First published in April 2020.
If you can’t make it out on the stream, the next-best way to connect with trout during the pandemic is by reading a good book about fishing.  We enlisted Jim Holden, a former high school English teacher and trout fishing nut, to put together a review of his favorite books about Midwestern trout fishing.  Jim has himself written a gem of a book about trout fishing in Minnesota.  Titled “Heron Thieves, A Bat Out of Hell, and other Fly Fishing Stories, Essays and Poems”, it is a delightful selection of stories that will make you laugh and teach you a few things about the personalities involved in developing the sport of trout fishing in Minnesota.  If you’d like to order a copy for ten bucks plus postage, contact Jim at holden@stolaf.edu.

In 1785 Scottish poet Robert Burns penned these words which seem particularly relevant in this time of the great pandemic: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men gang aft agley.” Translated into idiomatic English the words “gang aft agley” might read “go often askew/awry.”
My best laid plans included a North Shore steelhead guide trip my BFFF (best fly-fishing friend) Dave Emery and I booked with Carl Haensel for April 21. Canceled. I also hoped to do some fly-fishing bonding with my very busy son this year, so we booked a smallmouth trip on the Ottertail River with guide Doug Harthan for July 8. Probably canceled. And this spring my wife and I hoped to travel to the northern Black Hills so she could admire the blooming flowers and search for birds while I fished streams such as Spearfish and Rapid Creeks. Called off. In addition, another good fishing friend, Dave (Doc) Halvorson, planned a trip to the San Juan River in October. Too early to call.
So what are we fly-fishermen/women to do during this time of sheltering in place? Of course, you can spend time organizing your flies, cleaning your fly lines, patching your leaky waders, tying some flies, ordering more stuff. Or, as Dave Emery and I have been doing once a week or so—though now driving separately, you can head down to your favorite Southeast Minnesota streams for some solitude and relief from the endless bad news.
But you could also use that free time to re-read some of those old friends lying on your bookshelves, especially the ones about fishing the Driftless Area. I just pulled off my shelves four that I might have a go at again this spring.

Trout Fishing in Southeast Minnesota, by John Van Vliet.
Published in 1992, this book includes information about the geology of Southeast Minnesota; the trout in the streams; and chapters titled “Choosing the Right Tackle, “Naturals & Artificials” (with hatch charts), “Suggested Fly Patterns for Southeast Minnesota, Ten Tips for Small- Stream Fishing,” and “An Angler’s Driving Tour” (with maps). For you avid fly-tyers out there, Van Vliet has a chapter on “recipes” for go-to flies like BWOs, sulfurs, tricos, black caddis, pheasant tails, and hare’s ears. The book also includes directions on how to access streams you might have overlooked such as West Indian and Winnebago. It’s an oldie but goodie.

Wisconsin and Minnesota Trout Streams: a Fly-Angler’s Guide, by Jim Humphrey and Bill Shogren.
Written in 1995, this book features maps of the areas and hatch charts; and there’s also a chapter called “Hatches, Tactics, and Tackle.” In addition, a good portion of the book takes a look at Wisconsin streams in all areas of the state. The authors add interesting background information about the areas as well. Here is one in the section on “Southwestern Wisconsin: Spring Creeks in Hidden Valleys.” There are ethnic remembrances of the earliest settlers of this hill country: Indian Creek, Irish Ridge, Russian Coulee, Dutch Hill, Swiss Valley, German Flats, British Hollow, and Bryn Gyrwen, a hill named by some long-dead Welsh miner to remind himself of home. The Minnesota portion of the book includes chapters titled “Secret Streams of Southeast Minnesota, The North Shore—Arrowhead Country,” and “Northern Minnesota-Paul Bunyan Country.”

Fly-Fishing Midwestern Spring Creeks: an Angler’s Guide to Trouting the Driftless Area, by Ross A. Mueller.
Published in 1999, this work has a slightly a different focus than the first two. For example, there’s a chapter on “Resources,” another on “Casting,” one on “Equipment,” and still another on “Two-fly Systems.” Mueller also gives advice about fishing each season of the year, with specific information about flies to use and when (for instance—“Remember the advice dark day, dark fly—light day, light fly”). The author’s Driftless Area Stream Locator maps in the “Introduction” are detailed and easy to read, and what’s most helpful is that throughout the book he includes color photos of flies and the “ingredients” for them. Then he tells the reader how to fish each of these flies.

Fly-Fishing for Trout in Southeast Minnesota. . . a Trout Chaser’s Guide, by Bob Trevis. 
This is the most recent of these four books, published in 2016, so it has up-to-date information. And while it provides accurate knowledge about where to fish our Southeast Minnesota streams and rivers, I enjoyed reading his chapter on the Driftless Area and one called “Be Careful out There” (especially apt for an aging angler like me). As a former high school English teacher, I liked the occasional epigrams the author included such as “You don’t stop fishing because you get old. . . you get old because you stop fishing” or “I’d rather be lost on the river than found in the city.” One of the best features of the book is its color photos. There are pictures of fish caught, fishermen climbing over stiles and casting flies, old mills, improved stream sections, winter fishing scenes. Then there are photos of signs such as this one at Hay Creek: “Do not cross pasture unless you can do it in 3.7. The bull can do in in 3.8.” Another good chapter (“Getting Involved”) encourages anglers to join TU and other organizations working to preserve our streams and our natural environment.

So many other fly-fishing titles on my bookshelves call out “Please read me again”: Shawn Perich’s Fly-Fishing the North Country, Tom Rosenbauer’s The Orvis Guide to Prospecting for Trout, Terry and Wendy Gunn’s 50 Best Tailwaters to Fly Fish, and two by John Gierach (Trout Bum and Still Life with Brook Trout). But those are my books, what about yours? Why not take down your falling-apart copy of A River Runs Through It? Better yet, watch the movie with your 10-year-old son, a fly-angler-in-training. This would surely brighten your day. And if you’re into poetry, I recommend two books I just read by fly- fishing friends Larry Gavin (A Fragile Shelter) and Justin Watkins (A Mark of Permanence). Some excellent poems about fishing of course, but so much more. Oh yes, one more thing, I’ll re-read Steve Kinsella’s Trout Fishing in the Black Hills if the South Dakota trip materializes later this year. I’m crossing my fingers. So head over to your bookshelves, pull out your favorite fly-fishing books, and hunker down for some good times with your “old friends.”

First published in November, 2018.
​It used to be that Minnesotans who wanted to fish for trout from October through December had to head to Iowa until the special catch-and-release season opens on January 1 in southeastern counties. But since 2014, year-round catch-and-release fishing has been available in three state parks: Whitewater, Beaver Creek and Forestville. And in 2017, the regulations were extended to streams within the city limits of Chatfield, Lanesboro, Preston and Spring Valley.
Although I haven’t yet fished the towns or Beaver Creek, I have made a few trips to Forestville and Whitewater this fall, and found good fishing. It has been chilly, so I have found it useful to bring along a down jacket, fold-over mittens and a thermos filled with hot chicken soup. And when temperatures dropped below freezing, I fished a Tenkara rig so that I didn’t have to worry about my fly rod guides icing up and stopping the line in its tracks.​

My next trip was to Forestville State Park on November 15-16. I fished Canfield Creek all the way up to its source at a huge spring flowing out of a cave, as well as Forestville Creek and the South Branch of the Root River.
Although the high temperature on the 15th allegedly got up to 40, the frozen puddles along the trail never thawed out. On the 16th, it snowed – but the trout were cooperating. All wild browns, a bit skinny post-spawn, but hungry for a nymph rolled along the streambed and energetic when hooked. There was a nice blue-wing olive hatch right after lunch to give me a little dry fly action as well. As far as I can tell, I was the only angler on the stream both days.

Late Fall. The mosquitos have vanished, along with the jungle of streamside weeds. No sweating in your waders. he streams are clear and there are a few touches of fall color left on the bluffs. There aren’t any bad times to be on a trout stream in Minnesota, but this is a particularly good one!

First published in Sept. 2018
​Patches of mist hung over on the water on a late August morning as a bald eagle flew upstream on an unknown mission.  A doe and her nearly grown fawn stepped into the water to drink.  Small black duns began to rise from the water, accompanied by rise forms in a pool upstream.  I replaced my beadhead nymph with a #22 Trico dun, waded carefully to the tail of the pool, and began making short casts, silently willing the fly not to drag.  After several botched presentations, I finally found a trout gullible enough to take my fly, and, after a short fight an 11” brown was in my net.
I first encountered the Trico hatch nearly 20 years ago on the Rush and Kinnickinnic Rivers.  The idea of a river full of rising trout in the middle of the summer intrigued me, as did the challenge of enticing them with tiny imitations during the most pleasant, bug-free part of the day.  But a full-time job, a small child, and a love of sleep made it difficult to drive out from Minneapolis in time to hit an early-morning hatch, so I only fished it a few times. 
Fast forward to 2018.  The kid is grown up.  The job is history.  My circadian clock has been reset to Lark mode.  I decided this was the year to figure out the Trico hatch.  Between early July and early September, I have fished the Trico hatch a dozen times.  Not enough to claim status as an expert, but enough to gain a few insights and definitely enough to make me completely obsessed with them.  I thought I would share what I have learned with the TU Community in Western Wisconsin and Southeast Minnesota in the hope that some of this may be useful for other anglers.  I am also selfishly hoping that I might hear back from those of you who know more about Tricos than I.

The Insect
Tricos inhabit trout streams from Maine to California, and are said to prefer alkaline spring creeks.  We have a boatload of these in the Driftless Area but the only streams I am aware of in Minnesota and Wisconsin that host a significant Trico hatch are the Whitewater, the Wisconsin Rush, and the Lower Kinni.  I would love to learn about more streams with Tricos, and I have to assume that at the very least, the tributaries of the above-mentioned streams host the hatch—something I intend to research next season.  I have not yet reached the level of obsession where I use a portable seine to check for insects, but I do look at spider webs to investigate the presence and quantity of the flies.  The first time I observed a Trico hatch this year was on July 5th.  The hatch started to taper off about August 25th, but as of September 3rd, there were still enough flies on the water for me to catch 7 fish in a little more than an hour.

The following article provides a good layman's overview of Trico biology and behavior: 
 http://www.troutnut.com/hatch/669/Mayfly-Tricorythodes-Tricos
The article points out that unlike most Mayflies, who take overnight to molt from duns into spinners, Tricos need only a few minutes to a few hours.  The male duns hatch at night, the females hatch early in the morning, and soon afterwards the mating swarms of spinners appear over the water.

Season, Time and Temperature
Most of the sources I consulted stated that the best spinner falls occur on bright, sunny mornings where the overnight temperature dips into the mid 60s or lower.  The spinner fall is said to occur at daybreak, or when the air temperature hits 68 degrees, whichever comes later. My experience with the received wisdom has been mixed.  I can’t attest to whether the spinner fall occurs during or after a severe downpour, but I have seen it on muggy, overcast mornings, as well as bluebird mornings.  It does seem that air temperature plays a factor, as the spinner fall seemed to come earlier on warmer mornings.  The TroutNut article provides one explanation:  
“Trico action tends to be more intense during the heat of summer, when the flies must finish their business early before the hot sun dries them out. Later in the season their deadline is less strict and they become sporadically active through most of the morning.”
 
As summer progresses into autumn, the hatch and subsequent spinner fall occur later in the morning, until, by late August, you can fish the Trico until noon on cool mornings.  Civilized.  For what it is worth, the following table shows my hatch data from the 2018 season.  I did not distinguish between the Dun hatch and Spinner fall, but this should give a rough idea of when to be on the water.

Flies and Tactics
Although most sources emphasize the spinner fall, I had good success this season fishing a combination of dun and spinner.  I noticed that the rises during the first half of the hatch tend to be splashier as the trout go after active female duns trying to lift off from the water.  As the spinner fall arrives, the rise forms become quieter.  I generally start out with a #22 dun imitation.  Then, as the rises become more subtle, I add a #22-24 spinner dropper on 18” of 7x tippet.  Most of the fish hit the dropper, but I need the dun to see the strike!  If you are able to see a fish take a #24 Trico spinner from 20 feet away, call me.  I want to start taking the same vitamins as you.  I have heard of anglers having good success fishing emergers at the beginning of the hatch and drowned spinners at the end.  I have not tried this out yet:  another topic for future research.

Drag is the enemy. When fishing hatches of larger flies, I will often get one fish that jumps on a fly that is visibly dragging at the end of a float.  This happened to me just once this season on the Trico hatch, and it scared the heck out of me!  On the other hand, even “micro” drag, where the fly speed is almost imperceptibly different from the current, seems to put fish off, particularly with the spinner.  I find that a long (3-4’) tippet of 7x helps me to reduce drag.  At the start of the season I tried 6x—it just didn’t seem to let the fly float as naturally and I saw my hookups increase substantially when I switched to 7x.  Another key is short casts—I find a 20-25’ “pile cast” is the optimal length: it allows me to observe and control drag, and cast accurately into the feeding lane, while keeping me far enough away to avoid spooking fish.

​Where to fish
In my experience, there are certain pools and glides where fish tend to bunch up and feed heavily and others that look just as promising but have few fish.  Once I do find a spot that produces, it seems to be a good bet for the rest of the season.  Pools with a bit of riffle in them seem to be easier to fish—my theory is that the trout are not as sensitive to drag.  But I have not seen fish rising in “pocket water”—or what goes for pocket water here in the flat Midwest.  I do encourage you to prospect for fish.  I have several “go to” spots now, and in one of these spots the fish I catch are nearly always 12-13”, whereas the typical fish I catch in other spots are 9-11”.  My biggest fish this season was 14”, but I have seen larger fish feed on Tricos in weed-filled glides where micro-currents play havoc with drag, and the fish can break off 7x by burrowing into the weeds.  Another project for next season!

​According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tippet was originally “A long narrow slip of cloth or hanging part of dress, formerly worn, either attached to and forming part of the hood, head-dress, or sleeve, or loose, as a scarf or the like.” 
This delightfully anachronistic name is accompanied by an equally anachronistic measurement system.  Until the mid-20th century, tippets were made by drawing strands of silkworm gut through progressively smaller die holes.  Sizes ranged from 0x (undrawn gut), at 0.011” down to 5x (drawn five times) at 0.006”.  For reference, a human hair is approximately 0.001”. With the invention of Nylon in 1938, synthetics quickly replaced silkworm gut, and tippet sizes now range as fine as 8x, at 0.003”, although I’ve never heard of anybody fishing anything finer than 7x.  I’ve also never heard an angler refer to a tippet size in inches, and I suspect there are only a few hard-core gnurds who know or care about the actual size of tippets.

My fly vest has a lanyard with spools of tippet material from 2x to 7x, but I rarely use anything larger than 4x on Driftless streams.  I use 5x for most of my fishing, reserving the 4x for streamers and hoppers, 6x for Blue Wing Olives size #20-22, and 7x for the Trico hatch.  Last June I fished the Hex hatch on the Straight River using 3x.  Big mistake—an alligator-sized trout shook his head a few times and broke me off.  I go through enough 5x that I now buy 100-yard guide spools, a much better bargain than the standard 30-yard spools.  I played around with Fluorocarbon for a while.  It is invisible underwater, the breaking strength is higher, and it is more supple than nylon, but I could never get knots to hold.  

I attach the tippet to the leader with a blood knot, unless I am fishing a nymph with a dropper, in which case I use a double surgeon’s knot.  I find it is easier to leave a long tag end with which to attach the dropper. Alas, the surgeon’s knot lacks the elegance of the blood knot, the most beautiful knot in all of angling.  I used to let the knot trimmings fall to the ground.  They are fiendishly difficult to capture, and I figured that a few inches of ultra-thin nylon wouldn’t hurt the stream.  But then my wife started lecturing me about microplastics getting into her artisanal French sea salt and ruining the planet, so I started looking for a solution.  I found it in the “Mono Master”, which is basically a hair curler inside a cylinder with a small handle that can be used to winch in the waste tippet and hold it securely for later disposal.  I still leave plenty of tippet behind when I hang flies in trees or submerged obstacles.  I atone for this by gathering mono left behind by other anglers.  It’s not a perfect solution, and it brings to mind the story that using carbon offsets for plane flights is like cheating on your spouse and then donating money to the church.  But if I don’t lose any flies, I’m unlikely to be putting my fly where the fish live.

I attach flies to the tippet with a Rapala Loop.  I learned this from a guide on the Provo River in Utah who explained that the loop allows the fly to swing freely in the river, delivering a more natural presentation than fixed knots.  I suspect this matters more on the tiny #24 midge pupa we were using on the Provo than it does on the larger flies that I typically use in the Driftless, but now I can tie the Rapala Loop almost as fast as a Clinch knot, and that guide did get us into a lot of fish.  
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tippet was originally “A long narrow slip of cloth or hanging part of dress, formerly worn, either attached to and forming part of the hood, head-dress, or sleeve, or loose, as a scarf or the like.”
This delightfully anachronistic name is accompanied by an equally anachronistic measurement system.  Until the mid-20th century, tippets were made by drawing strands of silkworm gut through progressively smaller die holes.  Sizes ranged from 0x (undrawn gut), at 0.011” down to 5x (drawn five times) at 0.006”.  For reference, a human hair is approximately 0.001”. With the invention of Nylon in 1938, synthetics quickly replaced silkworm gut, and tippet sizes now range as fine as 8x, at 0.003”, although I’ve never heard of anybody fishing anything finer than 7x.  I’ve also never heard an angler refer to a tippet size in inches, and I suspect there are only a few hard-core gnurds who know or care about the actual size of tippets.
 
My fly vest has a lanyard with spools of tippet material from 2x to 7x, but I rarely use anything larger than 4x on Driftless streams.  I use 5x for most of my fishing, reserving the 4x for streamers and hoppers, 6x for Blue Wing Olives size #20-22, and 7x for the Trico hatch.  Last June I fished the Hex hatch on the Straight River using 3x.  Big mistake—an alligator-sized trout shook his head a few times and broke me off.  I go through enough 5x that I now buy 100-yard guide spools, a much better bargain than the standard 30-yard spools.  I played around with Fluorocarbon for a while.  It is invisible underwater, the breaking strength is higher, and it is more supple than nylon, but I could never get knots to hold. 
 
I attach the tippet to the leader with a blood knot, unless I am fishing a nymph with a dropper, in which case I use a double surgeon’s knot.  I find it is easier to leave a long tag end with which to attach the dropper. Alas, the surgeon’s knot lacks the elegance of the blood knot, the most beautiful knot in all of angling.  I used to let the knot trimmings fall to the ground.  They are fiendishly difficult to capture, and I figured that a few inches of ultra-thin nylon wouldn’t hurt the stream.  But then my wife started lecturing me about microplastics getting into her artisanal French sea salt and ruining the planet, so I started looking for a solution.  I found it in the “Mono Master”, which is basically a hair curler inside a cylinder with a small handle that can be used to winch in the waste tippet and hold it securely for later disposal.  I still leave plenty of tippet behind when I hang flies in trees or submerged obstacles.  I atone for this by gathering mono left behind by other anglers.  It’s not a perfect solution, and it brings to mind the story that using carbon offsets for plane flights is like cheating on your spouse and then donating money to the church.  But if I don’t lose any flies, I’m unlikely to be putting my fly where the fish live.
 
I attach flies to the tippet with a Rapala Loop.  I learned this from a guide on the Provo River in Utah who explained that the loop allows the fly to swing freely in the river, delivering a more natural presentation than fixed knots.  I suspect this matters more on the tiny #24 midge pupa we were using on the Provo than it does on the larger flies that I typically use in the Driftless, but now I can tie the Rapala Loop almost as fast as a Clinch knot, and that guide did get us into a lot of fish. 

For a cool 16-minute video showing restoration work being done on Trout Run Creek in Southeast Minnesota, click here.  It shows the importance of connecting the stream with the floodplain, and the coordination involved between all the different actors in a successful restoration.