Hoo, boy. We had such a big weekend. After posting about the demolition on the boat interior, we scooted on off to Milwaukee. The plan was to attend this function, stay in the hotel they provided us, and then go down to Racine, fish, and come home.
I’m happy to say it went off without a hitch. The hotel provided for us was wonderful. We had a jacuzzi and a rain shower. The function was a pretty good time- I got to meet a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Matt’s coworkers met the regional director of Homeland Security. And we got to have a big, fancy dinner at the Harley Davidson museum in Milwaukee. The open bar didn’t hurt, and neither did the fact that a wealthy former Marine picked up our tabs at the bar afterward.
So, this morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and took advantage of the amenities. We checked out of the hotel, and left for Racine, about 25 miles away. We had hoped to find the dam on the Root River there. For a large, inanimate, cement object, it proved elusive. We eventually just found the Root River Steelhead Facility, where the DNR does a lot of their stocking and sampling. We spent most of the day fishing nearby. I caught my first trout, and it was my first time using exclusively lures. Matt caught a couple trout, and a nice, big bass. I caught a little bass and a lot of little trout. We saw some real lunkers in the clear water, but they weren’t having any of our shenanigans. They were almost all rainbow trout, but Matt did get one brown trout.
We were out for about 6 hours. I had a blast, even though I didn’t catch any keepers. Trout are so much fun. They’re such spunky little fish, and I loved seeing the little guys swim up to hit my spinners.
We also had the good fortune to meet a wonderful fly fisher, who took pity on Matt and walked down to show him some stuff. He even gave Matt a fly. He was so nice!
We stayed in this area most of the day, on about a 3/4 mile stretch of river. We later moved on to a different area, much farther upstream, but we didn’t catch anything there and eventually decided to head home. It was a great day, and we had a good time. It was nice to get out of town for a little while. I’ll go ahead and dump some captioned photos tonight.
First trout of the day.
My little smallmouth
My first trout.
Beautiful day, beautiful setting.
Muscle Man
Itty bitty trout!
17″ small mouth.
Hunt/Fish/Play 
I agree, it was a perfect day!
One of very few items on my bucket list is to learn how to fly fish. I used to trout fish with my grandpa in a stocked pond, but I truly long to stand knee to hip deep in some mountain stream with my fly rod, line swooshing though the area, followed by a substantial jerk. Have you read Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”? Very Hemingwayesque-a Nick Adams story. Dark, of course. Enjoyed your blog!
Thank you! Neither of us are very good at fly fishing. We barely know what we’re doing đŸ˜› But We’re working on that. I’ll have to give that book a look. Thank you for stopping in!
Nice, I got to do a little trout fishing this last weekend as well. Lot’s of little ones and my body is reminding me today of all the rocks and logs I climbed over.
The most I’m getting reminded of today is that I’m a redhead, and sunblock is actually a necessity.
Congrats on your first trout! They really are a blast to fish for. When I started fishing I had a brook trout stream I could visit every day. The spunky little things are why I love fishing so much.
I’ve never lived anywhere that had trout streams. Moving someplace with muskie and pike was strange enough, but I’d always thought of trout as some strange fish they only had in the mountains. I got some recs today on streams closer to us than Racine, which is two hours away.
Pingback: More Solo Fishing | Hunt/Fish/Play