Driftless 2025: Part 3 – Over Hill and Under Hill

Day Three in the Driftless was going to be a unique one. Anthony and I were planning on fishing with our friend Jared. Jared is a pretty fun guy to hang out with, with similar interests and a fun loving disposition. However, the one thing Jared brings to the stream that Anthony & I typically do not is a GoPro camera.

Meet Jared

Yeah, Jared is one of those anglers who records his outings and makes short videos on his YouTube channel, Tenkara Genki. So not only were we going to be fishing with Jared, we were going to be videoed while fishing with Jared. Is there such a thing as tenkara performance anxiety?

It was also now the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, so we expected the local waterways to be a bit more crowded than usual.

In an attempt to avoid the crowds, we decided to fish a fairly popular and well known stream, but only its “upper” section. Why? Because while it is generally easy to access down a ravine from the parking area, it’s an equal pain in the ass to get vertically back up and out of. While Wisconsin’s hills aren’t the Appalachians or Rockies, the ascent out of this little gully is a bit steeper than most.

I’ll preface the rest of this story by saying that for some reason, I didn’t take many photos during our outing. Maybe I subconsciously figured Jared was going to be capturing most of the action on video… so I don’t have photographic evidence of much of the fishing. Draw your own conclusions.

Absentmindedness

As we reached the upper parking area and geared up, I let out an extremely audible “Fuck!” Anthony decided to drive today and when I transferred my gear from my rental car to his, I neglected to bring the most important pieces of equipment, my tenkara rods.

Fortunately, between Anthony & Jared they had several backup rods at hand, so I was kindly lent Anthony’s Nirvana Kokoro 360. Jared decided to fish his version of the same rod, so we were Kokoro twins (#teamkokoro), while Anthony opted for the DRAGONtail IceWING zx390.

The descent down the bluff the to stream was fairly quick and easy, and once we got to the bottom we found nobody there. A success!

As I strung up the Kokoro for the first time, I must not have been paying close attention to the knot I cinched at the end of my level line. The first cast was fine, but after the second cast I noticed the line was no longer attached to the lilian, seemingly vanishing either in the water or tall grass. “What the hell?”

I can’t remember the last time I lost a level line like that. Perhaps that tenkara performance anxiety was kicking in? Maybe Jared got the idiotic scene on video, only time will tell.

Anyway, I quickly shook it off and caught my first fish, a fairly small brown on a beadhead nymph. Jared and Anthony were also into fish as well, and we were off for the afternoon…

Time to Catch Some Fish

I’d be lying if I said the rest of the day’s fishing was as stellar as previous trips. I’ve fished this water at least three times before and was playing de facto guide for our group. I was disheartened to find the stream at its lowest levels as I’ve ever seen.

However, The resident brown trout were definitely stacked up down deep in pools as well as at the feet of riffles, but there were a lot of great holding spots that I was accustomed to fishing that were just too low and clear to hold fish of any substance.

Conditions didn’t take away much from it’s beauty though, and fortunately my friends didn’t have the same frame of reference.

Did we end up catching our fair share? Absolutely! And did we have fun exchanging a bit of banter? Totally! Fishing with good friends is a blast. I even snuck in to do some sports-themed “play by play” of Anthony while Jared was recording him successfully fishing a run. He would have been in trouble if I had a telestrator too.

After quite a bit of grouped fishing, the three of us started to separate a bit on the water, while staying within visual sight of each other. Jared was out in front, with me about 30 yards behind, and Anthony another 30 yards behind me.

I’d catch a few fish, then glance behind me to see Anthony catching a few fish, and Jared just kept getting smaller and smaller ahead of us presumably doing the same.

When Anthony eventually caught up to me during a Clif bar break, we signaled to Jared to come back and we ended our day on the water. By now it was about 2:30 PM and we had been fishing for almost six hours, and quite honestly were more than a bit hungry.

The Return Journey

Rods collapsed, we scrambled back up and out of the stream, taking a different path than we originally used to descend. It was initially a bit disorienting, with some confusion and debate at times when we hit a fork in the path, but we finally found the primary trail and started the steep hike back up to the cars.

At that time I also realized how out of shape I was. It wasn’t so much of being winded, my legs just didn’t want to work anymore. While Anthony & Jared seemed to climb out with easy strides, I just went slow and steady with shorter, choppier steps. And believe me when I tell you that my calves, thighs, and hip flexors remained angry for the next few days. At least my Garmin fitness watch was happy.

Gimme That Powerade

Once out and back at the cars, we decided to cap off our afternoon with a late lunch of butterburgers at the Culver’s in Viroqua.

Now, I don’t know if it was because I was overheated, dehydrated, or the fact it came dispensed from a fountain machine, but in that moment the Mountain Berry Blast Powerade I was sipping was straight up the most delicious drink I had ever tasted.

When I sports drink, I’m usually a Gatorade Frost guy, drink it straight from the bottle. Not even sure I’ve ever had Powerade more than once or twice in my life. But on this occasion, I couldn’t get enough. I think I refilled my cup 3 or 4 times while we ate, talked about all our tenkara friends and experiences, and of course other pop culture topics, mostly music and Star Wars.

To conclude, if I had to summarize the day in a few short bullets:

• The water was low
• The sun was hot
• The fishing was just okay
• The Kokoro is a damn fine rod
• The hike out sucked
• Powerade was a revelation
• The company was AMAZING
• It was a most excellent day
• 5 Stars!

🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

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Entries to the Driftless 2025 series:

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