Water Quality on the Milwaukee River

Milwaukee River water quality.

This spring I have been amazed at the increasing quality of the water on the Milwaukee River. Last night while trying out longer bellied spey lines at Hubbard Park, I observed an amazing mixed hatch of mayflies and caddis. Tan caddis lightly sprinkled with black caddis, blue winged olives, warm water cahills, midges, sulphers, and possibly gray drakes. This is a tremendous sign that water quality is good. The non-spawning immature smallmouth bass in the riffles that were home to the hatches were gorging on food.

I had an introduction to water monitoring for the Milwaukee Riverkeeper by my friend Rick F. We took PH levels, dissolved oxygen, and temperature and turbidity. In addition to that, we pried up streamside rocks to find out what kind of larvae were living under them. All this in the Hubbard to Capitol drive stretch which emerged from suffocation when the North Avenue bridge came down. Before the dam was removal, the only bugs in the area were mosquitoes, and the water stank.

Water clarity in the Milwaukee was excellent all year until recently when rains coincided with farmers plowing their fields. The north branch of the Milwaukee is running rather muddy, and downstream the silt is being carried in the water.

Recently a beaver has been spotted in the clean water around Good Hope road. (pictures here from the Milwaukee RiverKeeper). This stretch runs clean until the MMSD outflow pipe on the northeast bank of Green Tree road adds fecal matter and stink. Then downstream on Green Tree Rd. the water backs up from the small waterfalls at Kletzch Park, and is slow and unhealthy.

Beavers are a sign of healthy water and habitat. The Milwaukee River has come a long way since the days of its reputation as the big stinky. The removal of the Estabrook dam is the next step in aiding the river in repairing itself from the best intentions of mankind. That and preventing MMSD from arbitrarily dumping sewage in the river every time Milwaukee receives more than two inches of rain. If we are going to call ourselves “The Water City” we better clean up our act first.

A colleague of mine was teasing me about the beaver, theorizing that perhaps it had been recruited by the Estabrook Dam preservation faction to perform repairs and stabilize the structure with its beaver-dam engineering skills. ;)

Living closer to our food.

Closer to your food

Some recent experiences have led me to a string of thought regarding modern man, the ease of living, detachment from nature and essence.

In trips around to local parks, state forest lakes, and etc. I have noticed a decline in the ability for people of all ages to fish properly. I am not talking about flyfishing, but simply the ability to bait a hook, choose a bobber, cast into water deep enough to hold panfish, and have the patience and attention span to catch a fish. I have observed Dads teaching youngsters where the Dad was as clueless as the child. Funny. Anglo Saxon European immigrants to America have become detached from the sources of food so badly that they often don’t know what brussel sprouts look like in a garden. Food comes in a plastic package. Meat comes from the burger joint. Who is fishing? African Americans, Latinos, Laotians, etc. Because of more recent immigration, relative poverty and traditions and cultural values not yet washed away by our plastic cancer society, they live closer to their food.

Therefore, our own affluence and fast paced society has led to a decline in hunting, fishing, outdoor sports, and home economics. People no longer know how to sew, to cook, to can, to preserve food, to prepare wild game. My cousin Meggie has recently really become involved in organic gardening. Her vast garden is planted with veggies and herbs. She has started planting pre-Columbian beans and other vegetables that have not been genetically modified to taste like rubber bands. She says the difference between store-bought vegetables and those fresh out of her garden is like night and day. Although I don’t have a garden, I do haunt farmers markets every summer and fall, and eat as much raw whole food as I can, as well as stewing the veggies into pasta sauces and freezing them.

I actually have friends that don’t know how to cook anything. They eat at fast food joints when not subsiding on sandwiches or grilling out.

So traditions are dying. So what? Progress is good, right?
Well, the collapse of financial system, peak oil, global warming, etc. should show us that perhaps we should live closer to our food. The average piece of produce in the supermarket now travels over 1,500 miles to its destination. The largest portion of its price is dedicated to fuel cost for transportation. Imagine how much less greenhouse gasses would be emitted if we lived closer to our food. Only a generation back, both my mother and father had family gardens. Dad’s family built a smokehouse, and his grandfather homesteaded in British Columbia. Mom’s family of ten children were fed out of the garden. Homemade horseradish and sauerkraut were made. Apple cider was produced, home made cheese, home made rootbeer, and home made wine too.

Of course, our fisheries can’t support a constant kill-it-and-grill-it mentality, but we need to teach our children how to catch a panfish, clean it, get your hands dirty, and eat it for supper.

Fishing is part of the joy of nature, and an excellent way to begin to respect the resources we have. Tomorrow’s stewards of the environment may be sitting at the gaming console and eating fried chemicals.

When we forget where our food comes from, we lose a piece of our humanity.

That doesn't mean we all have to become mini-Thoreaus, nor vegans that won't eat anything that casts a shadow. We tend as a society to always take things too far in our personal search for identity. A small step toward buying from local farmers, eating a gamefish we caught, or a fresh tomato from the garden will begin to erode our throw-away society, and allow the future generations to carry on a tradition of appreciating natural things.

Some more hairwing flies

Based on the British Governor and Coachman patterns, this version of the Improved Governor was used on the Eel river as far back as 1910. It sports a bronze mallard wing with I have reinforced by an underwing of black bear.



Black Prince: An old pattern tied with hand dyed wool. This pattern is believed to have originated on the Umpqua around the turn of the century.



Unnamed original. A brighter fly to catch the eye of steelhead. The orange glows through the swept back black hackle and wings and the yellow butt acts as a spotlight. Good searching pattern.



My attempt at creating a traditional looking fly that can tempt steelhead in our colder water spring environment and be large enough without the use of flash or synthetic materials led to this Ackroyd with reduced dressing and using polar bear for the wing.

Fumbles with trout

One of the inevitable questions I am asked when people find out that I fly fish is “Oh, you are a trout fisherman, right?”

Right...

I spend most of my time chasing steelhead and smallmouth, and I castigate myself every year that I never spend enough time on quality trout streams.
So, for the past several weeks I have been on a whirlwind tour of Wisconsin’s coulee region and its fabulous treasures of trout streams. The numerous hills absorb water and disgorge it as cold water springs. Almost every valley contains a trout stream. It is fondly known as the Montana of the Midwest. There are so many little rivers and brooks that it is difficult to know where to start. This region took a big hit in June of 2008 when the whole area flooded. Roads were washed away, and lunker structures ended caught in trees. Stream improvements were washed away or left high and dry. But, as with all nature, time heals all. In this case the rivers have bounced back with the help of many dedicated volunteers who rebuild stream stabilization structures by hand.

The fishing was tough. Sunny days and low clear water make for spooky fish. Hatches were sporadic and mixed enough that the trout were not consistently keying on any one insect. I fished beetles and caddis mostly. A size 14 X-caddis ended up being the most consistent producer. I nymphed when I had to; a necessary evil during the day when Mr. Trout won’t look up.

I landed some nice browns and brookies, nothing of great size, but beautiful little bejeweled fish wearing a whole palette of colors. Much of my small success was due to going off the beaten path and fishing waters less pressured and smaller than most people are comfortable fishing. Helping this process immensely was Bob Blumreich, who took time out to give me a small smattering of his immense knowledge base of the streams and techniques for small water fishing.

There is something of the primeval wild in the hills. Fishing alone and exploring in the silence surrounded by lush spring foliage and catching wild colorful fish was a reward on its own. If there is a temple of fly fishing, then I have been there and lit a candle to those who have gone before me. As always, the learning process was fun and rewarding all on its own. We spend so much time trying to figure out the whys of trout thinking that sometimes I believe it borders on anthropomorphism. Us sophisticated descendants of monkeys with brains that allow us to conquer nature and destroy ourselves pitting our active neurons against a little creature with a brain the size of a pea, and often coming up on the short side. Perhaps this is what makes trout fishing special. If we were able to simply go down to the river and clobber the fish, it would take on all the excitement of meat gathering, and lose its mysteries, and thus, its appeal.

One must be happy just being able to fish and experience the coulee streams, even if the reward is a lost fish and a missed opportunity. Restraint is a good thing.

As usual, yours truly is followed by minute disasters. A lens popped out of my glasses deep in the woods on a secluded stream, and in order to get back to the car, I repaired it with 4X tippet material. I lost numerous fish when after a nice accurate cast, one of the dozen deer flies that were circling my head would inevitably land on my hand or face just as a trout rose and ate my fly. There seemed to be two kinds of flies, deer flies and ear flies; the latter preferred the canal of my ears as habitat. I stepped in holes and twisted both ankles, hooked every species of flora on my back cast, and communed with cows and cow pies.

I met few angles on the streams, as I prefer to fish alone and not in the immediate vicinity of others. Fly fishing is not a team sport, and it always amazes me how many people only fish with a buddy that is in the same pool as they are. I did run in to one mature husband and wife on one of the popular rivers, but they were less than friendly for some reason. No reason for that, life is too short my friends.

As a trout fisherman, I have a long way to go, but it is amazing how instincts can kick in on a stream, and how one can adapt if one uses the thinking cap and always questions their approach. Critical thinking skills apply here as well. Part of me is happy to come from a smallmouth background prior to trout fishing. It seems easier to make the transition then the other way around. Much of this fishing can be described as my friend Joe S. puts it as “Bass bugging for trout.” Hitting shoreline structures with splatty quick presentations vs. the eastern catskill methods of long drag free drifts.

Small streams, small rods, small flies, but it is the small things in life that often get overlooked, and are under appreciated. Holding a foot long brook trout in hand as carefully as a newborn infant, I marveled at the scale of minute beauty in this world. Beauty and happiness are where one finds them. I find them in moving water. As the famous line from Casablanca goes, “I think this is the beginning of a great friendship.” Ah…the coulees!

A pertinent quote

Why in these days and times we need to be more than just fishermen. The waters and the fish make the experience of fly fishing what it is. Without them, it would be just a bunch of us using expensive gear to chase hatchery drones.

"We have reached a time in the life of the planet,and humanity's demands upon it, when every fisherman will have to be a riverkeeper, a steward of marine shallows, a watchman on the high seas. We are beyond having to put back what we have taken out. We must put back more than we take out.We must make holy war on the enemies of aquatic life as we have upon gillnetters, polluters, and drainers of wetlands. Otherwise, as you have already learned, these creatures will continue to disappear at an accelerating rate. We will lose as much as we have lost already and there will be next to nothing, remnant populations, put-and-take, dim bulbs following the tank truck."

Thomas McGuane

Carpe Carpio

On a whim I explored an area lake in the pursuit of panfish. This lake does not allow motors on boats so it would in theory also reduce the amount of motorheads on the lake fishing, and give me some peace. I caught a few panfish and two largemouth bass, but the water was a little cold yet for the best action. After five hours I ended up at a dark bay at the end of the lake which the wind was blowing into. There were large fish jumping and rolling, but I could not tell if they were largemouth bass on a feeding binge or what. I made repeated long casts into the dark water and finally hooked one. It ran and broke me off quite easily. These were not bass, they were carp. Big carp ready to spawn and on a feeding frenzy. I knew I had found what I always wanted- a carp on the fly. However, since I was going for panfish, I had a 8'6" 5 wt with a Hardy Bougle' reel (click and pawl drag). I was totally under-gunned. After breaking off two more fish, I cut my leader back from 10 feet to around 6 feet, tied on a size twelve crystal hackle soft hackle streamer, and bombed out a cast. Strip...strip...pause...strip...THUD. Boom, fish on. I hoped I wasn't foul hooking these fish, but when I was able to carefully raise the fishes head after about five minutes of screaming reel and careful line management, there was my fly in the corner of its mouth. My first carp on the fly! Around 12 pounds of Midwestern golden bonefish lay on the bank for a quick photo.

I came back the next day to try to repeat the same process, this time with appropriate gear. After an afternoon of finding panfish on the beds, I made my way to the bay, and on the third or fourth cast in, hooked the first fish on a new carp fly I had tied that day. The fish dove, and the fly popped out. Crap. I checked my hook, made another cast, and heard a trolling motor near to my left. Sure as heck, there was a boat heading right into the area I was casting. They anchored directly on the spot I was casting to, and proceeded to cast their bobbers over my line. WTF! I tried to make conversation, but they knew what they were doing, and just were going to fish their spot, regardless if I was casting into it or moving forward into it. The occupants of the boat were the perfect specimens of the Midwest goober-schlub-goons. The guy was about 300 pounds and dressed in camo. Perhaps he thought the fish couldn't see him. The wife looked like a troll and smoked a cigar. While I pondered my chances another boat parked slightly behind the first and hemmed me in even further. As I told my friend Dave D., the experience reinforced my rather misanthropic side.

But at least I had pulled another hat trick, and added another species to the long rod. On a click and pawl reel to boot!

A proper Dunt

I finally found some white wing turkey feathers in matched pairs and put them to good use.
Here is a 3/0 Dunt Dee fly. Should look good stuck in a tree in the Bone Yard run... which is why I don't fish these in our river.

I will be conducting a casting clinic at Greenfield Park in West Allis on Tuesday May 12th @ 5:00 pm for the Milwaukee Lake and Stream Fly Fishers club. Everyone is invited to come and join the club in tuning your fly casting. The more the merrier. You might be in for a treat, and watch me throw tailing loops! ;)