Somewhere Under The Rainbow - Trout Fishing In Wisconsin!

By Jimmy D. Chance

If you find yourself wishing there was still a little good magic left in this world, I will share with you where I found such a piece of paradise. It is here in the many shades of green and the most beautiful fish God ever created in this land of enchantment! Sure, big is nice, but how about some of those variations in trout? I see them all the time as I share with you the beauty of Wisconsin's best-kept secret. Some experts say you need to get slightly removed from your hectic world to see things better. Fortunately, I do not have to tune out since I never really got tuned in! I ran the rat race as inconspicuously as I could, all the while trout fishing as much as possible. Fortunately, each job I ever had was in itself a labor of love behind trout, and later Wanda and trout. These stories are all true and mine to share with you. Few of my many friends know all these stories or some that are still unwritten. I have my wife's permission to say truthfully that "trout are my first love." Having been in that relationship with trout for forty-two years before meeting her is enough evidence to convince any who would say otherwise.

I try to keep my life story short and void of soap opera stuff while giving you some of my most humorous situations involving mostly trout fishing in a small portion of Wisconsin's thousands of streams. Wildlife intrusions are involved in this story as well as my greatly missed best friend, his remaining descendant, "Colt Gang," and my new entourage of fisher persons. I will share with you just a few of the many great people changing my story as it developed itself. I tell of fishing days on my Wisconsin streams that you might find tough to beat anywhere else. And Dave's Wisconsin Record Rainbow Trout was discussed more than six months before he caught it.

You never know what tomorrow might bring in the way of a story even if you stay home. It has been quite a ride, and with retirement life, it got simpler and full of wonder. Wonder how I might have gotten here sooner with better health to fish? I am after all on this journey, still looking to continue to the good end. There were also a couple encounters with weather I chose not to tell: The five-headed lightning bolt had split high above my head, started one tree afire and two others smoldering when it struck all about me as I climbed out of the stream; and the top third of an old oak tree on the bank forty feet above was twisted off and dropped by the wind into the stream right where my fiancee and I had just finished fishing. Please enjoy my stories, even a few I may have survived.

I wish you the very best life can offer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684988136

Book preview

Title Page

Copyright © 2022 Jimmy D. Chance

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-68498-812-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68498-813-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To Truth

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: DFC

Chapter 3: A Trout Fishing Terrorist: A True Story!

Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Canoeing for Trout

Chapter 6: Brown Trout Travel

Chapter 7: A Good Day on the Water

Chapter 8: Why Keep a Logbook?

Introduction

It seems quite amusing to me that rainbow trout are the most associated species with trout fishing. Here in Wisconsin that is far from true. There are eighty-one Wisconsin streams listed in the 2002 Wisconsin Trout Streams Blue Book as naturally producing rainbow trout. That is far less than 3 percent of the 2,931 streams listed. Interestingly enough, in 2002, there was no inland record for our state. It did not matter that I had heard many rumors of rainbows around 24 inches in the previous decades or that I already had a 20 1/4-inch that was taxidermied. I had tried once before to get my best friend an even bigger rainbow trout than mine. He, at least, had a good look at it while watching me lose it in the fast current, unable to get my hand to grasp across the wide back. We had been fishing in Avalanche for twenty years already and rainbows had been stocked heavily in the Seas Branch Pond many years earlier. The design of the pond meant rainbow trout would occasionally end up washed down into the stream below. Dave wrote a ditty he called Avalanche that included catching them in Seas Branch Creek. Late in 2002, I talked with Dave about the new Blue Book showing the lack of a rainbow record they had pointed out. We both agreed that even though few rainbows had been logged in recent years, if one of us caught one over 20 inches, the both of us would jump through the hoops to get it verified. Well, all that positive energy sure paid off as David F. Colt managed the first Wisconsin inland rainbow trout record on July 2, 2003. We had plenty of hoops to clear as the Fourth of July week was in full swing. The DNR offices in La Crosse were not manned as wardens and even supervisors were all in the field. We ended up clear back near home at the Poynette McKenzie Center to get verification. The record did not stand for long but was a true stream fish, unlike the later records from lakes, just like the eighteen-pound brown trout inland record from Lake Geneva; it’s not the same. Stream trout are all that impress me, well, almost all. I find the other species to be dull, boring, and seen one, seen them all. Only big ones are impressive. Not so with trout! Some of the most beautiful trout I have ever caught were not very large. If I had a camera, I would have taken pictures of them, more so since digital became a reality.

Even though the rainbow trout have been evident in my trout fishing, they are the least of my enjoyment. It is my opinion that they are stupid fish, even biting as many as three times in fifteen minutes, including two reminders and releases. My buddy Joe killed and ate the 15-incher after catching it the second time. Crawford County recently had a very large 31 1/2-inch rainbow caught and released on April 30, 2017, by Ben Halfin. Did I mention that Dave’s record fish came from the West Fork of the Kickapoo River, which is not listed for rainbow trout? Or maybe about the time Dave and I stood at the mouth of the West Fork of the Kickapoo River, where it fed into the Kickapoo River? We watched a huge rainbow trout clear the water with plenty to spare far out in that fast, deep current. After Dave’s record had become official, we saw this and still estimated no less than 26 inches. We threw everything at it, but I doubt we got into his feeding lane from our vantage point.

My logbook, kept since 1998, along with a diary kept in 1995, has given me my own database on Wisconsin trout streams. It is my opinion that the Kickapoo River is the best trout stream network in Wisconsin, with over 237 miles of connected trout waters. These are easily utilized by large brown trout. If I fished only this network all my life, the knowledge gained would never encompass the whole thing. As it is, I have fished eighteen of the forty-nine recognized trout waters in this system since 1995. I can tell you where in those systems the waters are best for midsummer trout because I have over a thousand water temperatures logged with locations. I am a dedicated Wisconsin trout fisherman with a generous amount of knowledge, self-taught. Yes, I have read and continue to read anything that strikes my fancy as far as trout are concerned. I know that I will never gain all the knowledge. But you have to look and listen to learn. Sift for the truth and skip the bullshit! Since I love trout, it is their care that is extremely important to me.

While I long for a nice brook trout over 15 inches, it is the monster brown trout that trips my trigger. I fish too light of line to land most of these though it sure gets my adrenaline going to see or hook into them. Most trout fishermen never see or dream of 30-inch brown trout. There are sparse records in some newspapers of these leviathan trout caught in Wisconsin waters. No, I cannot claim even one of these. My best friend who witnessed many of the encounters has passed away, unable to verify those results. It matters not a smidgen.

It is a fact that if you keep written records, you will need to stick with the truth, or each lie will require larger and larger amplification to the point your data is mute! My rules changed early as I went along. It seemed that the more guys I fished with, the less fish I caught per hour. Imagine that. So in 1999, I set a new rule that I would not fish with anyone not keeping track of their fish while with me. And I started keeping water temperatures. Since I fished the Fourth of July week every year when our factory shut down for maintenance, this was an eye-opener, to say the least. Because water temperatures would climb some in July, the knowledge of the springs was influential in the holding areas for the big smart brown trout in July. I find trout to be the most beautiful fish because there is so much variation. I have never seen two alike in spot patterns. All the brown trout have a dual camouflage system. While their spots do not change much, it seems like their skin layer is darkened or lightened by where they are hiding and what parts of them are exposed to light. The deeper and more hidden, the darker the coloring. And lots of refracted light, while they take refuge under a skinny log, will make them look mottled and sometimes less pretty. The same fish looks bleached out when hiding on sandy bottoms, fully exposed but too deep for trouble from prey above. I put such a fish on my wall after my brother pointed out that he was a rhino-horned, bleached blonde brown trout. The hooked bottom lip had worn through the upper roof of the mouth. When his mouth was closed, it protruded up through a hole on top of the head like a horn on a rhinoceros. With little urging from my fly-fishing, catch-and-release-prone little brother, this took no convincing. I have released many browns over 20 inches and even more brook trout over 12 inches. And those brooks have their own dual camouflage system coloring.

Most of the rainbows I have caught were stockers in otherwise good trout streams. The natives I catch are far more impressive in color than those stock fish that rarely survive more than a year or two. My largest in the logbook was a fat 19-inch that was from Doc Smith Branch upstream from Everson Road, the year before they changed the regulation for catch and release to a half mile upstream from the road. He was really chunky and most likely a hatchery hog the DNR dropped in the middle of the protected sections set up for the entertainment of the artificial fishermen. I am more impressed with the wild native rainbows caught in the West Fork of the Kickapoo River or other smaller waters listed as natural reproducing. Dave’s record was the most beautiful one I have ever seen, including out west! The stripe was truly a shade of Wisconsin red my disposable waterproof camera never did capture. I should have emptied the roll just to try. Unfortunately, I had gotten used to the Minolta Vectis Weathermatic Zoom camera that I had lost in the swamp on Jennings Creek only the year before. All those pictures turned out so nicely with no effort I had forgotten my previous experience with those disposable cameras. All in all, it was a feather in my cap that I wrote and was published on the story