Aug 28
I drive into Hayward, have breakfast at a restaurant and work on blog & emails. Camera is getting really cranky. Lens cover and zoom switch are really sticky from spilled chinese food juice. When I get back out to the car the monarch has fallen on the floor. I put it back on the goldenrod. It tries to flutter, but cannot fly. I buy another cooler to replace the one I left on the river. As I drive away the monarch falls off again. Struggling to stand upright now. After noon I drive out to check out the W Fork, and Moose Lake into which it flows. I am looking for John Myhre, who was featured in the TV show I saw so long ago.
The monarch is really struggling now. I put the cup of flowers into the cooler, where so the butterfly cannot fall down onto the floor. At the turnoff to Moose Lake I finally find a milkweed with flowers. I pick some, and put them in the cup. Put the monarch on it. It sits on the flower, but does not seem interested. It is not feeding on the flowers. Little hope now.
I arrive at Moose Lake.
John Myhre is out on the lake guiding. I talk to his wife. They rent canoes for $28/day, and will drop me off upstream so I can float back to my car. I decide to drive back to the milkweed patch and leave the monarch on its favorite flower. I have done all I can do. But when I look in the cooler the monarch has died.
May the sword of wrwenal justice and vengeance wreak bloody havoc up the person who ran down this helpless butterfly!
It is Saturday, in a maniac tourist area. I will go into town to get supplies, then come back and launch at Moose Lake, and camp out on one of the islands. On the way back to Hayward I take a different road, so I can drive by Chippewa Flowage, the huge reservoir formed in 1924 by the Winter dam on the Chippewa R. Flooded over a bunch of natural lakes to make one giant lake.
This is the place where Louis Spray caught his legendary world record musky in 1949. This lake looks really good. There are about a dozen designated islands where you are allowed camp, nowhere else. And a number of free boat launches. I will fish here tonite instead of going back to Moose Lake.
I drive back into Hayward, buy 2 more zara spooks and some steel and flouro musky leaders at Pastikas sporting goods. Good to see they are still in business.
When Radisson and Grosseliers first explored this area they were amazed to find a giant mounted musky near what is now the town of Hayward.
The tackle shop guy gives me a tip about a spot to try for LMs. I head back to the Big Chip and launch off Hwy CC.
I see a turtle on a log.
I have one rod loaded with a rapala and another with a frog. I begin at the entrance to the channel. Looks unbelievably good for LM. But I get no bites. I switch the rap to a black Yum worm and throw over to a sunken log. Bang. It gets hit. A nice 2 lb LM. It gets off, but I get another smaller one on the next cast.
Then more on the worm This place is loaded. I switch the frog to a big buzzbait, and it gets slammed.
This place is hot. Catching them one after another. I get a snarl and have to drop the buzzbait to the bottom in order to untangle. Only 4 ft deep, but when I pull the buzzer up there is something on it. Esox. Small one. From the flash I see it looks not like a musky, but like its cousin Esox lucius, the pike. In Wis they call them northern pike. Although these is no southern pike. Or they just call them northerns. Maybe it is cuz lucius is circumpolar. Native to northern waters of N America, Europe and Asia. Muskies are only native to the Mississippi watershed. Did not know they had lucius in this lake. A bit later a huge long green fish takes a swipe at the buzzer, misses, then chomps again and misses again. Definitely Esox, but whether it is musky or lucious I cannot tell. I am in a hotspot, but the bugs are incredible on this warm humid evening. Not mosquitos this time, but zilllions of tiny gnats. connet stop moving or they get in your ears, eyes, lungs. A big bass hits the buzzer, but I only have 1 hand on the rod – the other is swatting away gnats. Finally have to vacate this hot zone. Cannot breath. Gnats!!! I get another nice LM on on the worm.
Not bad for my first few hours out on this huge lake. I have found nirvana. Will come back tomorrow morning and wreak havoc on the wily bass. Then I load out and drive down to the casino for dinner.
The casino is a monument to cheesyness, a glitzy toilet into which wealthy white people can flush their excess cash. It exists here because the Lac Court Oreilles reservation exists here, one of a number of reservations scattered across N Wisconsin and the UP. When the Euro immigration wave moved across Wisconsin the native Chippewa people were kicked off their ancestral lands and forced onto reservations, under the legal framework of a number of treaties signed with the US government. Then the immigrants decided they wanted all the land. So president Zachary Taylot and the Bureau of Indian Affairs unilaterally reneged all the treaties, terminated all the reservations in Wisconsin and the UP, sent in the army to round up the natives, and shipped them across to a desolate location in N Minnesota where there was little interest yet in white colonization. It was a repetition of the Trail of Tears that the Cherokee had been forced to endure in the Tennessee. The government promised that there would be ample food, blankets, housing, etc. provided for them when they reached their new reservation. But – as coincidence so often repeated itself in the world of the BIA – the blankets and food never arrived. By the middle of the bitter Minnesota winter, 400 natives had already frozen or starved to death.
One of the Christian missionaries from the Bad River band on Lake Superior went to visit the new reserve, and wrote a heart wrenching letter to the president and BIA, stating that it would be more humane to shoot all the natives instead of forcing them to freeze or starve to death gradually in their new concentration camp. This letter was instrumental in generating public support for the survivors, and putting heat on the US government. The BIA backed down, and allowed the natives to move back into their ancestral territories onto a number of small reservations.
$7 for pork BBQ and coffee. Walk right by all the zombies dropping coins into the slots. Instead of playing slots I read Howard Zinn's History of the US, WWII section while eating. Sleep in the car in the casino lot.
Aug 29
I launch at dawn. Back to the same spot. Worm on one rod and zara spook on the other. But the spook does not get bit. What? I get one LM on first cast with the worm, same log where the first one bit yesterday. Then it is over. Fish for another 1 ½ hrs, do not get a single bite. Go figure.
I finally find an open campsite on Pine Island. Run back to the car, get my tent and chair and run them back out to the island. I have staked my claim. I will live here forever. Then run back into Hayward for supplies.
I stop at the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, constructed around N. N. Horse's giant musky.
Inside are many cool historic lures.
And replica mounts of world record fish. Every kid in the world wants to see his name up on these walls. I did.
Then I stop by the legendary Moccasin Bar, where there are many huge mounted fish. Since Louis Spray's big musky, caught on the Big Chip, was incinerated along with the tavern he owned in Rice Lake years ago, some of the biggest mounted muskies in the world are here.
I order a Hamms beer in honor of Ernie Banks and the Cubs. In the 1950s every Cubs game was sponsored by the Hamms commercials. “From the land of sky blue waters. From the land of pines, lofty balsams, comes the beer refreshing. Hamms, the beer refreshing!” These words are burned into my brain. Even though they have a Hamms sign on the building, they do not sell Hamms! So I settle for a Leininkugel.
Then back to the Big Chip. A comma butterfly is hanging around the parking lot. I launch and head out to my island home.
Hazy cloudy afternoon. Great day to be out fishing, but I lounge around camp, and go for a swim.
Then I head out to find Minnesota Bay. Met a guide at the boat launch who said it is good for LMs. But I get lost and go to the wrong spot. End up at the entrance to Chicago Bay instead. Very easy to get confused on this lake. Unusual to Chip Flowage are the many floating bog islands.
The guide said these are boggy sections of lake bottom that get filled with gases formed by decomposing organic matter, and suddenly float to the top. Eventually the gases dissipate and they sink back down.
I have given up on the tiny rod I took down the Wisconsin River – the one that had a big ski break off after hitting on the spook. In its place I have re-activated the tofinorod. I bought this rod for $12.99 at the Tofino Coop Hardware store almost 20 years ago. Many rods have come and gone in my life since then, but the tofinorod endures. Its tip has broken off a few times, so it is a bit shorter. The ferrule got squished in a car door. The male half of the ferrule is splintered and shattered, some parts missing. The female half is crunched too. Only thing holding it together is the black electric tape, which has been on wrapped around the ferrule for perhaps 15 years. Never was a very good rod, but it has one endearing quality: It catches fish. All my big fish seem to come on this rod, and there is a logical reason. I am a lousy fisherman. I always have brilliant ideas and plans, which are implemented on my good rods. The tofinorod is always the last choice. But my brilliant plans seldom work, and it is the last, desperate backup lure that gets tied on to the tofinorod. My bad ideas catch more fish than my brilliant ideas. It was the tofinorod that caught the 10 lb 7 oz LM, my biggest ever. And my biggest SM ever.
Today I tie the big golden rapala that never gets any bites onto the Trod. I am fishing a little pocket along a point. I see a huge fish chasing something for about 25 feet. Will get to him later. I get no bites on the worm, nothing of the buzzbait. I am throwing the golden rap when something stops it dead. It peels off but I get its head turned. As it nears my boat I see that it is Esox, but not a musky. It is a big lucius. Biggest one I have ever had on a line. It swims by my boat and I try to lift its head out of the water. Does not like this. It jumps, high. Gonna jump right into my boat. It lands crosswise on the gunwale, head inside, shaking its jaws. Do not want to be near those teeth! Then slides back into the water. The fish is wild, running & jumping repeatedly. The rap is crosswise in its mouth, which is good. If it gulped the entire lure the line would be running across its teeth, and this would have cut the line. I have no net. But I remember how to handle Esox. If you can get them tired enough and bring them beside the boat you can grab them on the side of the head, just behind the eyes, with thumb & forefinger. This paralyzes them, but does not hurt them. I carefully lift the big fish into the boat, and lay it across the seat for a portrait, before removing the hook and releasing the fish.
The digital camera owned by City of Ashland would only take about 15 pics before it killed the batteries. My new camera has already taken hundreds, along with endless zooming and on/offs. All on one set of batteries. It picks this moment, biggest lucius of my life, to have its batteries run dead. I try to hold the big fish down with one hand, figure out what is going on with the camera with the other. Must give up on the pics, the trophy fish's life is on the line here. I quickly remove the rap hooks with pliers. No blood, only hooked in the lips. A miracle it did not swallow the rap deeper and cut the line. I lift the fish back in the water and slursh it back and forth to run fresh water over its gills. Could try to put a line thru its gills and hang onto the fish until I get the camera running, but I don't want to stress it out any more. I let it go without a portrait.
Later I remember that I snapped off a couple shots while the fish was rampaging around the boat. These are all I have to remember it by. I would guess 12 lbs, but will never know for sure.
Should keep fishing, but I just sit in the boat and decompress for a half hour. Watch the lake. Think about fish of my past. This one will be burned onto my cerebral hard drive forever. Then go back to fishing. I throw the rap over the lily pads where the big swirl was earlier. Twitch it, and suddenly and enormous head and back lunge out of the water. Huge fish, much bigger than the one I just caught.
Swing and a miss. I rip the rap out of the fish's mouth, and it comes flying back at me like a bullet. As long as the rap does not hit my boat I am OK. This fish is very aggressive, and will probably hit again. But the rap hits my aluminum hull like a rimshot in a strip club. Spooks everything nearby. I get no more bites in this cove.
Must switch to the big rod with heavy leader. I put on the big Mepps spinner, with braided leader. This lure worked well in the Wisconsin R. But will they bite on it in a lake? Yes. Around the point the big Mepps is jolted to a stop. Big fish, Cannot even turn its head. It headshakes a couple times and is off. Next cast I hook a small one. Comes in easy. This one poses for a pic.
Not bad for an hour's fishing. Probably had over 40 lbs of fish on the line in 1 hour. Should stick around here, but I go off looking for Minnesota Bay, find it, and get skunked there.
Head back to camp early, where I have 2 ears of corn and a big porterhouse steak waiting to be grilled over the campfire. An entertaining evening of fishing. And I did not leave any lures stuck in fishes mouths.
Aug 30
I go out at first light. Very windy. Everywhere else I have been in Wis is flat calm, but here the wind never stops blowing, day and nite. I try some new spots. Get 2 hits on the buzzbait early, one is a big Esox. Both miss. Then back to the pike point, around some gravel islands. All I can muster is a couple tiny LMs on worms. Seems like a pattern ever since I left Trempeleau – the morning bite, which is usually my favorite, is nonexistent here. The evening bite is hot.
There is a water plant growing here that I have seen in Oregon reservoirs. A little tuft of pink flowers. What is it? Is it native to here?
Head into town for breakfast and blogging. Then back out to my camp. Expect to have the place all to myself, but a tourist houseboat breaks down, and they have to anchor 200 ft away from my camp. Can't get the OB running. Finally must call for help after 2 hrs. Easy for a novice boater to get into trouble here. Amazing that there are not more accidents. Due to all the rain the entire lake is up about 3-4 feet they tell me. But there are still reefs, and deadheads sticking up out of nowhere. Lots of musky & walleye fishermen all over this lake at nite. How do they miss these?
I am getting tired of this island. Beautiful spot, but I have been here too long. The days are getting short, and the leaves are starting to turn color. Summer is almost over, and I have hardly gotten out on the water, hardly caught any fish. Like Loiuse and Clark in late August of 1804, I cannot tarry. The winter snows are fast approaching.
I head back to camp in late afternoon. It has been blowing hard ever since I got here, but it is howling now. I head over to the pike point, but nobody is home there today. Very difficult to fish in this wind. I decide to make the 2 mile run over to the backwater sloughs I fished the first nite, but it is even windy in there. Coming from every direction as the wind swirls around the islands. I lose one nice LM on a worm, but must give up on that. Cannot fish a worm unless you are in control of the boat. Cannot control the boat in this wind.
Nothing moving, nothing biting at all. The buzzbait, which was slammed here 2 nites ago, is ignored now. I hear a soft plop next to the boat. Is this a fish jumping right next to me? No - it is Cat VI. The lure on the end of the tofinorod must have snagged off on a weed, the whole rod was pulled overside and into the water as the boat spun around in the wind. I see it sinking through the water, reach down to grab it, but just miss. Take the big 7' rod and sweep at the sinking tofinorod, snag it for a moment with the hooks of the zara spook, but it falls off. Try again but it falls off the spook just before I get it to the surface. Sinks to the bottom, about 6 feet deep. I reach down and try to snag it with the spook, just about get it to the top when it fall of again. Getting very dark, hard to see. The more I sweep around the bottom with the spook on the 7' rod the more I churn up the weeds. I will have to come back in the morning.
I am skunked on the Big Chip. Head back to my island despondent. Forgot to get more food, so all I have to eat is 2 ears of corn and a bag of marshmallows, some of which I roast. Very windy nite. But even so they fish all nite here. I hear boats running around, and see lights on the lake. Walleye fishermen likely. The eyes like to bite at nite.
Aug 31
My poiaon ivy sores are almost healed over. Even the big crater on my left ankle. Mosquito bites taking over as the primary nuisance now.
An hour before dawn it starts to rain, but the wind lets up. A good dawn to be fishing, but my rain gear is in the car so I stay in my tent. Stops raining an hour after dawn. I scramble out and hurriedly load everything into the boat and take off, before the next squall hits. Farewell to my island home.
I fish the pike point again. No bites. Then head over to the slough where I lost the tofinorod. Getting very windy again now that the rain has stopped. Always blows from the S. Where does this S wind come from, when the entire rest of the state is calm?
I see a water weed growing here called spiralis. It also grows in Elk Lake in Victoria BC. Invasive species there. Is it native here?
Back in the slough I fish the worm. Tough in this wind. I catch 4 small LM.
Then get back to the place I lost the tofinorod. I hope to see it on the bottom, but do not. Turns out it is more like 9 ft deep here - 6 ft of water and 3 ft of dense milfoil slop. I try swooping the bottom with the 7 ft rod. Only get weeds. Try sweeping the bottom with an oar. No use. Just a bottomless pit of mud and weeds. The tofinorod is gone. A real tragedy. I fish a lot, but all my big fish come on this rod. I may never catch another big fish. Could drive to Hayward to get a grappling hook. But I decide to go to Wal Mart and buy a replacement rod & reel. Farewell to the tofinorod. You served me long and well.
And farewell to the Big Chip. A huge challenge to a novice fisherman. Easy for a tourist boater to come to grief here. Get lost, break down, hit a deadhead or floating island. I did OK, considering I have never been here before. Would like to try this lake during a different season, when the wind is not blowing.
I drive up to find John Myhre at Moose Lake, but no one is home. There is a boat launch for $5 at Moose Lake. I will fish here in the AM.
There is a beautiful pool on the W Fork below Moose Lake, right next to the road. The Teal R flows into the W Fork here.
I will fish here. I walk down to the pool with the big rod. Middle of a hot. Sultry afternoon. Gonna rain tonite. I make a few casts, but it is impossible. Too many mosquitos. Everything is covered except my hands and head, but they are chewing my head off while I fish. Must go back to the car, where I have a mosquito net that fits over my head. It is lost in the chaos of the car. Takes me 15 minutes to find it. Any movement causes me to sweat rivers. In the desert sweat evaporates. It is a mechanism that cools the body. In Wisconsin and Illinois, where humidity is 99.8 percent, sweat does not evaporate. It does not cool. Just runs down your body and soaks your clothes. By the time I unload everything in the car and find my headnet I am so sweaty I must drive fast down the road to cool off. On the way I see a sign for a boat launch on Teal River.
One small rock rapids backs this river up into a pool at least a mile long. I will fish here tonite instead of wading in the big pool I just left.
I catch a couple small lucius, and nothing more.
A storm is coming.
I load the boat back up and head into Hayward. A storm has been brewing all evening. Now it lets go. Late at nite in Hayward, driving rain, the first place open I come to is the casino. I have another meal – boring and mediocre. Like the people who come here and the people who work here. C. Horse would never have worked in a casino. Finish Howard Zinn's chapter on WWII, which extends all the way up to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Go figure. Sleep in the car in the casino lot.
Sept 1
August is over. Summer is almost over. I have killed the car battery listening to radio. Must get the battery out of the boat to jump start the car, so I get started late. Head up to Moose Lake and launch at Louie's Landing.
After King Louis XVI fled France and lead the Corps of Discovery across the Great Plains with Clark Kent, he was getting tired and old. Like me. He bought a lakeside tavern and retired to Moose Lake, Wis. The resort - Louies Landing - is now run by his descendents, so I launch there in honor of his great expedition.
This lake is stained very dark. I head up the Moose R Arm. There are no weeds in this lake. Why is Chippewa Flowage a few miles away full of weeds, and why are there none here? All rock on the bottom, with tons of wood along shore. Unreal amount of superb SM habitat, but I cannot get a bite on rap or Mepps.
Around the bridge looks good. No bites. Upstream I am in the W Fork Arm – current is flowing. There are some super looking spots.
Must hold fish. But I get no bites. No fish in this lake. All the rivers in this part of the world are dark, but this one is almost pitch black. On a sunny day you can barely see one foot down. Getting very shallow as I head upstream, casting rapala and Mepps into likely spots.
No bites. I switch to electric motor, but still keep hitting bottom. Must keep going until I can say I reached the river. Must fish the W Fork. I keep on, poling the Bullship upstream against the current & wind. Finally I can go no further. Like Lewis & Carol when they reached the Pacific, I must turn back.
This river sucks. This lake sucks. I will head back down, load the boat out, and go to another watershed.
I keep casting the rap on the way back down. Suddenly, a hit. A beauty SM, about 2 ½ lbs, makes a spectacular leap, and shakes off. Then I get nothing for another ½ hr. Middle of the day now, and only 1 bite. Must leave this lake! Only 1 shady spot left, under a patch of alders.
I throw the rap in, twitch it, and there is the huge swirl. Unmistakable, after seeing it on repeated on the Wisconsin River. Esox coming! Smashes the rap. This time I am ready. I reef back, pulling, pulling, pulling. Must get a good hookset. It is a musky. Good one. At least as big as the pike I caught at the Big Chip. Bigger. I get it out away from the wood along shore, but it rampages around the boat. Only the back hook is in the fish's mouth. As long as I keep a tight line I may land this fish. Trying to get a pic with one hand, and hold onto the fish with the other. Again, the adrenaline makes me panic, press the Power Off button instead of the shutter button. No time to take pics, the fish has wrapped the line in the Minnkota prop. I get the line loose, but have to leave a little slack to do it. The ski swims away from the transom, jumps, thrashes, and shakes the hook loose. This one came very close to posing for a picture. 12-14 lbs? Not as big as N.N. Horse's fish, but would have been a trophy for me.
I lounge around for a half hour. Should fish, but I want to get the feel of the place. Then start throwing the rap again. Catch a dinker SM.
Could have been eaten by the bass I lost earlier. I am struggling with the big ones now that the tofinorod is gone.
A minnow scurries frantically around the surface of the pool, chased by an Esox no doubt. Need to go back to town and load the new rod up with line, and musky leader. I switch to using the big rod, with the golden rap. Catch a teenieweenie ski. Small but mean.
I am a bass fisherman, not equipped to handle these slashers. Need 2 pairs of pliers to handle skis and pike – one to hold the hook and the other to grab the fish's jaw. I grab the hook with my pliers, but now what? Don't want my fingers anywhere near those teeth. I try to hold the fish down on the seat. It is little but I know what is coming. The fish lurches, thrashes, and stabs the loose triple hook deep into my thumb. Now the ski is hooked loosely on one hook, and my left thumb is hooked deeply with the other. No choice. I hold the fish down with my left hand, grab the hook with the pliers, and yank it hard out of my thumb. This one is gonna bleed. Then I get the fish loose and release it OK. People don't believe me when I tell them that nowadays I spill more of my own blood when I fish than I do fish blood.
Seems like there is a pretty good bite on. I will come back tonite. But first I head back to the launch to have a couple beers at King Louie's Landing, rest my sore thumb, and load the new rod up with line.
I am onto the fish now. I fish my way back up the channel in the afternoon. There are a few real good looking spots here, but I get no bites. In a little back bay I get a small hit, probably a small ski. Then nothing. Getting up near where I almost caught the big ski this morn. Dead flat calm and still.
Suddenly a thermonuclear explosion at my floating rapala. One of the hardest surface hits I have ever seen. Looks like a smallie hit, but is too big. Must be a ski. But I see when I get it beside the boat that it is an enormous SM. Perhaps the biggest I have ever seen. Cannot get a good look at it, cuz it is a raging bull. Certainly over 5, maybe over 6. Never know. Like the ski this AM, I get it inches from the boat and shakes the rap off and gets away. Would have landed this dolomieu on the tofinorod.
Under the same trees where I hooked the ski in the AM I get 3 consecutive follows from a big fish. Almost certainly the same fish I lost this morn. Won't bite again. Again, I cannot believe these big fish hold out in 2-3 ft of water. But when the visibility is only 11 inches they are safe from eagles and ospreys.
Then there is a mosquito. And another. I put on T shirt, socks, blue jeans, sandals, long sleeve shirt. As fast as I can clothes on, but not fast enough. They are ravenous. I cannot fish. Need to get back into the sun. I fish back down the river arm. The moment the boat is in the shade I am swarmed by skeeters. The only clear shot they have is my wrists hands and face. They swarm my wrists. Then start biting thru my socks. I am going to pay my dues for every cast this evening. Should have worn gum boots. Cannot swat them away fast enough. Every cast is paid for by another bite. I fish until dark, and never get another hit. Go figure.
Must get away from these horrible mosquitos. I load up the boat and head back to the Teal River launch site, sleep in the car overnite. Too many bugs. I am outahere.
Sept 2
At first lite it starts to sprinkle. I will head east to Afterglow Lake, where my family spent many a summer vacation. Afterglow is a private lake, bought by the phys ed teacher at my grade school, who quit that job to start a resort. Just a little bass & bluegill lake in the northwoods. Not specially good fishing, but enormous memories for me. I head east on Hwy 70 as the thunderstorm picks up power. Raining hard now. Suddenly something big by the road, and another and another. Are these moose? Cannot be. No moose around Moose Lake, or in Wis at all far as I know. Must be elk. Are there elk here? I turn my rig around and head back west. Sure enough. In the driving rain and near dark there are a few big cow elk nea one big big buck with a huge rack. I try snapping some pics out the window.
Turns out that there used to be lots of elk around Wisconsin.
A Brief Ecological History of Wisconsin:
Since the last Ice Age native people lived here, hunting buffalo and elk along with deer. The S part of the state was mixed hardwood/pine forest with a lot of open prairies maintained by fires set by the natives. The N half was magnificent Eastern white pine forest. Some of these pines were over 5 ft diameter. When the French explorers came along they got along pretty well with the natives, but infected them with smallpox, which killed most of them. When the US settlers moved in they chased the remaining natives off or killed them. Only a few small resevations reamain – Lac Court Oreilles, Lac du Flambeau, and Bad River. The immigrants plowed and farmed the grasslands in S Wisconsin. After the Civil War commercial logging nuked the pinery. This great white pines were cut down and dragged to the nearest river in winter, when the ground was frozen; Then dumped into the river by the thousands in spring when the rivers were high. The big rivers of NW Wisconsin – the Namekagon, St Croix, Chippewa, Flambeau, Black, Wisconsin – were used as conveyor belts to drive millions of logs to mills and markets. The log drives jammed the rivers.
The magnificent white pine ecosystem was wiped out in about 40 years, simultaneous with the extermination of the buffalo on the plains. Huge fires raged thru the logging slash, burning away the soil, and leaving a landscape of burned stumps. Some of the fires were of historic proportions, especially the Peshtigo Fire that occurred the same day as the Great Chicago Fire. The Chicago Fire got all the press, cuz it had a better agent. But the Peshtigo Fire killed far more people, between 1,500 – 2,500. Nobody could be sure in the charred wasteland that remained after.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_5_22/ai_n24983543/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hinckley_Fire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_Cloquet_Fire
The N half of the state was left a barren scabland that stretched from the Mississppi to Lake Michigan, now referred to as “The Cutover”. The idea was that once the pines were gone the land could be sold as farmland, and most of it was. But most of it did not grow profitable crops and the farmers went broke. Much of the land reverted back to the government due to non payment of taxes. The great pines were replaced by whatever seeded in – poplar, maple, oak, jackpine.
I drive on thru Park Falls, on the Flambeau R. They still harvest timber in Park Falls. It is a pulp mill town, making a meager living off the scrub that grew back in place of the great pines. They still do commercial logging here, but the trees are so scrubby nowadays that they load them crosswise on the trucks.
"During the age of sail, tall white pines with high quality wood were known as mast pines. Marked by agents of the Crown in colonial times with the broad arrow, they were reserved for the British Royal Navy. Marking of large specimens by the Crown was very controversial in the colonies, and their de facto seizure was a point of great contention among the colonists and played a significant role in the events leading to the American Revolution. During the American Revolution it became a great sport for the patriots to see how many of the King’s trees one could cut down and haul off ." Now they haul the logs crosswise on the logging trucks, cuz the trees do not grow long enough or straight enough or big enough to haul lengthwise.
On thru the Chequamegon (pronounced she-wam-igan) National Forest. All federal land now, farms in the Cutover that failed, property reverted to the govt for non-payment of taxes. But there is a new form of prosperity on the Cutover lands these days. A huge marijuana grow-op was recently busted here, run by Mexican druglord mafioso. I arrive at Eagle River in the afternoon. The tourist towns like Hayward and Eagle River are booming, but the industry towns like Ladysmith and Park Falls seem to be really struggling in Wis.
I am back in the Wisconsin R drainage now. I once rented a canoe and floated down the top 15 miles of the Wisconsin, which begins as the outflow from Lac Vieux Desert just N of here. The uppermost dam on the Wis R is the Otter Rapids Dam, just below Eagle River.
This dam generates a bit of electricity, but its main purpose is to regulate water levels in the famous Eagle River Chain of Lakes, around which an enormous tourist industry has developed.
I still have issues to settle with this river, whose muskies humiliated me further downstream near Merrill. There is about a 2 mile stretch of rocky, free-flowing river below this dam before the river enters Rainbow Reservoir, formed by the next dam. I find a nice free campsite near the top end of Rainbow Res. There is a big mushroom growing there.
I head in to a cafe in Eagle R and check my emails, and look at the waters around here in Google Earth. Seems to be a couple boat launches on Rainbow Res. so I head down there to launch.
Then head off downriver, excited about the impending evening bite.
The local guy said to throw a charteuse spinnerbait into the flooded timber along the steep cutbanks. He caught SM, 1 LM and a big pike doing this today. So I pound the steep cutbanks mercilessly with chartreuse spinnerbait and rap. Never get a single bite. Go figure.
There is a back channel where they have installed some concrete structures to prevent erosion.
I am throwing mostly to the edges of the grass, thinking it is growing out of only a foot or so of water. Walt Whitman would have loved it here - a Sea of Grass. Near dark I check this spot. My oars are 8 ft long, and I cannot touch bottom with them in this grass. The grass seeded on dry ground, and must have just kept growing all summer to keep its tips above water.
I run back to the car before dark, frustrated and dejected. Must get out of this Wis R. Cannot catch any fish here. Tough for a tourist like me to figure out a flooded and radically changing ecosystem like this one. I will get right out of the Mississippi watershed. Head east to the St Lawrence. I go into Eagle R for dinner and blogging at a tavern. Have ribs and a couple beers. It if fine until about 10 PM, when they turn up rap music to wall shattering volume. I ask them to turn it down. Only about 6 other people in the place. But they don't. I leave my ribs and full beer on the table, and pay my bill, and flee. First time I have never left a tip on this trip. Disco was the death of music in this country, and rap is the rebirth of the undead. I drive back to my campsite and listen to Byrds and Eric Clapton. I don't mind loud music, as long as it is not trash.
Sept 3
Dawns drizzly and windy. I have been beating myself up chasing the elusive Esox. Must take a day off and get a shower, dry out my gear. As I expected in a tourist trap town like Eagle R, the Super 8 motel, which cost $65 a nite in Merril, costs $100 here. I will outahere and look for a cheaper town. But on the way out of town I see the Hiawatha in, where they rent me a great room for $60. roof over my head, shower, bed, and not one single mosquito. I can see why many people are attracted to this kind of living. The cold front is here. By the time I get my room it is driving rain. Temp is 48F! In Trempeleau it never got below 80F. Howling N wind. Trees are shaking. This is a honking big storm. Summer is over here in the northwoods. After my shower I drive back into town. There is sleet falling on my windshield. I picked the right day to hole up in a motel. Spend the day drying out my stuff, doing laundry, blogging. LouAnn and Clark would do the same thing when they got tired of life on the open trail. Stop over at a Motel 6 for a day, and rejuvenate. I do the same.
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