amounts of water not heavily laden with silt which provides extra energy and carrying capacity for sand and silt. Typically occurring in the spring, frozen soil helps minimize runoff erosion. Heavy snow accumulation and a late thaw made for one of the best spring scouring events in recent years.
Flooding on the South Fork of the Kinni this spring has flushed out the sand below each of the EROs. Last year’s partial deposition is gone and the deep holes are looking much deeper and longer than ever. All of the EROs except one produced fish. One ERO that has a flat rock wedged in between the anchor rocks provides narrowing high velocity and redirected water and has accidentally produced my favorite spot on the creek to catch fish.
Additionally, 3 more lunker structures have been partially exposed for the first time in many years. One is below an ERO, the others are upstream of the other 9 EROs. I expect this condition to be temporary as summer rains bring more sediment from upstream and rebury them. We will see. Pocket water sixteen inches deep or more has reappeared upstream of the EROs. It is still impossible to cast due to all the willows, but If you were to drop a fly into the pockets there are fish holding in the deeper areas.
There are large sections of prairie that are apparently free of any willows! Some areas contain willows on one side of the creek while the other sections are totally infested with willows. Unfortunately, the areas closest to the creek still have a major willow problem.
Hay creek has 4 of the 5 Eros still producing deep enough water to hold trout. Only the #1 structure closest to the bridge is deep enough to hold nice sized fish. Two of the previous deep corners that held fish have filled in with sand and are devoid of fish. Pocket water does exist between the EROs but it lacks adequate depth or cover and seems to lack fish. Perhaps additional efforts such as adding a rocky substrate and additional structures could lead to more bank stabilization and subsequent undercuts that may attract trout.
Cady creek, what a gem. While some areas still remain dominated by sand, many areas have flushed clean and provide pocket water up to 45 inches deep. From the snowmobile bridge upstream, the #1 ERO is still plagued by rock washed into the downstream side of the ERO. It won’t provide deep water until the rock is removed. We did remove the rock upstream last fall which allowed scouring to occur and the ERO went from 85% full to 50% full under normal water levels. With that said, there is deep water and trout in the bend due to natural snags and rock causing the water to rise over and cut deep water below the snags. The #2 ERO provided stable 4 feet deep water 55 feet downstream. That number has increased by 5 to 10 feet, but this might be temporary. The #3 ERO deep hole is HUGE! Over my waders and maybe over my head with an additional 10 feet of length of 3-foot-deep water added. In a previous report I stated, this is the strongest and best ERO ever built, but wow I was shocked. Too many spooked trout to count.
I visited Halverson horse ranch to check on the scouring. It’s amazing and far better than after it was just finished. Enough said.
From my perspective the ERO’s constructed over the last 5 years have done a good job of creating deep runs. These deep runs provide habitat and cover for mature fish and are an important component of a healthy fishery.
ERO Structures Number and Location:
Hay Creek, 5
Plum Creek, 2, uninspected this year
South Fork Kinni, 9
Cady Creek, 3
Trimbelle Halverson easement, 2, uninspected this year
Trimbelle Thom easement, 1 or maybe 2, uninspected this year
Gilbert Creek in Dunn County, 10 or more and still being built
Loren Notes that the construction of ERO structures by the Wisconsin DNR is a “very good sign of things to come.”
At the original Bob Mitchell’s Fly Shop in Lake Elmo, across the street from the second iteration, you could smell the coffee on your way down the stairs. There was a wooden desk just to the left, where, more often than not, Jean Mitchell was knitting, reminding me of Madame LaFarge during the ‘terror’ in 18th century France. Bob might be tying flies at the vise that was always ready for customers to use, and a group of people, mostly male, was gathered around a table with mugs that had their names on them, telling lies about encounters with big local trout. Dr. Patrick Daly, with those twinkling Irish eyes and turned up black eyebrows, was a Saturday morning regular, as was Dick Schwartz, who loved to tout his Orvis ‘Far and Fine’ as a more than worthy competitor to Sage’s 479LL, an assessment I vigorously opposed. Jonathan Jacobs was usually there too, sometimes with his little daughter, a former board member of our TU chapter. He insisted on calling me Layton instead of Skip like everybody else did, so I will always refer to him by his full name rather than Jon. Legendary guide and caster Bob Nasby showed up to.
Dry Fly Dick Frantes was seen often on the Kinni, but rarely in the fly shop. You could always tell Dick from others on the stream because he wore a white pith helmet when he fished. Dan Bruski was a regular, as were Don Ausemus, Kevin Becker, Denny McGinn, Bill Stieger and Dean Hansen. Dennis Hook and Jan Jancourt brought in bamboo rods for our inspection. A few bamboo rod builders brought in their wares to show off. The names of some of those guys escape me now, but the recent Kiap-TU-Wish ‘Hot Dog Boil’ at the Ellsworth Rod and Gun Club reacquainted me with some of them, whose faces I remembered, but whose names escape me still. In order not to display my ignorance, I conversed with these guys without letting on that I didn’t remember their last names.
In the 70’s and 80’s, I was privileged to be as much an employee as a customer. My pay for helping out was a 10% discount, which, my wife would tell you, I used way, way too much. I could sell rods, reels, materials, supplies, and make change from the cash register, even though there was no cash register. Money was kept in a small gray metal box on the desk. In those days, the latest Graphite III offering from Sage sold for a bit over $200. As I write this, I’m bidding at Ebay on a used, two-piece, 389LL for much more than twice what It cost to buy brand new.
On the other side of the parking lot was a field of grass, where a few of us taught fly casting to beginners, and tried to work out the kinks in the technique of old timers. You could try out a new rod, mounted with a reel and line from the upper dresser drawer in the fly shop, each of which was carefully labeled with line weight and type, then come back inside and buy the rod…or not. When we sold reels, we filled them with backing from a spool that was suspended from the ceiling, and used the right knots to tie the backing both to the reel spool and the new fly line. There were only two manufacturers of lines that we sold at the shop in those days, Scientific Anglers and Cortland, and there were heated arguments about the superiority of one over the other. There were fly tying classes offered, and I taught a few of them. Often, the class focussed on a single skill, like tying parachute dry flies, or soft hackles, or bead heads. Most of the materials in those days were actual feathers and fur, metallic tinsel being the most common inorganic material. Of course, as fellows learned to tie, and to have confidence in their creations, they bought rods, lines and reels, tippet material, hooks, hackle necks and fur patches. I was lucky enough to be part of a happy, successful business. Bob and Jean enjoyed their fishing as much as anyone. They lived in a house overlooking Lake Mallalieu in Hudson, and Bob could be found early summer mornings fishing the Trico hatch just upstream of the bridge on the main branch of the Willow. Jean said that one of her favorite things was to float the Bighorn River with famous guide, Ron Granneman, and stay at the Bighorn Angler in Ft. Smith. The year after the Sage 389LL was introduced, Bob took one on a float trip and returned to the fly shop to say, incredulously, that it was the only rod he fished with.
