Into the Driftless

I caught my last Steelhead before covid. I've had some great adventures steelheading since, but I haven't landed another steelhead. After that trip I had been burned out and had a lot going on in life so I took a year off from any steelhead trips, and then covid came and went and I didn't quite have the same steelhead bug. I went on a bunch of trips out to the the Clearwater, the lake Superior Tribs, a bit around home. I helped my son land his first steelhead on the Brule (swinging a fly on a two hander). I was with a really good friend as he landed his first steelhead on the Clearwater. I hooked and lost some epic fish on long casts, but I wasn't the same fisherman that I had been.

Also, I was having a difficult time getting friends and relatives to fish with me, because I am so demanding on fishing trips. This means waking up predawn, fishing all day and grabbing something convenient once it is too dark to fish. I think I was burning myself out too, but was too driven to hook another steelhead, I couldn't see when it stopped being fun. 

Anyway, through the usual seasonal course of events, in 2023 I got back into trout fishing in a big way (which is how I generally do anything). It started small and innocently enough; I was visit some customers near Minneapolis and I realized I was close to pretty decent trout stream. 

It was early April and the Mississippi was way over its banks. I remember crossing the river at Redwing and seeing a tavern along the river bank that was flooded nearly up to its windows. It was an old Victorian building, I was sure that it was seeing its last flood, but I was wrong and it does a steady  business serving drinks to boaters all summer long. However, even with the Mississippi raging the trout streams of the driftless are known to run clear all year long. 

With this in mind I headed inland from the big river for several miles, to a spot where I hade had a good evening of fishing several years earlier, on one of the two previous times I had fished this stream. Really it was the only spot I knew. The water wasn't exactly clear but it was clear enough. I pieced my rod together, tied on a nymph. walk to the edge of the bank on my Khakis, and quickly hooked and landed a decent, 12' Brown. It was rainy and windy, so a bit of the joy was quickly diminished by the general foulness, and that was the only fish, but it was enough.

That night at the hotel I listened to a John Gierach audio book and  started planning a sales trip to Montana, and would be back on the same creek within several weeks, dialing in on caddis and Mayfly hatches, for several nights. If I had known a bit more that first day back in April, I probably could have had a pretty great day of fishing if I had gone a few more miles upstream, but given how the last few years have gone, it really was a great day of fishing even if it only lasted about 15 minutes.