A Day in the Driftless with a Couple of Favorite 3-Weights

Once plans were made to attend the Oak & Oscar Built to Discover Trip to the Driftless, Brad Eaton of Greens & Streams and I put our heads together on what we could do with a few days leading up to arriving in the Viroqua area for the weekend.  It didn't take too long to sort out a plan of fly fishing, golf at a couple hidden gems, and borrowing his neighbor's Airstream camper so we'd have a place to crash for a couple of nights. 

As soon as I touched down in Madison, Brad was there to pick me up.  We made the necessary stops for groceries, lunch, and then headed north into the Driftless, dropping off the camper at Jerome Kohout's mixed use campground where he also grazes his cattle.  Brad has camped here for years and it's a special place though it's advised you watch your step for cow pats in the middle of the night if you need to take a walk to the outhouse.       

The streams that we fished over these few days were perfect 3-weight water.  You may be asking yourself, "What makes for a perfect 3-weight fly rod?"  At least in my opinion, it's three things.  This fly rod should be fiberglass, it usually doesn't need to be longer than seven foot, and it should have an action and taper that falls on the spectrum of full-flexing and even what some would say feels slow.  I'm sure there are some graphite (gasp...) and bamboo that could check these boxes but I don't know about them.

As this trip approached, I put together a carefully curated Sea Run Case with six fly rods, which I'll deep dive into in another post, two of which were cherished 3-weights with the Ijuin-Rod Yomogi (built by Kazutomo Ijuin) and a C. Barclay Fly Rod Co. Blue Ridge Special 68 (built by Chris Barclay).  Both of these fly rods are paired with a Japanese-made KINEYA Tackle Maker fly reel, which just raises the level of aesthetic perfection of each outfit.      

Fly selection was easy with small foam hopper patterns and even though it might have yielded a few more fish, I didn't bother with dropping a nymph off the back bend of the hook.  I'll take pure dry fly only eats over treating that same fly as an indicator.  I end up fishing hopper/dropper tandem rigs differently than if I am only casting a single floating fly.  And, honestly, F$&% nymphs.  That might be a hot take but it's late summer in the Driftless.  Let small foam hoppers float high and swirl in the corners, near the undercuts, and along the tall weed lined riffles and runs.  Wait for the slow rise of a trout nosing up the surface.    

Brad and I took a long walk downstream through a series of pastures trying to time how long it might take us to get back to the bridge.  Chase from Oak & Oscar had left Chicago that morning and was planning to meet us at the pin that we sent him for the afternoon.  This would divide our day into two halves and I spent this morning session with the Yomogi.  It was overcast but warm.  Hoppers of several sizes jumped and flew out of our way as we walked through the pasture and even though none of them were pink and purple, those colors of the foam flies worked better than more natural tones of tans and brown. 

While Brad and I were fishing one of the last zig zags of the steam near the bridge, we heard from Chase that he was gearing up at the car.  He made good time from Chicago and this was a good enough excuse to walk back to crack a beer and snack on some chips.  I took a moment to put together the Blue Ridge Special 68 and tied on a fresh hopper as the couple that I used all morning were a bit chewed up.

Chase and I decided to work our way upstream and Brad wanted to circle back to a few areas downstream for a second try.  We crashed our way through tall grass and weeds that much of it was taller than Chase and I.  This wasn't the same pasture water that I had fished through the morning and it required careful short casts, always looking behind you to make sure that the backcast wouldn't get wrapped up.  Several trout rose to Chase's fly and it wasn't too long before he slid a brown trout into his net.   

I walked upstream from Chase and even though I had told myself that I didn't really need to fish anymore, there was a deep corner just ahead that was being fed with with a shallow rock riffle.  The riffle was now in the early evening shadows but the corner was still lit up in the autumn sun.  Maybe I'd try just one more spot and if a trout didn't rise from here, I'd call it quits.  The tall grass of the bank leaned over the dark water and the click and pawl sang as I pulled thirty or so feet of fly line from the reel as I looked on at where I'd want to land the hopper.  There had to be a trout there, maybe several, and I wanted to carefully pick this spot apart.   

I sent the first cast near the tail out of the corner, then another into the riffle to the front edge of the corner, and then one last cast deeper in that landed in the riffle and was quickly swept along the bank.  I watched as the hopper floated high against the grass and then it disappeared.  I raised the fly rod up to feel the immediate weight of a trout and watched as a large, at least for this water, brown trout swam out of the undercut bank.  Moments later, I was able to move this brown trout into a thick weed bed to admire it for a moment before removing the fly and coaxing it back into the deep water.  What a trout to cap off an already wonderful day.  I likely didn't deserve it but sometimes things work out that way.

The sun was falling behind the forest when I met up with Brad and Chase to walk back to the cars.  With the tailgates up, we all cracked a beer to celebrate a stellar day on the water.  After that last brown trout, I didn't feel the need to fish again this trip, even though I would.