Fencerows

By John Luthens

“Off the Grid”

The birch leaves were flaming gold.  They sifted through the high pine ridge from the hardwood acres beyond and fell noiselessly in the pooled water, curling around the bend and clinging wet to my waders.  Late October on the Brule River is like standing in a solemn outdoor cathedral.

  “Fish on!” screamed Tom.  The northern Douglas County valley echoed with life.  When the spawning run swings to life, the autumn cathedral turns wild at the drop of a rod and the flick of a hook-setting wrist.

  “Should I wade over with the net?” I hollered from below the curling pool.

 “Nope, Jon is right here.  We’ve got it covered.” Tom shouted back.

So let it be duly recorded that my good friend Tom Nigl, with the help of his son Jon, caught the first one – Almost.

 The steelhead rolled its silver sides towards the shallows.  Jon grabbed the tail and attempted a good-faith maneuver designed to lift the fish onto the bank.

 The Lake Superior rainbow had alternate arrangements in mind.  With a shake of its square tail and a slight wriggle (more of a violent double-twisted thrash, actually) the silver beast plunged free and back into the shelving water.

 “I thought you said you had it covered,” I laughed.

 There was a moment of fuming antics on the clay banks of the Brule that would have done justice to a stomping bear.  Then silence descended again from the high white pines, leaving only the golden leaves falling and sound of spoons and flies hitting the water in a deep searching pattern.

 It didn’t matter.  We decided that touching the steelhead’s tails was as good as a catch- sort of like tagging a deep-sea shark before cutting the line.  We were off the grid and there was no one around for a country mile to tell us otherwise.

Late season trout fishing along the lower section of the Bois Brule River, like many other tributaries along Lake Superior’s south shore, stays open under special regulations until November 15.  It’s a magical time that starts beneath vivid fall colors and Indian summer breezes, switches to raw and cold rain off the Superior shores, and often ends up in a full-fledged blizzard by the time it all wraps up.

And swimming through all the glories of autumn turning towards winter, as temperatures plummet and water levels fluctuate, lake-run brown and steelhead trout move up the river from Lake Superior to spawn.

The lower Brule stretch remains open from the bridge at U.S. Highway 2 down to the river’s mouth.  It’s about a 12 mile stretch as the crow flies, with bends and twists along the remote stretches holding more water than can be rightfully explored in a lifetime.

 Our trio was off the grid on the lower Brule for three days.  One fish lost or caught was nothing.  There were miles of promising water swirling around our waders.

The air was alive with the sounds and smells of crunching leaves and dark stands of fragrant wet balsam.

“I could stand in this river and smell the air and not even fish,” said Tom, looking perfectly content to stand and do just that after his first go-round with a Brule River steelhead.

I agreed, but told him that just in case he hooked another one while standing and smelling, then he should try and play it out a little more.

 “It’s not like pulling sheephead out of Lake Winnebago, for God’s sake,” I think were my exact words.

 Neither of us was in any hurry to be back on the grid, back to Oshkosh where we both work.  Our jobs seemed trivial compared to a rolling river cut through this vast northwest corner of Wisconsin.  Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, both Tom and I agreed long ago that our real jobs are quite trivial.

Jon Nigl, on the other hand, has a job that is anything but.  He was on leave from the Air Force where he flies on refueling tankers.  He was slated to be back on base in Wichita, Kansas in a week.

 While it was debatable if our boss would come looking for Tom and I if we stayed permanently off the grid, we were pretty sure that Jon’s would.  Three days would have to suffice.

 “Less smelling and more fishing,” I told Tom. We moved further off the fringes of everyday life.

It rained, not all that conducive to the fishermen, but very conducive to trout moving upstream.  Steelhead and browns have an ingrained sense of the waters where they were spawned, returning again and again to the same river.  Floods of river water shoots deep into the lake and beckons the fish.

 We threw everything in our fishing war chest at the river: spinners and spoons, yarn flies, spawn and worms.  Tom and I tried to solve the puzzle of a large surfacing brown that rose from the depths of a riffled pool and mocked us.

 I changed flies 5 times trying to tempt the trout.  Tom and I finally agreed that the fish was just trying to shake eggs loose and really wasn’t interested in feeding.  We always fall back on that excuse when we can’t catch ‘em.

 We searched stretches of river, catching trout and releasing trout, saving a few for pictures and a few for the frying pan.  Jon Nigl was adept at ranging the banks ahead, finding the deep runs and fishing with vitality, while Tom and I used our age and wisdom to wade behind and poke out likely corners.  Jon hooked up with a 21 inch brown one wet afternoon, easily landing it without a net. 

 “He hooks up with F-16 fighter planes at forty-thousand feet.  Bringing in a big fish is probably anti-climatic.” I told Tom. “I’m sure it was just a training run when he tried to land your steelhead.” I added.  We picked up the pace some, sloshing in wet waders and moving into his son’s hole like a pair of vultures.

 Trees leaned in dark tunnels along the bank with fresh wood chips around their trunks, gnawed by beavers to the breaking point.  Grouse flushed at our feet.  We walked off the river at nightfall, alternating over ridges of pine forest and down swamp-bottom valleys, getting back to the truck in near-darkness and chased by imagined wolves the whole way.

My landing net took a lot of grief, hooking up on every thorn bush and protruding deadfall that barred our way.  I took my own share of grief from both the chuckling Nigl boys every time the net hung up and pulled me back into the thickets.

 Darkness found us back in the cabin, drying gear by a crackling fire of split birch.  Did you know that if you go in over your wader tops and soak a camera, the camera will dry out in front of the fire too?  I’m not saying it will work again, I’m just saying it will dry.

 The last morning found me beneath a cluster of chokecherry trees, chest deep in cold Brule River water and hooked to cold lightning.  The steelhead cleared water twice before dropping to the bottom and playing tug-of-war.  My fly rod bent in half every time I tried to raise him.

 The net that caused me so much trouble over the past three days saved the moment as the steelhead finally came in.  Twenty-three inches of pure fight, caught and released. 

Now, days removed; Tom and I shuffle off to work and Jon flies high in the service of our country.  It seems like a distant dream.  But I know that for a moment in time we were all off the grid together.  I still wake up in a cold sweat with my rod hand shaking.

Brule River steelhead caught and released.

Jon Nigl with a Brule River Brown.

Tom and Jon Nigl on the banks of the Brule.