Cold Water Brookies – A Winter Postcard

Northwestern Wisconsin, February, on a day that seems lifeless. The cold, dense air isn’t moving, and the world is pressed between a dull, sodden sky and sodden ground with some remnant scraps of the last snowfall. Even the stream seems lifeless; it is mute, with no music for the ear or dance for the eye. As flat as the sky. 

I find myself along the bank on this afternoon, on a stream I’ve never fished before, for a confluence of reasons: I happen to be in the area, the temperature is marginally above freezing (my car’s thermometer reads 35F), and an old-timer I know, a retired fish manager for the state of Wisconsin, recently told me that thirty years ago this stream had a lot of brook trout and that maybe it still does.  

It’s the vacant Sunday between the playoffs and the Super Bowl, and not so cold, and so I thought I’d find other anglers about, other cars at the bridges. But I have the stream to myself.  If anyone else is out on this bleak day they’re probably ice fishing. 

I drop a thermometer into the stream and even it gives a comatose reading: 37.5F. I’ve found that, at least for brown trout, I don’t have much success if the water temp drops below 38F. But I rig up anyway – I’m here, I could die tomorrow, and maybe I’ll at least learn something about brookies in winter.

The stream is small, and many of its stretches are barricaded by alder tangles. And so I go with what I consider my small stream brookie rod: Oni Type 3, 340 cm long. Here in Wisconsin it’s still catch & release (until the main opener in early May), and so with no prospect of brook trout for tomorrow’s breakfast, I go barbless, with a Red-assed Monkey. In case the stream should open up a bit, become less tangled, or I find some large, deep pools, I also take my TAO Classic, 360 cm, with a #14 tungsten Egan’s Red Dart (both flies are members of my go-to palette).

Standing in the water I can feel the grip of its cold through my neoprene wader booties and wool socks. I work slowly upstream, probing here and there with my casts, sometimes climbing onto the bank to skirt a phalanx of alders. The croak of a raven relieves the monotony and reminds me I’m no longer home in the southern Driftless Area. A bobcat has left its track on a patch of snow.

I work carefully yet futilely, and just as I begin wondering if trout are either absent or just too cold to be active, I lift my rod and line for a next cast and find a brookie attached to the end. I bring the 10″ fish to my net, and I’m on the brook trout board for 2025. Instantly, the world is no longer dull and lifeless. I’ve pulled a band of fireworks from the water, fireworks with a heartbeat.

I soon find several more, and nearly all the takes are as subtle as the first. This is something new to me – the takes of these brook trout are much subtler than of brookies in summer, or browns and rainbows in any season. Perhaps the very cold water has them moving with lethargy when they decide to move at all.  

By the time I call it quits and head toward the car and the coffee Thermos, I’m in modest double figures – all brookies and all smaller than the first. But the beauty of a brookie is so large that I’ve never caught one that seemed small. And this now brighter day has been no exception. 

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