Gurth wrote:0% mortality.
Improve cast accuracy.
Get out further west and north (than Fennimore).
Find more brookies.
Catch my first tiger.
Figure out where the trout are on the Sugar River coz it's so close.
Blue River Slam
More north woods trout fishing.
Don't see myself getting out again till Saturday, so time for a quarterly review coz I'm obsessed (trout nerd) with this of late and have too much time on my hands today.
0% mortality.
No obvious deaths. Had one 14 inch brown bleed quite a bit. Even though it was a short fight, was easy to get off the hook, was only out of the water for a few seconds and I tried to revive, it slumped to the bottom. So I gently picked it back up and spent about 10 minutes with it, holding the head upstream while my hands went painfully numb. Eventually, it gave a kick and was gone. I hope it made it although I know the odds were probably 50/50 at best. Did my best though.
Improve cast accuracy.
Improving all the time (and was already pretty good) especially now that I took the oddball lower end rods out of the rotation. Having the same setup in my hands consistently is key and I often get almost as excited for a great cast as I do a fish - especially when I had to play the wind. Need to practice my backhand and underhand casts though.
Get out further west and north (than Fennimore).
Done - but still have a lot that I want to explore this year. Too many streams and not enough weekend days! Plus many are smaller streams so I need to hit them in the next 10 weeks (or less) before the grass grows up.
Find more brookies.
I've already caught 7 times as many Driftless/southern Wisconsin brookies this year as I did all of last year... I got one last year.
Progress… even if they've mostly been very small. Now to find some larger ones.
Catch my first tiger.
Incomplete - haven't been to tiger territory yet.
Figure out where the trout are on the Sugar River coz it's so close.I'd say partial credit. I've always been able to get a brownie or two out of the Sugar, but never found spots that give me a good fish count day. Still haven't had a fish count kind of day there, but I'm usually getting 1 or 2 when I go out for an hour or two and on average, they're bigger than the Driftless brownies that I get out west.
Have been much more willing to go there on a regular basis this year for a quick 30-90 minutes.
Still not a destination type of stream for me, but I am gonna spend a day at some point going for a pig coz they're definitely in there and I believe that I know where-ish.
Blue River Slam
Got it on 2/11/17 but the rainbow was a brood, so I'm putting an asterisk next to it and not really counting it in my heart. There are fingerling rainbows in there, so I'll get it eventually. To be honest, the brookie will be just as hard to find (again) though.
Have been close on Otter Creek and German Valley Branch with 2 of 3, the latter even had a follow up nibble of the missing third. Doh!
More north woods trout fishing.
Incomplete – haven't been up north yet and most streams up there don't have early season anyway.
According to my fishing logs…
Number of days fished: 28
Number of Different Rivers/Streams: 17
Brown Trout: 113
Brook Trout: 7
Rainbow Trout: 2
January really killed my fish-per-outing with only 12 fish in 7 outings including twice being shutout. Didn't realize I was doing so poorly at the time.
Guess I was just happy to be out.
Of the the 28 days fished, 10 times were an hour or two on the Sugar where I was shutout 3 times and caught a total of 13 fish although probably 4 of those were amongst the 10 largest browns I've gotten this year including my biggest brown ever.
First year of keeping an exact log and I'm liking having this info.
Have a log from last year too although a few days are missing.
Edited by user Tuesday, March 28, 2017 12:35:11 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
