scouting trip - Eastern Wisconsin

I took a trip this morning, up north to WI on a scouting trip in preparation for Chinook, Coho, and Steelheads in the coming colder months. I scouted the Root river (from Colonial Park and south of it) , the creeks in Petrified Springs Park, and lastly the Kenosha harbor. I waded at a quick pace up and down the river & creeks, and made some notes of the larger holes. By what I can read of the landscape and banks, the water level was pretty low. I had my 4 weight rod, some water, some flies, and a pair of binoculars, and off I went walking down the river bank. There was some bush whacking I had to do to get to the water, but perhaps this is because I don't know where the path was. In any case, I wanted to take the shortest line to the water, even if that meant through the bushes. There's a fairly large marsh on the way, so be careful.



Naturally I spent some time to wet the line a bit, and caught some smaller sunfish and what people call “creek chub” (does anyone know what the name of this fish is?). The creek chums can be caught like a trout, and on this day, I rigged up a tandem fly & nymph rig with an indicator. (By the way, once you discover the wonders of this rig, it’s hard to go back to anything else other than straight dry flies) I caught a bunch of smaller ones (bait sized) and 3 medium sized ones. There was some huge (looked at least 5+ pounds) carp patrolling the waters and they were darker in color than the normal golden ones. They had dark, almost black backs. I found one dead in the rocks in the middle of the creek, and seems like some smaller animal had chewed on it a bit. The weather was good, plenty of insects in the woods, and I had a vision of larger fish swimming up this river in the fall. I saw couple of people also scouting the creeks, and spoke to one of them about what to expect with the elbow to elbow situation. “Expect elbow to elbow when fish runs, get out early (before 4am)” was the response. "All you will see are the headlamps everywhere, even at 3:30am". I better get some extra bright headlamps and trim up my gear so I can access everything in the dark. I am not a fan of crowded fishing grounds, so I mainly plan to head up further north and towards the west in the fall. But the 15+ pound steelheads sounds too attractive to pass on completely so I am sure I will fish Eastern WI a couple of time, at least. Kenosha harbor was okay, but I wouldn’t spend too much time there without a boat. I’ll likely hire a charter soon to check out the surrounding waters there. Fishing does get increasingly better as I head north, and I guess I’ll soon find myself up in Canada before the year is over.