A friend and I hit the Brule River in Northern Wisconsin for the Wisconsin fishing opener. It was quite busy and alot of others had the same idea. It wasn't that bad at all and still some peaceful fishing. We managed manged quite a few brook trout, rainbows and brown trout.
I've never been much of a wooly bugger person, mainly dries and nymphs, but it actually worked good. It took me a bit to get used to fishing with it from a canoe or even wading. I broke off quite a few times on some nice fish. I think it was my poor quality knot tying and just making took much of a hook set, but I'll be working on that. It seemed like the wooly bugger brings out some bigger fish from cover, just my observation.
The weather was a little cooler on Saturday, with highs in the 50's, partly cloudy and windy. The night before it was 29 degrees. Sunday was beautiful, with mostly cloudy skies, temps in the 60's and a slight wind. The fishing actually was better on Saturday then Sunday. Some of that might have been because the fishing pressure on Saturday, which made for a slow Sunday. There was sporadic caddis and mayflies flying around. Midges were pretty much everywhere.
I'll probably go back when the fishing pressure slows down and when lots of bugs are flying in the summer. The summer time on the Brule has way less fishing pressure, but you also get alot more canoers and more biting bugs.
Tight lines.
I got out to fish the Brule this past weekend, my buddy and I fished downstream from Highway 2 just to try to ditch the crowds a bit, I mostly swung a black wooly bugger. I landed a good amount of pretty nice rainbows and a few browns. The highlight was a beautiful 17" Brown, that came out of a fast moving deep run.
I'm gonna have to try whipping around that wooly bugger downstream as well. It looks the downstream section below 2 would be a great place to use it. There is alot more access to most of the river in the lower sections which is a plus. The upper section is pretty much accessible only by canoe and a few access points, but you can on fish so far from a put in.
Sounds like you had a good time on the lower and nice fish, I'll give it a shot with a wooly the next time out there.
