So for Mother’s Day weekend James’s mother, James, and I headed to Marquette, on the Mississippi, across from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights and tried to act like tourists. We walked around trails and scenic overlooks at Pike’s Peak State Park, strolled what passes for a quaint touristy downtown in McGregor (nice from a distance, variable up close, probably in better form during main season), hiked at Effigy Mounds National Monument, and had dinner at a Wisconsin supper club. There had been some rumblings that someone might like to dip a toe into this fishing stuff, so I told her to buy a license and trout stamp, and was somewhat surprised to find she did. So on Mother’s Day we headed out into uncharted waters. First we went to an Allamakee County stream I’d fished before, notable for having all three trout species, but not all that easy. We rigged up, and as we were walking down to the water a young couple with spin rods arrived. They immediately hurried past us and started fishing the first main pool downstream of us. ‘Kay, whatevs, whatevs.
I set James’s mother up with the Tenkara Times Watershed 330 and a black sparkle bugger. At the first half-decent holding water, I thought lightning was going to strike as a mid-sized rainbow started hitting her fly. It tried to strike at least twice, but it was her first time fishing in her life, so figuring out what to do didn’t happen instantly. The fish flirted a bit longer then lay low. After a while the dude with the spinning gear came back up and told me his bail had broke. So they left. We continued downstream through the nice series of pools in open farmland and stopped at the first pool in the woods, after which the going gets a lot more difficult. James and his mother got some flashes. I had a brown almost to the net and lost it, but nobody caught anything. We headed to Elkader where I’d planned lunch on a patio overlooking the Turkey River at an Algerian restaurant. But we were too late for lunch and the restaurant was closed. We caught the tail end of a Mother’s Day buffet at the only other restaurant I knew of in town, then I decided what the heck, let’s go to Richmond Springs.
It was as you’d expect on a sunny Mother’s Day Sunday, swarming but generally good natured. There wasn’t anyone at the first couple of beauty pools up near the springs, so I parked at the shelter. We weren’t really serious – I just took the Watershed rod and my vest.
Well. So. James’s mother started casting and armed with 500% more experience than first thing that morning, starting looking like she’d done it before. She got proficient at tossing the bugger. More than that, she settled in obsessively. This happened once before in our lives, when it turned out 20-odd years ago that she had a more obsessive video gaming streak than I did, albeit directed at arcade-style games (an old Apple Mac game called Apeiron, I think, was the revelation). James and I kind of looked at each other. She started getting follows and flashes. I was yapping advice and as often happens a fish struck in mid-yapping, obviating the advice. It started thrashing around, hooked, and I waddled out and handlined it in.
So she caught a brook trout. This was a bit strange. When James and I started last year, the first Iowa trout I caught was a brook trout, one pool down in the same stream.
No other fish cooperated, but it was an impressive showing, and she had to be more or less hauled off the stream. I got a turn with the rod late on and caught a small rainbow.
Who knew?