WS season opener

I fished the Wisconsin trout opener two Saturdays ago. I went to, probably, the most crowded worst place to go for the opener, the lower Kinny. I couldn’t get out until about 1 in the afternoon and when I got to the lot at the park there were a group of guys getting ready to head out. There were three of them and I asked if they had any luck earlier (they were wearing waders when they got out of the truck). The bigger guy in the very nice Sims waders said they did okay over on the Rush in the morning. All three guys had fly rods, one had a nice lab tagging along. At this point I reailzed it was going to be a rough day. I forgot my reel with 3wt line and only had my reel with 5wt. Yep, only brought the 3 wt rod. I strung it up anyway, I wasn't going to let a 2 size overweight line ruin my first day out. I realized I’m not going through leaders like I used to. I had at least 8 feet left on a nine footer from last season. I’m pretty poor and I don’t tie my own leaders (see tying leaders and throwing beer cans, a previous post) so I used it anyway. I tied on about 18 inches of 6x and a trusty pink squirrel. I stated the walk out to my favorite spot knowing that if there weren’t three guys and a dog there someone would be for sure. The walk down was interesting. The ground was still mostly snow covered and I have felt soled wading boots because that is really all they sold when I got mine. They suck in the winter. I can’t afford $150 bucks for a new pair of boots so I fall a lot in and try not to break my rod for the third time (thank god for the Winston guarantee (calm down, I only have a $200 Ascent and it has the same warranty as the big boy rods).


There was a guy in my favorite spot so I headed down farther, two more guys in spots I usually skip. Hmmm, bad sign. I kept walking and found the three guys with the dog. They were standing about waist deep in about the middle of a spot I usually cast to, not wade in. Much to my chagrin, one of them hooked up and landed a fish as I was taking a few pictures up stream.

I had to walk out quite a ways and finally found some good water. I hadn’t fished the spot I started at and was happy to find it. Crowds are good for something. It was a little fast for early season, I’ll have to come back when the water warms a little and the fish get some energy back. Browns are notorious for laying back in the calmer water in pools. I caught one on the squirrel and moved on.


I switched to a bead head prince nymph (all #16s) and fished another spot just down from the three guys who were still, amazingly after 1 and a half hours, catching fish in the same spot. Life is not always fair.

I moved back past the crowd and walked back over to my favorite spot and, thankfully, a guy was just leaving. I moved in and decided I would give the old two nymph rig another chance. I tied on a size 18 orange scud to the bend of my bead head prince. Once I did that the action really started. I caught 5 in about 45 minutes. Two small fish on the scud and 3 bigger ones on the prince.






I’m not sure it always works out that the bigger fish go after bigger flies but it happens more often than not. The two nymph rig is the way to go. I had no trouble casting it and had no tangles. As long as the taper is set up right its easy. ~7.5 feet of tapered 5x leader-BH prince nymph-18 inches of 6x-scud. Overall, it was a good day. The weather was warm for March and the fish were biting.