A week from today my family and I will be piling into our cramped vehicle and heading for the great state of Wisconsin to enjoy the festivities of “the first and foremost feminist science fiction convention in the world”. That’s the official reason we’re heading to WI.
As you probably guessed already, I have my own reasons for making this annual pilgrimage to the land of cheese, and the number one reason is trout. Butter burgers from Culver’s run a close second, but mainly it’s the trout.
Last year was the first time I fished Wisconsin’s driftless region. I did some research before hand, learned about the spring creeks, the hatches, found out what the hot flies were, tied some nice dries, some small nymphs and got there to find out that all the rivers were blown-out due to the two previous days of torrential downpour. I did catch fish, but they were few and far between and all on streamers, of which I only had five of…
This year I refuse to be ill-prepared.
Except, at this particular point in time, one week away from leaving for the driftless, I am woefully ill-prepared.
It’s my own fault. I’ve had time to tie for the WI trip, but I found myself obsessing over getting this bass fly right. In the time it takes to tie one of those I could tie four or more streamers. And I haven’t even started on the dries and nymphs I need to fill in the blanks.
So, with a heart that would be much heaver if it was for any other reason, I am going on a brief hiatus so I can tie flies and go fishing. I’ll probably still check out what everyone else is doing and I’m going to test out my new bass fly tomorrow so you’ll get to hear about that, but I’ll probably be pretty quiet until after May.
I would have a good supply of soft hackles from 12 to 22, different bodies, quill, dubbing, etc., colors, different hackles. A simple but numerous supply served me well on small spring creeks in The Black Hills, without much previous knowledge. Bully for that bass fly, it will, well, “fly”.
Gregg
that’s a good idea Gregg, thanks!
I live on the other side of Wisconsin, but you can find fishing reports for the driftless area at:
http://www.driftlessangler.com/fishing-reports.
Good luck and have a great trip.
Awesome, thank you!
ah the tying fever just before leaving…
I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes though. feminist science fiction convention sounds pretty hot, I wouldn’t want to have to choose between that and a Wisconsin trout stream.
No slave girl Leia costumes at this con. Think less Star Wars and Comic books and more professional sci-fi authors sitting around discussing serious social issues. I find much of it very interesting, but not as interesting as the local streams.
you mistook me for a bigbang nerd. the pro writers discussing real issues is more my idea of hot. scifi has always been on the leftist utopian social-experiment side of the spectrum (while medfan is clearly on the reactionary/traditionalist/a good king is what you need side)
having a chat with some good writer would make for an interesting mid day break, allowing for morning and evenings on the water.
I only get one day to dedicate to fishing hard so no mid day breaks for me, but all the really fun stuff happens at the evening parties anyway. And you’ve got to remember, even the best of these writers are also fans of the genre so even though this con isn’t your cliche sci-fi convention there is more than a little hardcore fandom in the undercurrents.