Fencerows: November Wind
November Wind
By John Luthens
Leaves fell like heavy rain from the oak tree in my yard. They swirled and flew horizontal in the November wind. They warned me off the water, but I was restless.
There would be a storm riding the wind in from the northwest. It was hard to tell if it would be rain or snow. November storms can be chancy in Wisconsin. They have a deep history.
A pike swirls from the waters of the Milwaukee River.
The Edmund Fitzgerald, a cargo freighter, took its last Great Lakes voyage almost 38 years ago to the day, leaving port in Superior loaded with taconite iron ore and headed for the steel mills in Detroit.
Winds hit 70 mph and snow flew in stinging pellets. Waves crested 35 feet high. The mighty ship yielded to November, riding to the bottom of cold Lake Superior with 29 crew members whose bodies were never recovered.
Nov.11, 1940: Armistice Day. It’s now known as Veterans Day in our country, a day to honor the sacrifice and service of our proud military history. But what started as an unseasonably mild holiday for duck hunters on the Mississippi River Bottoms 73 years ago, quickly turned deadly, when the wind shifted out of the west and blew in a storm of epic proportion.
Mallards and Canvasback flew ahead of the rising gusts, but hunters in the back-sloughs soon lost interest as winds peaked at 60 mph, bringing waves of snow, ice and plummeting temperatures.
Skiffs capsized and hunters were left wet and stranded. Before daylight the next morning, the temperature stood at 6 below zero. From Mississippi blinds between Red Wing, Minnesota and Lacrosse, Wisconsin, more than 30 duck hunters never made it back.
Last fly fishing trip of the year.
I was not in such dire peril as the leaves fell. It was not life or death. The November wind made me restless, and I did not want to rake. Let it take my leaves where it would. I wanted a last crack in the wind-blown waters of November.
The November wind pushed me to the Milwaukee River; a stretch I seldom have the opportunity to fish. Steelhead and Browns come late in the year from below the harbor in the city of Milwaukee, winding on a spawning run through an urban jungle of bridges and pilings. It can be crowded, wall-to-wall anglers in the city, and rightfully so. Some of the fish are monsters.
My hometown of Grafton makes it into the annals of the Wisconsin Trout Fishing Regulations as the highest point up the Milwaukee River that is open for trout all year, the end point being the village dam. I didn’t want the crowds of the lower river, and a big fish wasn’t that imperative.
That being said, Grafton is at the outer limits of chance for a steelhead. The odds of winning the lottery are probably worse than catching a trout in town, but I’m not certain how close the margin is.
Sometimes, for a fisherman, a chance is all you can ask for. It can be enough to keep you going in the most brutal of conditions. The wind already dictated a low success rate with the fly rod, so I settled for meeting the river closer to its own terms, south of the town of Cedarburg.
I entered the river at a small park on nothing more substantial than the fact that I liked the look of the river there. It was a Saturday, but the park was deserted. November weather, when it starts going bad, can have that effect on the masses. I geared up in waders and wondered what was wrong with me. Am I crazy, out here, fly fishing in this weather while everyone else is tucked indoors; or am I in the heart of something that others are missing. That, my friends, is the kind of circular logic that gets you locked in a straightjacket.
The sky was November gray and the clouds rolled low and heavy. There were whitecaps moving against the current. It was hard to tell where the sky ended and the water began.
I tied on a black nymph, pinching a piece of split shot at the head. I chose the fly on the same whim I chose my entry point into the river. I wanted to get down in the current, but the split shot also made for easier casting. I didn’t plan on changing it unless it snapped off. Low and with the wind, I could cast a country mile. But if I turned into the gale and fouled my back cast, I was lucky not to spear my eye out.
Then, I just went fishing. I waded down river, hitting gravel seams and the deep stretches along the outside bends. The trees along the high banks creaked and smashed together in the wind. It was a little eerie, like the trees were stretching out and criticizing my casting ability. I kept plenty of water between me and the biggest widow makers.
Winding through a grassy channel between two islands, I nearly stepped on a pair of mallards sheltering from the wind. Feathers flew and water sprayed. If you’ve ever kicked up a grouse or pheasant at close range when you weren’t expecting it, you get the general idea of how long it took my pulse rate to come back down.
I worked a mile of river. No silver steelhead found its way into my net. But it wasn’t a wasted trip. From a deep pool, a flash of life charged my black nymph. It was a shovel-nosed, snaky fish. It was the first pike I’ve ever taken on a fly. It would have been a dandy-sized brook trout, but it was only a small pike. I scratched it off my fly- fishing bucket list nonetheless.
As I finish writing this, there is a covering of snow on the ground and it’s almost cold enough to make ice. It’ll probably melt, but the wind has spoken. It’s time to trade the fly fishing rod for a tip-up and a jig pole.
And if by chance it doesn’t melt, then I’ll know that I rode the November wind to a last open-water trip. I’ll consider myself blessed. Blessed for a season of fishing, and blessed because I won’t have to worry about raking leaves until spring.