Last week I headed across the border for the first trout session of the year. I’m glad to be getting out, but lacking the usual amount of anticipation. Typically on the first trip of the year I head to the “K” River and do a milk run of easy spots, usually catch a couple out of most, probably get a bunch out of one or two spots. Based on what was going on over there last year, my expectations were low. Decided to hike in to an area we refer to as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, a reference to four good spots with a bunch of slow, brushy, unfishable water above and below. 
No one had been in there yet this year, no tracks in the shin-deep snow. First spot, nada. Second spot, well this one now has a huge willow tree lying in it making it very difficult to fish. Gave it a good try, no fish. Now I get to the ace spot. Can’t miss. Easy, open riffle, deep enough to hold a bunch of fish. I catch them here every time. I scoured it for half an hour, not one fish. As I hike out, I think about the book “Who Moved My Cheese” that was popular about 20 years ago.
Maybe it is still popular now, but it was 20 years ago when I read it. I don’t remember all of the details, and I’m not going to re-read it, but as I remember it described a group of mice who led their lives always going to the same place where they could get all of the cheese they needed. At some point in the book, the never-ending cheese supply dried up and disappeared. Some of the mice continued to go to the same place, hoping the cheese would re-appear. It never did, these mice ended up in downward spiral of despa
ir. Meanwhile, some of the other mice, the more ambitious ones, dared to look elsewhere for new cheese. As I remember, they had to travel farther, and work harder to find it, but they did indeed find new cheese and lived happily ever after. So the moral of the story is that when you lose something, whether it be employment, relationship, favorite fishing hole, cheese—let it go, and go find some new cheese.
Trout are my cheese.
I’ve written before about how good the local streams were “back in the day”. In the mid 90’s the “R” River was THICK with big browns. One September day in about ’98 I said goodbye for the season to all my trout friends, happily finning around in the crystal clear canyon pools. Came back in the spring to stick hooks in their faces, you know, just to say “Hi, how was your winter?” and they were gone. Like 90% gone. After a couple of years the stream rebounded, but has been different ever since…perhaps more fish, but smaller overall. A lot more brook trout. A lot more Subarus parked at the bridges too.
The “K” River has long been a favorite of mine. Historically is has held crazy numbers of wild browns. Walk the banks and you would see trout everywhere-even flat, non-descript sections would have trout scattering. You’d come to a corner hole and you could see 50 in there. Spring 2015 came around and the fish were gone. Walk the stream bank and there were no fish on the flats, come to a corner hole that used to hold 50 and there would be two. Two trout where there used to be 50. The stream rebounded some by 2019, but going by results there last week it seems like the stream is nearly barren again. Not sure who moved my cheese, or where they moved it to, but a search for new cheese was in order.
Acting on 20-year-old intel, I decided to head farther east to a stream “filled with big fish” according to the report from decades ago. With tools like Google Earth and the Troutroutes ap, finding and exploring new streams is easy if you have the time.
When I got there I found the stream to be a bit bigger than expected, it can be hard to judge the size of a stream when using street view on Google Earth. After getting suited up I stepped in and started working my way upstream, nymphing with a beadhead. For all I knew, this stream’s trout population was similar or worse than my “home streams.” But it looked good. Real good.
There is a certain satisfaction that comes with arriving at a new stream, analyzing the water, and catching a fish right away. I’d be lying if I said I caught a fish out of every likely looking spot, but most pools and runs gave up a fish or two, and a couple of spots had a whole bunch in there. Definitely cheesy.
Despite no other anglers around on this fine spring day, there were signs. You could argue that even if I didn’t catch a fish that I found enough tackle left by other anglers to make the trip worthwhile. That blue Rapala is worth 7 bucks alone. I was not impressed with whoever lost the jig worm thing—it had about 50 feet of braided line trailing off it which is quite a menace to songbirds and other animals. I disposed of the line, the jig is headed to my wall of shame.
Fished for about 4 hours. Caught 15, maybe 20 trout. Mostly browns, a couple of little brookies. No big ones, the longest one wouldn’t made it past the end of a ruler. To someone who doesn’t trout fish, this might sound like a colossal waste of time. Drive a hundred miles, walk up though unknown waters and woods to catch 20 fish that if you weighed them all in a sack it wouldn’t be more than five pounds. 
I like catching big trout, but guess what—I figured out that trout fishing, to me anyway, isn’t about catching big fish. That’s what muskies and sturgeon are for. Here’s what I like–put me on a stream where I can hook up a couple times an hour, not see another angler, not hear anyone trying to save lives with their loud pipes. White pines on the ridges, silver maples and alders vying for space along the banks, critter tracks in the mud. End the day with chapped hands and no worries other than figuring out where my waders are leaking from now.
Since this story is about cheese, and these streams are in America’s Dairyland, I tried hard to come up with a good punchline about Wisconsin and cheesy trout. Couldn’t find one, so I’ll leave you with this picture of an unknown fish from a Wisconsin steelhead trip in the 90’s. The streams were so cheesy back then I even caught what we decided was a “cheesehead”. Photo courtesy of Trout Camp News