FENCEROWS...“Spring Thoughts on the Pine River”
By John Luthens
The first dandelions poked out of the yard. The grass was slowly turning a bright shade of green that only May in Wisconsin seems to bring out, waving in a gentle breeze under a blue sky with lazy clouds and becoming greener with every ticking rise of the morning sun.
The grass was long enough to warrant a first-time flyby with the lawn mower. And while the dandelions would grow up like they always do, longer and uglier with the summer before puffing up and blowing away into white-seed cotton, these first ones looked almost pretty. They’d fall under the mower’s wrath just the same. My lawn would be shipshape like a manicured golf course and smelling like fresh hay.
Marsh marigolds blossoming along the Pine River.
It was one of those spring mornings that constitute a fork in the road. Down the path of yard work, the summer spins to life. The grass grows quickly and the mower roars more often, there is a flash of Fourth of July fireworks above at some point, and then you are raking autumn leaves in a cold breeze. It is over just like that.
I hadn’t caught a trout yet. That was down the other fork. A fine spring morning was made for many things: the first dandelions, wrestling a lawn mower to life, and trout fishing among them. I was down the block and headed out of town with my waders and tackle with these thought dancing in my head; with the grass getting greener in the rearview mirror, and with the first dandelions of spring left standing proud in my yard like infants learning their first steps.
I’d only heard stories of the Pine River. It starts in the small streams and tributary ponds around Wild Rose, stretching through Waushara County before dumping into the Wolf River system along the cattail lined shores of Lake Poygan. The lower reaches of the Pine are warm enough to hold bluegill, crappie, and bass. But the stories that interested me most involved the upper reaches and spring-fed water. Those stories smelled like trout.
A drive through new country in the freshness of spring is like staying young forever. There were the same newly plowed fields and the same budding trees; maples and oaks, lowland alders, and there were the same swampy stretches that hold water far into the dry summer months. But it was new country and I was headed to a new trout stream. Every field and tree turned back the years with the fresh and strange promise of a new season.
The map showed a snaking river line of blue that passed beneath bridges and swung near any number of interesting back roads. I have spent untold time staring at strange blue lines on a map and wondering what they look like in real life. If I spent as much time picking dandelions out of my yard as looking at maps-well, then I guess I wouldn’t have any dandelions in my yard. I’d miss out on a lot of fun and have a stooped back to boot.
I didn’t know what I would find or even where the best place to hit the river might be. It was not yet my river. When I got close, somewhere between the towns of Saxeville and Wild Rose, I put my map away and simply drove down interesting lanes. I left it to chance.
Soon enough my leisurely drive brought me to a sandy parking lot, a trail winding out of sight through scented pines and not a soul to be seen. There was yet no glimpse of the river, but it was as inviting a place to embark as you could ask for. I was getting tired of driving around anyway. Scenery through a truck window will only carry you so far on a trout expedition. You need to walk the final paces in waders.
The Pine River slowly appeared through thick tangles of blackberry bushes and thorn apples. Birds whistled unseen in the thickets and the river rolled around a bend into a marshy bottom. I started to make the Pine River one of my own places at the ruins of an old stone footbridge that stood at the end of the fisherman’s trail.
The water was clear and the bottom was sandy, but there was a dark pool where the footbridge had once crossed. I was anxious to try out a fishing fly called a Tungsten Medusa that resembles a wriggling gob of red worms wrapped around a weighted gold hook. I cast above the pool and drifted the fly into the swirling current.
No fish came out of the pool depths, but as I pulled the fly back in, a shadow lit from beneath an overhanging bush almost at my feet and nailed the fly. It was a brown trout, only about 8 inches, but coming on only my third cast of the day.
Now, catching a trout right off the bat is usually the kiss of death for me. I end up walking a lot of bank before I hook another. I don’t understand it. It’s one of those unexplained mysteries of nature. At least the first one told me there were indeed trout here. Now I had faith, and faith keeps you going on around the next bend, and the next one after that.
A brown trout released back to the cut banks of the Pine River.
The banks of the Pine River were cut deep. It was sneaky going trying to crawl up to the edges. Occasionally I plunked down too hard on the bank and the vibration tailed out big trout from below. I lost one of my Medusas to the tangles of a watery brush pile. I sat beneath a tree at a turning point and tied on a black streamer that was shot through the tail with silver tinsel.
True to form, I still hadn’t hooked another fish. I watched the river flow by, my streamer hanging idle in the water. I took in the view. Marsh marigolds blossomed along the banks, putting my dandelions to shame with their brightness. I brushed the first wood tick of the year off my arm. I imagine I could sit and watch a trout stream roll by for hours, but I started back, drifting a long line below the banks.
Another small brown surrendered to my streamer on the way back to the stone footbridge. It was getting dark. It was that magic time on a trout stream when every ripple looks mysterious. A new river gives off sort of a haunting disquiet at dusk. I felt a little guilty about neglecting the yard work for two small fish, but I forgot my remorse quickly as my line went tight beneath a clump of overhung marsh grass.
The trout cleared the water twice. A jumping trout on the end of your line is worth more than a running lawn mower and a trimmed yard. I stripped line and kept the fish from diving back to home under the bank. It was a touch-and-go for a while when the fish sulked under a small log, but I finally turned him back into open water.
Fourteen inches of bright gold came into the net. To catch one like that on nothing more than a chance on a new river and the call of newly blossomed spring; that is why the dandelions will continue to blossom in my yard and the grass will soon become long enough to cut with a sickle.
A river like that, when you find it and make it your own, becomes a fountain of youth where the autumn winds will never blow cold.