Swamp Fishing

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Perry Palin
Master Guide
Posts: 408
Joined: 12/07/12 13:34

Swamp Fishing

#1

Post by Perry Palin »

I hadn’t been to the swamp in over a year. First the pandemic closed the gym and I wasn’t keeping up with my strength and balance exercises. Then came the cancer diagnosis and the surgery. Next, I blew out a knee. Then the hottest and driest summer in years kept me off the streams. Now it was a warm overcast day in August and I was going to the swamp.

Above the swamp the stream is narrow and choked with alders. The brook trout and an occasional brown can be caught by roll casting a short rod, with a lot of flies and a sense of humor over losing them in the trees. Below the swamp the stream is wider and glides over stones and into deep pools with browns and the occasional brook trout that have been taught by fishermen to be careful about flies. Few people fish in the swamp. The three men that I’ve taken to the swamp enjoyed the fishing but said they would never go back.

There are two approaches to the swamp. From below you are in marginal water until you get to the upper half where most of the fish are. When you’re done it’s a nightmare to get out of the water, fight the weeds, the mud between the sedge hummocks, the downed trees, the alders, the willows, and the biting and stinging insects to climb up into the woods, and then a mile walk back to the car, if you know the way. From above the swamp you walk down through the woods, either on the east or the west banks, the east being easier, until you think you are far enough, and then fight through the weeds and sedges, the mud, the downed trees, willows and alders, and the bugs, until you find the stream, dark and slowly crawling across the floor of the swamp. The advantage to the upper approach is that you only fish the better water, and you are fishing back toward the car.

I parked near a stand of aspens at the upper approach to the swamp. I pulled on my waders and shoes and strung up a rod, loaded my fly boxes into my heavy vest, shouldered the vest and picked up my net and wading staff, and I walked into the woods. In August the small trees are in full leaf and the weeds and grasses are high. It was impossible to see more than twenty feet ahead. Spring floods had blocked the side channel that would have led me to cross the stream to the east bank. The channel had no water, and I stepped over it unknowingly and continued through the alders above the west bank. When I realized my mistake, I continued on the west side, planning to pick up the stream a half mile below the car.

I broke out into a field of prairie grasses and native flowers and weeds. The weeds were waist high. Bees and butterflies were working the blossoms. Bumblebees, and a lot of smaller wild bees. Monarchs and viceroys and yellow swallowtails and one black swallowtail and summer fritillaries, and a lot of smaller butterflies I didn’t know. And small beetles with gold or blue metallic wings. Grasshoppers clung to the stems of the grasses and spun away when I got close. I followed the edge of the field to its western corner and dropped down into the woods. The ash and oak trees gave way to alders, tangled, dead and falling, some alive, with crossed arms. I threaded my way through slowly. The ground fell away a bit and I fought through sedges, willows, stinging nettles, and swamp milkweed. The weeds were shoulder high. I waded through, sweating into my shirt and my waders. The ground was wet and uneven. I was breathing hard. A nettle stung my right wrist.

I struggled through the weeds toward an oak snag that would be near the stream. I tripped on a downed tree trunk in the weeds and landed on my knees. My wading staff, which until this time had just tangled, helped me to my feet. I found the stream finally, and knew just where I was, a little above where I preferred, but there it was, stained dark by leaf litter, smelling of frogs and muskrats, moving slowly between high banks overhung with grasses. I watched the water as my breath caught up. A disturbance near the far bank might have been a frog dropping into the water. I saw a small rise just below me, near my bank. I tied on a size 12 Hornberg, cast it to the far bank, and got nothing, then fished through the near slot where I’d seen the rise. Nothing there. I struggled through the grass, found a place to plop into knee deep water, and fished down and across through a deep corner pool.

I needed a larger fly, I thought, and switched to a size 10 Pass Lake bucktail with a slender body. The first fish was a little guy, maybe seven inches, and I gave him enough slack to get away.

In the first water upstream the better lies were near the right bank. I fished the bucktail upstream, and missed a couple of strikes. I worked upstream, dropping the bucktail near the right and left banks.

At a deep corner pool I caught a little brook trout. He had a wound on his flank from a heron or kingfisher. I caught a brown of about ten inches, and then had a strong fish pull into the deep water of the pool and hang my fly on a stick. I never saw that one. I knotted a new Pass Lake to the tippet.

A sandhill crane called overhead. He circled high outside my field of vision, all the time calling, then came back. I looked up to track him against the clouds. He was missing a flight secondary feather on the right wing. I leaned back to follow him, lost my balance and almost fell on my butt in the water. That would have been a mess.

The fish would strike just as the fly touched the water. They had been eating grasshoppers for a couple of weeks. The Pass Lake didn’t look like a hopper to me, but it didn’t matter what I thought. I caught a couple more fish, and moved up to the next piece of water. This stretch had been scoured by floods and now was waist deep. Several more fish came to the Pass Lake.

I forgot about the pandemic, I forgot about the cancer, I forgot about the old horse I need to put down, forgot about the money and the estate planning and about the pasture that needs to be mowed again, and when the truck needs its next oil change. I forgot about the honey harvest next month with the beekeeper who had hives on our place. I forgot about everything else. The swamp was a relief, a welcome vacation from thinking about those things.

I neared the upper end of the swamp. The alders were closing in on the stream. In a deep corner pool I flipped the fly into the current and the best fish so far, a fifteen inch brown, came off the bottom and grabbed the fly. The fish ran to the deep water, and when I curbed him from the brush pile below the turn of the corner, I knew I had him. I measured the fish against the marks on my rod, and he was gone again. Four casts later a bigger one took the fly. That was enough.

I pulled myself onto the bank and started for the car. The alders were thick on both banks and leaning to meet over the stream. I looked through the tangle and into the smooth water. Several more nice fish were holding in the gentle current above the sand. I heard the water’s running song before I saw it, the short rapids that marks the upper end of the swamp. I fought the weeds and the alders for the last hundred yards to the car, opened the door for the water bottle and a candy bar. Swamp fishing in August.

headwaters
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 3233
Joined: 12/23/10 19:00
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Swamp Fishing

#2

Post by headwaters »

Forgetting about everything but the fishing sounds like a pretty fair day to me, Perry! Thanks for sharing.

crowebeetle
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1340
Joined: 08/03/13 22:51
Location: Chapel Hill, NC & central Penna

Re: Swamp Fishing

#3

Post by crowebeetle »

Very nice writing, it takes us there. Thanks for posting

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GerardH
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1071
Joined: 06/20/19 08:45
Location: Wyoming, MN

Re: Swamp Fishing

#4

Post by GerardH »

That's exactly what I needed today. If there's anything as therapeutic as fly fishing a northern WI brook trout stream, I haven't experienced it....even if it involves crawling through tag alder. Thank you, Perry, for taking me along with you into the swamp.

Perry Palin
Master Guide
Posts: 408
Joined: 12/07/12 13:34

Re: Swamp Fishing

#5

Post by Perry Palin »

Thank you, gentlemen, for your comments.

The swamp brings me back to my roots, fishing small trout streams that are rarely visited by other fishermen. Bill, in his post ‘A Great Day of Fishing. . . until!” describes an all too common occurrence. When I moved to the city for a job I fished in Bill’s stream. In the early 1990’s I stopped fishing there on weekends, and not much later I stopped fishing there on Mondays and Fridays. I moved again, and now I fish places many won’t go. It’s hard work, and often it is worth it.

billems
Bamboo Fanatic
Posts: 1620
Joined: 05/11/06 18:00

Re: Swamp Fishing

#6

Post by billems »

Nice to have the get away. Can't think of anything better. Overeating, booze, drugs. Naw, go fishing.

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