FENCEROWS...Fishing down Rocky Run
By John Luthens
I had a day coming all to myself in northwestern Wisconsin, the small town of Brule to be exact. My daughter wanted to spend a week with Grandma, and I heroically volunteered to drive her up. I could easily squeeze a day in to do that.
No need for Grandma to meet us half-way. No need to bother my wife with hectic packing and a seven hour pilgrimage. I would shoulder that burden. Besides, my wife wouldn’t know the fly rods I needed, or what kind of flies-and my waders are quite bulky if they’re not folded just right. Sometimes I’m so obviously shallow that I even disgust myself.
The Interstate 94 corridor that slants across Wisconsin is a long stretch of road. I’ve driven it so many times that I could do it in my sleep. There are parts of the drive when I’m afraid I’ll do just that, so I usually end up fiddling with the radio, alternately rolling the window up and down to stay awake and to yell at cattle and horses in the passing fields to drive back boredom. My daughter thinks I’m not quite right in the head.
It may have been true on this trip, because I had a coming day to myself, and for the life of me I couldn’t decide where I was going to fish. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the possibilities in the northwestern corner of the state.
The situation resolved itself when a passing thunder cloud dropped a torrent of rain and wind on my daughter and I. It was a little south of Eau Claire, and right in the middle of a rousing game of twenty questions.
The high, dark clouds passed quickly, breaking apart and opening a filtered shaft of sunlight. The clouds billowed up and bright spots of blue sky shot through. It looked like a banded mountain of rock, with sunlight shining over and through the peaks and valleys; and it came to me just like that. I was going to fish my way down Rocky Run.
Rocky Run
Rocky Run is a tumbling spring creek that cuts through a cedar-lined valley and empties into the Brule River. There are many such springs along the stretches of the Brule. Because of them, the great river runs cold all summer, and the Brule thrives with trout.
I’ve been up and down some of the Brule spring creeks. There are native brook trout in them along with some browns. They are far-reaching waters, not heavily fished, and very hard to fish because of thick vegetation and storm blown deadfalls. Usually my reason for exploring them boils down to the sake of exploration itself. You never know what you will find.
Some years back, a stream improvement crew found an elk antler in one of them. It was a preserved memory of the time when elk roamed free in the state; A time before eradication, and long before the Clam Lake reintroduction.
When I was a kid, jumping from rock to rock and playing the day away on one of the creeks, I found and old moonshine still tucked away in a side valley. During the Prohibition years, I’m told, (not from personal experiences, or ones that I remember anyway) that spring waters made for some pretty good hooch.
I’d somehow neglected Rocky Run. But with my daughter and grandma off shopping in Superior, or sightseeing Bayfield, or wherever it is girls go, I found myself parking in a small turnout and climbing down the steep banks of the Brule tributary.
The parking spot is on one of the multitude of back-county roads here, and to tell how to get there is more confusing than counting the spring creeks on the Brule. I will say that it isn’t far from The Hungry Trout, a road house tavern in the small province of Waino-which is not really a town, but more a state of mind.
Anyway, stop at The Hungry Trout and ask directions. When you leave the bar, you’ll be in the proper state of mind to find Rocky Run.
I explored the reaches above my parking spot, climbing down the steep road bank and rigging up my fly rod while sitting on a dead cedar giant covered in rich green moss. I tied on a grasshopper fly- always a good starting point in late summer. The going was difficult, so I was tangled more than I was in the water.
The stretches of the run I was able to get at were crystal clear. I could see brook trout darting out of their bank cover to take a look at my grasshopper. They’d hit at it with some abandon, but they were too small to mouth the fly. The brush strewn homes of the big fish were impossible to fly fish. I made a mental note to leave the grasshopper flies at home next time and bring a good gob of night crawlers instead.
Cutting back down stream, I crossed under the road through a stone culvert, with the creek pouring through, and me crouched down and sloshing through the darkness. There was a good, deep pool at the end of the tunnel. I actually fished the pool from the shadowed exit of the culvert.
Further down, I crossed beneath ferns and shadowed white pines, skirting over rock and gravels beds, and stopping frequently to indulge my passion of searching for arrowheads, lost relics, or agates.
Searching for banded agates
Lake Superior agates are banded quartz rocks that were deposited on rock beds by retreating glaciers. Depending on the specimen, some collectors will pay big money for a banded agate.
I’m not always certain how to identify them, because geological knowledge has mostly eluded me, but I’ll pick up a neat looking treasure rock here and there, filling my wader pockets and wondering why it gets harder to walk the longer I go.
While I was belly down on a rock bed, a doe and her fawn crossed into the stream. There ears twitched when they saw me, and they paced nervously into the brush. I’ve seen a lot of deer in my life, but when they stand in the brush and snort, and it’s so close that you can nearly feel their breath, it never gets old.
By the time I reached the spillway into the main river, I had nearly forgotten that I had a fishing rod; but the sun was setting just right, so I switched to a sink-tip line and waded the river, casting a Muddler Minnow and being careful not to step too deep, because with a load of potential treasure rocks in my waders, I figured I might sink like one if I went down.
Brown trout from Lake Superior can start their spawning run up the Brule in early August. I thought there could be a chance that I might connect with the advance guard. Right below the mouth of Rocky Run, the first splashing rises started.
Brown trout started darting from underneath the banks and from the deep runs to hit my fly. I hooked and lost several before finally connecting on two of them that went a solid 14 inches. Later in August, the really big browns start coming up, and they could probably swallow those 14-inchers whole.
A brown trout falls for a Muddler Minnow fly on the Brule
I wasn’t complaining. It was one of the best rises of fish I’d seen all summer. I topped it off by landing a 15 inch rainbow that stripped line like a torpedo and nearly hooked me in the brush twice before I got him in my net.
The fish were still rising, and although it was still light enough to fish, I had to head back. Not only was I unsure of where I was-I was unsure how to get back without tracking all the way up Rocky Run. It sure gets dark a lot quicker as summer wears on.
I’d released my fish. I wasn’t worried about bears. I guess I could have spent the night. But like I said, I only had one day to myself. I had to leave early in the morning. And I wanted to get to The Hungry Trout to see what kind of libations I could get in trade for my treasure rocks. I made it-but that’s a whole other story.