FENCEROWS...Spring Training
By John Luthens
Position players fielding endless streams of ground balls, the sharp crack of the bat, pitch counts monitored and curve balls tested; baseball spring training is for working out the bugs.
For an open-water fisherman in Wisconsin, spring training means dusting off the boat covers, mending line and greasing reels, all the while warming up your casting arm with your favorite stadium tail-gate beverage, toasting the snow and ice to give way to the open and sun-drenched water of summer.
The thing is, baseball players get to work out the spring bugs in the temperate bliss of Arizona and Florida, while we here in Wisconsin are forced to take what spring blows in. We necessarily relegate our training to whatever open waters wash our way.
Now, if you’re a trout fisherman in Wisconsin, you happen to be blessed with a multitude of waters throughout the state that open early for a catch-and-release season. From March 2 to April 27, if artificial lures are your thing, and if you don’t mind throwing back what you catch, then there is plenty of time to work out the bugs. Subject of course, to the same unpredictable weather that comes through our northern climate over the span of those dates.
It is hypothetically possible to skip town and train like the pros do, opting for a warmer climate to limber up in. But for some of us it just doesn’t seem to fit the mold. Case in point is a doctor friend I’ve recently had the pleasure of meeting.
Both my new friend and I tend towards the world of fly fishing, which I happen to believe is a world that spans social classes. I’m even planning to help him with a fishing clinic for kids later in April, which by the way is that season of fresh smells and soaked turf along towards the end of spring training, when the start of the season can’t seem to get here quick enough.
He’s a real nice fellow and a passionate fly fisherman, the difference between us being he’s a precision Oral Surgeon with a ton of schooling and diligent study under his belt. He meticulously works in the science of helping people.
Consequently, the doctor is, at this very moment, conducting his spring training flinging flies at bonefish and tarpon on a southern Mexican peninsula.
I’m quite meticulous too. I meticulously skipped a ton of college classes at UW- Lacrosse, opting instead to explore the coulee trout streams that wound through the bluffs and constantly beckoned me to sneak out the campus back door. Karma now dictates that I work on printing presses for a living, sometimes all night and sometimes I end up sleeping in my truck in the parking lot. I’m also not averse to using a hammer on the gizmos to get them to do what I want.
Consequently, my spring training got relegated to the oak ravines of Hobbs Woods, a 60 acre natural area that pops out of the farm fields south of Fond du Lac. It was relegated to the rocky bottom and snow-covered banks of Parsons Creek.
Parsons Creek called me in from the bullpen to work out the bugs on my close-quarter fly casting, and to test out the new seam patches on my waders- only the ones below my knees-because the meandering stretch of water just isn’t deep enough to test any of the real puncture wounds along the wader’s chest; holes that magically appeared one dusky trout night last summer after meeting up with a rusted barbed-wire fence.
Spring training on Parsons Creek
The info I’d gathered on Parsons Creek, spoke of “some” naturally reproducing brook trout. I didn’t know exactly what the quantity of “some” portended, but the WDNR and the EPA classified the steam as impaired. I figured it would trend to the lower populations, likely more of an unincorporated hamlet as opposed to a full-blown trout city.
The weather called for snow showers, and the temperature was far from warm even for an early Wisconsin spring. Overall, the scouting report told me I was going to get out-hit, out-pitched and out-played. But you never know, and that’s why you play the game.
Besides, I subscribe to the trout philosophy of esteemed outdoor writer, Robert Traver, who wrote long ago in a book titled “Trout Madness” from the wild waters of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: “But if heaven forbid, there were no trout and men were everywhere few, I would still doubtless prowl the woods and streams because it is there and only there that I really feel at home.”
I went to the game, though it was not an early rising affair. Catch-and-release spring weather and water temperatures tend to keep the trout sluggish, and feeding activity is best observed in the early morning and late afternoon. It’s the extreme opposite of the summer months, when it’s best to be in the trout runs during the dark, witching hours.
There was plenty of time to sip coffee instead of slamming it scalding hot and running like a madman down the stream banks to hit the morning rise. Spring training saves your morning tongue from burning too badly early on, breaking it in slowly for later in the season. The same concept applies to skewering waders on wire fences in the deep twilight hours.
By 10 A.M. I was fishing small stonefly nymphs, bumping them along the graveled bottom of Parsons Creek, dropping them as close to the brush and logs as my early season skills allowed. It takes a while to get back in the rhythm after a long winter.
Hobbs Woods didn’t disappoint in the least. Gray squirrels kept me company, skittering along the banks and voicing fishing advice. Large banks of icicles dropped over the openings to the springs that fed the creek. A teal duck splashed merrily beneath the banks, laying claim to a private stretch of water.
I worked out the kinks. I slowly found my rhythm. I tangled less in the overhangs as the day wore on, dropping my flies in the best runs of current. I stuck with my stonefly fakes, though I didn’t turn over any fish. I was hesitant to drop my gloves and change up the game in the snowy banks. If I hooked my fly in the brush, I sloshed through the hole and retrieved it. The sneaky-business part of trout fishing wasn’t yet imperative, and I learned that my wader patches held up just fine.
It began to snow, lightly at first, then slowly building into big, white tracer-bullet flakes. Tiny winged bugs, called snow midges, began to hatch and fly about. I caught one in my forefingers and pondered finding something in my fly box to approximate the hatch. I opted for the warm security of my gloves.
I wondered how the tarpon fishing was getting along, down in the land of margaritas and Bermuda shorts. I slogged on through the snow, whistling “La Cucaracha” and enjoying my own personal brand of Wisconsin spring training.