Night fishing on Wolf River fills the soul
GILL'S LANDING – Pink and blue light filled the early evening sky and reflected off the calm surface of the Wolf River.
Pleasing as it was, the mirror image of pastel colors and patchy clouds on the water belied the richness found below.
Now, in midsummer, the Wolf was slightly swollen but gentle, dark but welcoming.
And full, oh so full.
Schools of minnows darted in the shallows, their quiet ballet broken every few minutes by the splashy, belly-flopping kaboom of a feeding smallmouth bass.
Leopard frogs were so numerous along the river's edge the grass seemed alive. Some spilled over into the water and bobbed downstream.
But those observations, literally and figuratively, only scratched the surface.
The vast majority of the Wolf's life force was hidden beneath the top layer. And it surely wasn't as still as it appeared from above.
"I wouldn't want to be a small fish out there right about now," said Tom O'Day of Weyauwega. "Actually, not a medium-sized one, either."
As the sun descended in the west, the dinner bell was ringing for the river's night shift, including two whiskered denizens of the deep, the channel catfish and the flathead catfish.
O'Day and I gathered along the shore of the Wolf to enjoy an evening of fishing, story telling and star gazing. The catfish had arguably motivated the gettogether, but we both understood we didn't need to justify time spent along a Wisconsin river, watching the current and the world roll past.
In his classic American song, George Gershwin wrote: "Summertime, And the livin' is easy, Fish are jumpin', And the cotton is high." The only modification needed for an August 2019 Wolf River edition of that phrasing would be taking out "cotton" and substituting it with "cattails" or "wild rice" or "river."
Lush vegetation, including stands of wild rice, lined the Waupaca River near its merger with the Wolf at Gill's Landing.
And the Wolf itself is still higher than normal from abundant precipitation this year.
But it was eminently fishable, in part due to the river's connection to thousands of acres of marshes.
When the Wolf goes up, it also spreads out into original and restored wetlands. When you consider the river's habitat, its fish (including the lake sturgeon), and its culture (floating fishing cabins), there is simply no place like it.
O'Day and I set up shop for the evening on the dock of a cabin he owns and a pair of pontoon boats tied alongside.
The site is just downstream from a railroad bridge and adjacent to an eddy.
Decades of current have carved out a deep hole below a bridge footing. It, and just about every other hole in the area, usually holds a catfish or 10 in summer.
O'Day and I started by trying to catch bait for the evening. I used a small piece of nightcrawler on a size 10 hook in an effort to land some small bluegills. Something in the 4- to 5-inch range would be perfect to entice a flathead.
Unlike other catfish you may be familiar with, flatheads prefer live bait. In fact, they are the biggest predator fish in Wisconsin waters.
When dangling a bait into waters known to hold flatheads, most anglers have the possibility of catching the biggest freshwater fish of their lives.
The state record flathead weighed 74 pounds 5 ounces and was 53 inches long. It was caught in 2001 on the Vernon County portion of the Mississippi River, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
For reference, that's about five pounds heavier than the state record muskellunge, and surpassed only by lake sturgeon (170 pounds, but not considered a predator fish).
In the DNR's new "Live Release" category, a 47-inch flathead occupies the top spot. It was caught, photographed, measured and released Sept. 3, 2017, on the Wisconsin River in Sauk County.
O'Day and I have enjoyed an annual outing or two on the Wolf in search of big flatheads. I consider the opportunity, watching rod tips and stars along one of the state's waterways, a precious slice of Wisconsin life.
Try as I might, I couldn't catch a bluegill. It turned out a school of black crappies was hovering around the dock. O'Day joined the hunt.
The smallest crappie we caught was 9 inches, the largest about 12. It's not a bad day when all the only panfish you can hook are chunky crappies. But they were larger than we wanted for flathead bait.
We had a back-up plan, however. O'Day, who owns Gill's Landing Bait and Tackle, never leaves home without live bait.
In this case, that meant sucker minnows. We hooked 7-inch long suckers on stout spinning or bait casting rigs and cast them into the deep. A 2-ounce sinker helped hold the bait near the bottom.
We placed the rods into holders on the front rail of the dock, sat our cabooses into chairs, popped open cold beverages and waited to see what the evening would bring.
The first memory we added to our creel came not from the water but the air.
As the sun dipped behind the trees, a large black-and-white bird of prey flew over them. A pair of ospreys has a nest atop a power pole along the railroad tracks and just north of the fishing hole.
About 8 p.m. one of the adult ospreys flapped in with a medium-sized fish in its talons and dropped it off for its two fledglings to wrestle over.
A high pitched "ak, ak, ak" emanated from the nest and echoed down the river. We couldn't tell if it was "thanks" or "Mom, she took it from me again!"
Clearly, though, it was another sign it's best in these waters to be a big fish.
A few minutes later we were treated to another part of the local ambiance. A train rumbled through, clicking and clacking and squeaking over the bridge.
It was the first of four that would pass in 4 hours.
The ospreys didn't mind. I wondered about the fish.
"I've had catfish hit when the trains are rolling past," O'Day said. "I don't think it bothers them a bit."
Darkness settled in and, with the train gone, so did silence.
Crickets chirped and frogs croaked as the night took over.
About 9:30, the southernmost rod began to vibrate. We waited a minute, then when the line began coming toward the dock, I picked up the rod and reeled.
A fish was on, and it began pulling hard downstream, then up. After 20 seconds of to-and-fro, it yielded to pressure and came to the surface.
O'Day reached down and lipped the fish into possession. It was a 5-pound channel catfish, proving that they, too, will take live bait.
After the flurry of excitement, we sat back and were swallowed again by the summer night.
Lightning bugs danced above the shoreline vegetation.
After 10, streaks high in the sky grabbed our attention. Meteors, probably from the Perseid meteor shower which peaks in early August, began streaming over the Wolf.
Twice our shooting star show was interrupted by rod tips twitching. Both times the fish turned out to be small cats.
One of the fish hit as a meteor flashed overhead and a train rumbled past.
We ended the outing at midnight. We had not landed a big flathead, but our creel of life experience was once again filled with the sights and sounds of a summer night along the Wolf.