We hold these truths to be self evident

Catch up entry number 2 - posted on Aug 2 but fished on July 4th in the Driftless

My July the 4th.

Landed from old yurp on wednesday, headed up to the farm where the pup was boarded in central wisco. Spent the afternoon and fishing through the evening.

Where and what are these pairs.











My fireworks outside the tent - camped next to a stream behind some farmers trees, and the fireflies were flying.

Austria - yes that's right Austria

Report posted July 31 - but fished in Austria June26/27...

Burned a ton of miles and decided to get the kids some Old Europe culture.

This was the Fishing Hutte we spent a night in.
outside:

inside:

The back yard of the utte:


We hiked up the side of the valley to get a close look at one of the waterfalls coming down from the ice fields.





This valley is above the Krimml wasser falle - highest in Europe.

The kids at the top of the valley.



and there was trout:




The Krimml Achental is 14KM long, ending in a glacier at the head of the valley that is coming down off of Großglockner the highest montain in Austria. ( I think ). The fishing access is all controlled by the Braurup Hotel family, apparently they have been contolling it for the last 400 years or so. They issue daily permits to the 200KM of prime waters that they control, at 25 euros a day. The 14KM of the Krimml above the falls is in a preserve, that limits the rods to 10 a day, fly only, complete C&R. There were two other fisherman there for the two days I was there, I did not see them any near I was fishing, but I ran into them in one of the two "restaurants" that are up there. Basically old alpine farmhouses and the families that live in them sell beer, and homemade weinerschnitzel and milk and cheese made from the 8 or 9 cows they graze, and have on the farm, and I swear that the cream and cheese soup tasted like the wildflowers they were grazing on.



It was blazing sun while we were there with occasional rainclouds blowing through. So - by midmorning the river itself would be up in high runoff mode. I couldn't cross the river to get to this pool and big back eddy, but some monster trout were steadily rising to a grey and sulfer hatch beyond my ability to cast and mend and float a dry into this. These trout laughed and mocked me all afternoon.



The high water did bring up all the small feeders flowing in from all the waterfalls though and the trout did take refuge in these.



These were fishes that came from these feeders on dries of various types.
















The second day in the evening I fished a different stream. Thom the guide at the shop at the Braurup sent me to it. I don't know what it was called. It looked like this.



Got a few from this stream - including the biggest fish of my two Austrian fishing days.



Had one on this stream at the base of a plunge pool that I never saw. It just broke me off after about 30 seconds.

Hard rains gonna fall

June 8

Some things I thought I was gonna do didn't happen, others fell into place in a vague way. A bit of a window opened for take off Sat morning and the radar looked mostly not good. A single line of storms on sw to ne diagonal was looking to cross the driftless and so I figured I'd gamble on coulee hopping keeping an eye on the thunder heads and headed off for a June fish on the spring creeks. In the car at 11AM had me on the first stream at 2:30PM. I figured I'd play to hit the headwaters and watch the radar on the phone and jump the ridges looking for clear water to try to avoid being struck by lightning.

I knew that there was some H.I. bank work happening on the first spot on a largish drainage south of the sconny river, but apparently dropped in right at the top of the work. This is what spring creek bank restoration looks like when it is just a couple of weeks old.


This spot used to look very different.

Although very natural looking, in 2005 when this pic was taken it had had extensive brushing the previous season, including placing that log. The new bank work looks pretty raw. I could always get a brook trout or two from this spot - and apparently still could.
This is a brown from the next pool upstream.
Tucked into the bank and waited out the rain from an isolated thunderhead. The lightning wasn't too close.
15 minutes later 90 degrees and 100% humidity on cold spring water.


Another nicer brook trout amongst many.

Here's my June submission for the Calendar fundraiser. This is bank work that is one year old.

Another thunderhead rolled in from the south and I followed it up and over the sconny river to fish a different stream. Stopped to set up the tent, at the highest point on a little county campground, next to a dandy spring and hopped a ridge to another stream.

There was fish.



A little after 7PM the steady wind from the south stopped, and it was all perfectly still, and hot, sticky, and the sulfers started popping off the surface, and a cloud wall came bearing down the valley at about 50 miles an hour - from the north. After all this regular summer storms from the south - this had bad news written all over it. I didn't make it back to the car before the driving rain hit.
I made it back to the tent, had a couple of cheese snadwiches and drank the majority of the pilsner 6-pack and settled in with the lightning overhead and the first glo bugs of the season blinking down below and rain pounding on the tent.

Sometime in the night, I heard something a little different than the steady rain. Went down with the flash light and the creek had backed all the way into the spring head. It was topping the bridge and going over a few inches. I moved the car to higher ground and went back and figured I'd wait it out - went back to sleep in the tent. At dawn the rain had stopped and the river dropped down under the bridge. I tossed the wet gear in the back and took off driving in a non-stop hard rain all the way back to the state border.

The briefly back under the bridge river.

This is usually about 18 inches deep here and crystal clear, about 9/10 feet deep.

The sand on top of the bridge from the night's flash flood.
It rained six more inches that day after I left.

March 22 trout & PB Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.


OZYMANDIAS -Percy Bysshe Shelley 1817

Started the day at 22 degrees, coullee hopped, three valleys and three creeks.