Fencerows: A Typical Fishing Day
By John Luthens
There are fishing days that set your heart to fluttering. A hard won limit, figuring out the magic color and presentation when every other boats running into the landing holds nothing but frustrated anglers. Or maybe that fish of a lifetime that smashes your tackle in an epic battle.
Then there are the typical small-fish days and, as often happens with me, the monotonous array of typical no-fish days. Through late nights and early mornings, staring down the end of an unmoving rod, I’ve come to see that some of the finest fishing trips don’t involve a single nibble. Those days can turn into the best fishing journeys, revealing something in plain sight that a bustling society hurries past without a second glance. Those typical days make all the early mornings and late nights stand out.
It was the first week of July when the Milwaukee River, in the suburban town of Grafton, Wisconsin, offered up such an experience. We made our way below the Bridge Street Dam in the center of town, traffic crossing over it as fast as the spillway from the dam flowed beneath it. A boulder-strewn embankment piled down and under the bridge and the footing was tricky.
The beginning of a typical fishing day below the Bridge Street Dam in Grafton, Wisconsin.
My son clambered down with his fly rod held high and with the sure steps of a mountain goat. I picked down the side slower, using my own rod as walking stick and lumbering with all the grace of a bull elephant. The current frothed beneath the dam, building up speed over the rocks as the Milwaukee River headed on its journey to meet Lake Michigan. The air was humid and the water looked right. The smallmouth bass we were targeting were as good as ours.
We waded below the dam, working the fast water and the deep-cut seams. We cast upstream and down. We changed flies, although I knew from experience that when the Milwaukee River bass take a mind to feed, they are anything but finicky as to what they will pounce on. After an hour of fishing, all we had to show were sore casting arms.
Moving into the overhung growth of the banks in order to bypass by a fast run of current, we found our first victory of the afternoon below a crab apple tree. The mountain goat climbed the tree and the elephant stayed below to collect the green apples. Then the two of us sat on a log in shafts of broken sunlight and lunched on a pile of the sour, but strangely irresistible, wild fruit.
Crossing onto a grass covered island, we finally hooked our first bass in a small, deep rip. It was fighting mad in the current and all 10 inches of the beast were up to the fight. If we knew in advance it would be our only fish of the day, we might have paid more attention. But we were more interested in a small rabbit that had amazingly found a home on the island, sitting with its back to us, perfectly still like rabbits will do, not so interesting, perhaps, except for the fact that we didn’t know rabbits could swim. For the record, we still don’t.
As we worked back upriver to our starting point, the first stars of the night began blinking on. In the deepening twilight we came upon a ripe mulberry tree. Our hands and mouths were soon stained as purple as the deepening summer sky. I was unsure of the gastrointestinal ramifications of stuffing a stomach full of crab apples and mulberries but, when you’re living for the moment, you tend not to worry about where you’ll be sitting tomorrow.
The Bridge Street Dam at the end of a typical fishing day.
The beginning of a typical fishing trip should be spent basking in light of anticipation, just as the end of the day should be spent rehashing and remembering; savoring the memories and filing them away for blustery days to come. When we first climbed down the rocks, the Bridge Street Dam was nondescript in the light of day. It was simply another in a long line of typical fishing explorations. But when darkness falls, then the Bridge Street Dam becomes one of the finest of places to reflect on the day.
The bridge is fitted with multi-colored lights that shine on the waterfall rushing over the dam. The waterfall turns from blue to green to red. It is pretty enough when you drive by and see it through the car window, but walking out of the bank-side brush along the Milwaukee River and seeing the water light up in rainbows of color is another thing altogether. It washes over your senses. For a moment in time you are fishing in some far off and exotic location instead of in the heart of one of the most populated areas in Wisconsin.
We sat in silence and watched the lights dance on the waterfall as the summer night came down around us. Our stringer was empty and our fishing rods lay forgotten on the glowing rocks. I could still taste crab apples and mulberries in my mouth. A typical fishing day doesn’t get any better than that.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com