When the trout stream met the sky, and all became water

Everyone loves a good storm. Sitting back with a hot cup of tea and smelling the rain as it renews the land, or feeling the approach of a dark cloud in your bones, the unending rumble of thunder filling you with anticipation as the first tentative drops of rain begin to fall.

A really good Midwest thunderstorm can force even the most stalwart farmer to pull his cap down. Storms here reach biblical proportions at times. It is in the month of June that temperatures and humidity levels rise enough to prime the air with a stagnant and heavy load. Steamy air laden with moisture boils up from the gulf and meets the cool jet stream. The resulting storms go spinning off to the east like miniature hurricanes. The dark cumulonimbus anvil clouds expand and rise quickly high into the atmosphere, and the bottoms boil. The entire sky turns a sickly green color.

I knew when I left my home that it would be stormy, but one takes free time as it comes to one. Days off are not to be squandered. So, I raced the coming storm front to the driftless country of south-west Wisconsin and it’s spectacular spring creeks. Four hours later the tent was set up and secured, and I was playing the first little wild brown trout on my new seven foot four weight superfine. The sun began to be eclipsed by little puffy cloud-sentries, and the fishing started to improve. For the next three hours without a hatch, I had spectacular dry-fly fishing. All I needed was an elk-hair caddis in a size 14. Splat it down gently around a bend or far enough ahead and it died a gallant death a hundred times as it was ravaged by trout. I actually felt sorry for the poor fly as its hackle got torn off and its wing lay in tatters. I imagined it looking at me, begging “Enough, PLEASE! Enough already! Don’t throw me out there again. This is murder!”

The cloud sentries by now had spotted me and reported back to the gathering storm regiments. “Trout angler, due east,” they rumbled. As the sky grew ominously darker and rain drops began to fall intermittently, the fishing just got better and better. It is said that trout, and fish in general, feed heavily before a storm, and although I had experienced this before, it was never on a spring creek where it could be perceived so obviously. It was as if someone turned on a switch or rang a dinner bell. The problem was that the fish were so eager, that I had a hard time getting casts to where I wanted them, as the fly kept being eaten before it got there. As the air became thicker and thicker and breathing harder, the trout began to jump again and again. I had to do a double take. Were they trying to escape the creek by swimming in the air?

I was experiencing the best non-hatch dry-fly fishing I had ever seen. As the trout leapt, I giggled. “Off that blade of grass…. Fish on!” “Against that rip-rap… Fish on!” “Wheeeeee!”

It was then at that moment of trout epiphany that the first lightning began to flash. Now wandering around standing in water holding a seven-foot lightning rod and waving it overhead during a thunderstorm is not a good idea. I should have left and headed back to the car. Instead, I fished on, the trout now jumping on the end of my line into the falling rain.

Finally, I felt that I had pushed it far enough and wound in, put on my rain jacket and tromped off. The creek I was fishing runs against the bottom of a ridgeline of a coulee hill. That prevented me from actually viewing the storm as it approached. The first inkling that I got that this storm was a force of nature, an elemental power of water, thunder, and wind was when it came over the ridge. I was twenty feet from my car when a downdraft of wind twenty degrees cooler than the humid 90-degree air of the valley nearly knocked me to the ground. I was then assaulted by a horizontal rain. Each drop was like a projectile. It actually hurt. The sky became water, and I could no longer see at all. Then the lightning struck repeatedly and close. I threw my rod into some nearby bushes and squatted down in the classic duck and cover position, water streaming off my hood and hands like faucets. Water began to trickle and rise around my feet. I thought I glimpsed Noah in the distance sawing wood for his ark.

It lasted fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes more than an inch and a half of rain fell. As I got back to the car and drove off to see if Mr. Tent had survived, I saw the creek I had just fished. Where it turned back into the wooded ridge and increased in gradient, it was a muddy torrent pushing rocks and boulders before it. Further down the road the storm dropped the first of its five tornadoes.

I guess the thing that struck me was that I was not disappointed. Two and a half days of trout fishing had turned into three hours, but experiencing that storm, and being made to feel helpless in the face of nature was an experience in itself to be treasured…. Once. Next time I will just pull into some rural bar, order a tap beer from Stash or Erma, and say “Ya, how’s about them Packers?”

Bass Pond Apocalypse

In June of 2008, I drove to a friend’s apartment complex for a day of fly-fishing and classical music listening. This was the first time I had visited him in his new location, and I had heard talk of huge large-mouth bass and cooperative panfish in several ponds. I arrived armed with music disks, and a large duffle of tackle.

The day was as hot as the face of a griddle and sunny, and upon arrival, I noticed that my friend was already fishing. The apartment complex was enormous and sprawling. The land consisted of hills and valleys, and several small dams backed up a creek to form a series of weedy ponds. I greeted my friend and found that he and his roommate had already landed several panfish. I armed myself with a foam cylinder popper, and went to work. The first cast produced a ten-inch largemouth. This was going to be a blast!
I don’t necessarily believe in fate or karma, but I do notice that when success comes too easy and soon, disaster is likely to follow. These bass had had every lure in creation thrown at them. Local kids with snoopy rods and random tactics had turned the bass from willing players to extremely dour and spooky. I could see bass up to six pounds slowly swimming through the weeds. In four hours of fishing, all I had to show for it were two missed takes, one panfish and one small bass, muddy feet from stepping in a hidden hole (I am great at locating these), and a nasty sunburn. I also caught a lifetime supply of weeds. In fact, it seemed at times that I was doing a one-man job at weed reduction in the pond.
Then it began to rain: lightly at first, then steadily heavier. We had noticed ominous black clouds moving in from the west, so we retreated to the apartment.

My friend and I share an interest in weather in general and storms in particular. Soon the television was tuned to the local news broadcast. No matter which station we tuned in, the weather personalities were wide-eyed and visibly excited. It doesn’t take much to excite these guys anyway, but now they were hysterical. The radar showed the entire southern half of Wisconsin as one giant red blob. Sirens began to go off as I moved my car into the shelter of the underground garage. Just in time too. A massive storm front with evil rotating green-gray clouds and constant lightning began to dump hail that covered the ground like snow. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees in a minute, and more sirens declared the obvious. White wisps danced before a boiling wall-cloud and kissed the tops of the trees and roofs. I half expected the four horsemen of the apocalypse to ride out of the looming and churning storm.


Then it began to really rain like I have never experienced before. I almost thought I heard a deep voice saying “Noah, build an arc.”
All visibility was lost, as the entire air became water. The television proclaimed flood warnings, downed power lines, stranded motorists, tornados, hail damage, and the end of the world. When the downpour let up enough to see out the window, we witnessed strange fountains of water shooting twenty feet into the air. The hills of the subdivision were partially drained by a system of culverts. These culverts had gathered so much water that they became pressurized, shooting water in great arcs into the sky. A turtle emerged from the nearest pond, and crawled across the sidewalk to take refuge in some bushes. That’s when we noticed the water level in the ponds had risen by at least a foot. Weeds were no longer visible. Then all visibility was lost for the next two hours as the skies opened, and a truly biblical downpour began. Local storm and sewage systems were overwhelmed, and manhole covers shot into the air. Roads turned into raging rivers.
We alternated between music and the weather broadcast for the next few hours until hunger drove us to attempt to find an open restaurant. We made our way through a labyrinth of streets blocked by squad cars and filled with debris, and by a miracle, found a greasy hamburger joint. The food was wonderfully awful as it always is in these locally famous grease-pits. As we ate, the rain began to slow to a drizzle.

Back at the apartment, and sated with food, I suggested that we venture out and see how the bass were doing. We donned waders and rain gear and hit the pond. By now the water had fallen enough that the little footpath surrounding it was only submerged by a couple inches of water. I made my way to the inlet to the main pond, which was gushing forth a stream of dirty water through the cattails, and put my popper as close as I could to the incoming water. What followed can only be described as insane. Every bass in the pond was gathered at the inlet eating all the small fish, insects, and what ever else that had washed down to them. They liked the popper too. I missed more fish than I know in the darkness as they exploded on the fly. I had to set the hook by sound. We had found the secret to the dour bass. They were like sharks on a feeding frenzy, arbitrarily hitting everything and anything, even each other, in their mania for food.

That could have been the end of the adventure, but as they say, “When it rains, it pours.” After navigating flooded streets and hydroplaning on the freeway, I got within two miles of home and reached a dead-end. The main road was closed due to a flooded underpass. I drove through side streets filled with up to two feet of standing water for an hour before I found a way home.

I awoke in the morning in time for the parting shot. Another storm blew through and knocked down half the trees in the neighborhood.

All in all, six to ten inches of rain fell within an eighteen-hour period. Half of Wisconsin was a disaster area, and some communities were entirely isolated when rivers rose all around them and washed out bridges.

This was the day, of all days, that I picked to go bass fishing. We later learned that the tornado warning that was issued was due to the large rotating cloud that passed directly over us. Nice.

The moral of the story is simple. You choose the day to go fishing, not me. My track record is a bit tainted.