It was in-between-times in the forest this morning. Morels are about done. Ramps are about done. Oysters haven’t started in earnest. Still I can’t complain. There were a few oysters, and they were nice and fresh, and a few ramps, enough to assure a tasty wild treat for dinner tonight.
The 27th Street Podcast is back after a brief hiatus. This episode features my conversation with Mike Chew in the Dogwood Banjo workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was in the Twin Cities to pick up Dogwood Banjos # 52, which Mike made for me. I really enjoyed our conversation, while Mike put the finishing touches on my instrument.
Dogwood flower and leaves inlay
Podcast music: intro – The Forky Deer; outro – The Banjo Tramp – both played by me on my new Dogwood banjo.
Curly maple neck, fretboard bound with ebony.
This banjo has a 25.5 inch scale length. Curly maple neck, bocote fretboard, wenge rimcap and tone ring, natural skin head.
Mayfly inlay
Dogwood banjos website: http://www.dogwoodbanjos.com/ or visit the Dogwood banjo page on facebook.
I was pulling into a rest stop on my recent road trip, when I heard the tell-tale swish that means a text has come in. I parked and pulled out my phone. It was Tuffy P, informing me she got us tickets to see the amazing Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Toronto Jazz Festival, June 25. I’ve wanted to catch one of their shows for a very long time. Isn’t Tuffy P fantastic? I think so.
Here’s Natural Born Lover…
We’ve been watching London Spy, the British/American production which aired as a 5-part series in early winter of 2015. It was slow, sometimes excruciatingly, it was smart, clever, fascinating, dark, and did I mention slow? I think it was an excellent bit of work, although I would have been happier if more of the mystery had been maintained. The injection of a rational “what really happened” took the intoxicating edge off.
So what do you watch after a series like that? Fortunately, our pals Candy and Stagg sent me off with a big bag of DVDs when I left Chicago. Tonight, Tuffy P reached in and grabbed one – and out came Chef, the 2014 Jon Favreau flick. It’s a food movie and a family movie, and a road trip movie combined and it is chock full of charm and delight, perfect for a boost after enduring London Spy.
There was a time I could drive much longer distances than I can today. I recall the time I drove out to the Sierras for a button accordion camp (with some fly fishing along the way). That trip I drove as far as Omaha on the first day. When I finally stopped, it felt as if my eyes were fused open. Since that trip, driving long distances has become more challenging for me – but this time around I was able to relax into some longer drives again.
On day one of my road trip, I drove from Toronto to Escanaba Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, 994 km. My new strategy was to make many brief stops. I looked for a rest area about every hour and stopped for only a couple minutes. I’d stop, walk around, get back into the car, and motor on. Each short rest was rejuvenating and I felt comfortable driving the long distance.
I crossed the border at Sarnia to Port Huron, turned north at Flint and headed right up the lower peninsula to the Mackinac bridge. After the bridge, I turned west and headed along the Lake Michigan north shore. At one point, I stopped by the lake and found myself in the midst of a huge midge hatch. I was standing in a fog of the little bugs, and my buggy was quickly being covered with them. I got back into the car, joined by a few hundred midges, and got back on the road. This is when the check engine light came on. The last thing I needed was a check engine light.
There was little choice but to continue to drive, so that’s what I did, and the car was running fine. In fact it continued to run fine for the rest of the trip. I’m guessing the bugs had something to do with the check engine light. I’ll see my mechanic before heading off to Midwest Banjo Camp next Thursday and get it checked.
The stretch from Escanaba Michigan to Viroqua Wisconsin was challenging. Google Maps offered up a route I was not satisfied with, including a mind-bending number of road changes. I chose what I thought was a more reasonable (and straighter) route. This was fine, but it included a stretch of 41 cutting through Green Bay. To say this stretch was under construction was generous. It was confusing, slow and very ugly. This was an introduction to Wisconsin roadwork. It seemed as if there was roadwork happening just about everywhere in Wisconsin. In fact, my preferred motel near Viroqua was only available 2 of 3 nights because it was booked up with construction workers. They repaint the lines. They groom the shoulders. They fill in the cracks. Wisconsin may be the road construction capital of America.
The good thing about the system of roads in Wisconsin is that the county roads seem to follow the stream valleys, so finding a trout stream usually means simply finding the nearest county road to the stream system you want, and the county road will wind you right down into the valley.
Viroqua to Minneapolis was an easy drive. It seemed to me that La Crosse had sprawled considerably since the last time I was through there several years ago, although perhaps I had selectively forgotten what it really looked like. I took the 90 west to Rochester and then straight up 52 to the Twin Cities.
Most of the drive back south to Chicago was fine until about 20 miles from the big city. At that point, there is mega-construction, tolls and a remarkable lack of road signs. I stopped at an “Oasis”. I had enough gas to get into Chicago, but I was happy to get off the construction for a short while. the Oasis gas station offered no cash option, so I put in a credit card. Is this a debit card, asked the pump? No. Enter a 5-digit zip code. What? I’m from Canada you silly pump. I pressed the call for help button. The pump wrote back, attendant has been called. After a few minutes of being ignored, I canceled the transaction and opted for an ice cream instead, then back on road. It just seemed wrong they would charge a toll for a road that looked like a war zone.
I was worried I would get hopelessly lost in Chicago but amazingly enough I found my exit, and recognized some of the Pilsen streets from a previous visit. Finding Candy and Stagg’s place turned out to be easy, and I even found parking right near their car. My anxiety about driving into the city in a construction zone dissipated quickly as I downed a been and a super-delicious burrito with Candy at a local taqueria.
The final big drive of my trip was the long day from Chicago to Toronto. I again stopped briefly each hour and had no difficulty with the drive, and it was uneventful. Traffic was light. There was no line-up at the border. I had a great trip, but I sure was happy to be home.
I fly fished a stretch of Timber Coulee in the Driftless which had a cliff along the far shore. One spot featured this spring emerging from the cliff. You can see the water dripping into the stream in the photo below. 
This is not a really deep run but the trout like the deep cover. Some really good trout were rising right back into the brush. 
The concentric circles are rising trout during a baetis emergence in a big pool in Timber Coulee (in the Driftless).
Here’s a little dose of Iris Dement, covering the late Merle Haggard, just because….
There are a tremendous number of fly fishing opportunities in the Driftless area. I decided to focus on the Viroqua Wisconsin area, and I ended up spending all my time on one system. I fished Rullands Coulee, Timber Coulee and Spring Coulee – and even if I went back a few more times, I wouldn’t be able to explore all the water on just these streams. There are other tribs in the system I didn’t even look at. Consider there are many other systems of creeks through the Driftless area, not just in Wisconson but also in Minnesota, Iowa and a wee part of Illinois. 
Some of the streams, like Spring Coulee above, are well marked and there are good safe areas to pull your car off the road. In this spot, Spring Coulee is quite narrow, but because of all the brush and the small but fairly deep valley, you really have to get in there and wade the stream. 
This little cut was only a couple feet across. The run below is surprisingly deep, with an undercut on the far side. I tried fishing this fast run with a dry from below, but found it very difficult to get my fly in just the right spot. This is the challenge on this little stream. It’s pretty obvious where the best fish will be – and when I fished it they were free-rising and not very selective. The challenge is getting your fly to the trout without spooking them. I fished all morning one day on this stream. I slowly worked my way upstream, fishing most of the good runs along the way. I say most because some deep undercuts are just about impossible to fish. Some of them can be approached from above, and I made a mental note of which runs to fish on the way back, but once I started working back downstream, I was getting hot and tired and I ended up cutting across the field and heading back to the motel for a nap before the evening fishing. I’d like to fish more of this little water sometime. I didn’t get anything bigger than 11 inches in this stream, but I did catch quite a few trout here and I really enjoyed this water.
For those who prefer bigger water, a short drive takes you to Timber Coulee, a stream which offers quite a variety of fly fishing experience. 
One evening there was a huge blue-winged olive emergence on Timber Coulee at this stretch. This run came alive with trout rising all over the place. There were two sizes of fly coming off and the trout seemed to have no use for the larger of the two. This stretch offers a series of runs-riffles-pools, and the some of the pools have considerable depth. Other stretches are quite different. One evening I fished a stretch with a bit of a rock cliff on the far side. This stretch had deep undercuts, and bushes and trees on the far bank. The biggest trout rose tight to the structure, of course.
At this time on these creeks, mid-day is the time for lunch and a nap. Morning fishing tailed off by 11:00 am and there really wasn’t much doing until about 4:30 PM. Since there were plenty of rising trout, I mostly fished dry flies. I did try nymphs and streamers at various times, and caught a few on streamers, but curiously enough, nothing on nymphs. On the other hand, soft-hackle flies, fished in the surface film or even a little below were among the best patterns.
The fellow in the fly shop told me the trout had been eating craneflies and except for the one evening when the olive hatch was overwhelming, adult crane patterns were about the best pattern I could find to fool these fish.
27th Street 