Blog

2013. Another year of getting closer still to the true meaning of fly fishing. Last year, we brought you the written story. This year, we bring you the filmed story. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Driftless scenery and trout as the words of Dave Matthews Band and Coldplay drift through your speakers.

That clean, crisp, fresh feeling. You know, that “after the rain” feel/smell. It’s that window of time that really opens your senses and frees your mind. We’ve been getting hit with a lot of precipitation and this Memorial Day weekend was no different.

The first Saturday in May. The beginning of the Wisconsin Trout Regular Season. No, we didn’t keep any but traditionally this day has served an important purpose throughout my life. It all began just before my 5th birthday, when my dad took me out for my first opening day of trout season.

If you recall when I posted about the inspiration behind our development of The Red Storm (on 2/25/13), you’ll remember how excited we were about the possible trout production capability of this fly. You’ll also remember from our last post on our 3/23/13 outing, The Red Storm had a breakthrough performance. Well today, it was beyond breakthrough, it is now considered in an elite group of our flies called The Crème de la Crème of the Spirit Streams Flies lineup.

The chosen stream for today was one that had been on my radar for some time. To be honest, I mainly wanted to pursue this stream to see the supposed large rock formation that parallels the stream for a decent distance. If I caught a few trout, that would be nice but the formation is what lured me in.

Remember at the end of the movie Braveheart when William Wallace yelled “Freedommmm!” just before he took his last breath? His entire fight throughout the movie was to protect their freedom. Similarly in the trout fishing world, freedom is not guaranteed. Many high quality sections of rivers out east or out west are locked down.