Troutsmith (5 page)

Most tiger trout are propagated artificially in hatcheries as a novelty fish. I've seen them on display at trout hatcheries in Pennsylvania and New York. Utah hatcheries produce enough tiger trout to support an extensive reservoir stocking program. Wisconsin hatcheries raised tiger trout for a short time in the 1970s, but all of these domestic tigers were stocked in Lake Michigan. Eventually the program was discontinued because of poor hatch rates. Wisconsin's rugged Driftless Area may be the only region in the United States where wild tiger trout are common enough to give even the casual trout fisher an outside chance of catching one.

If you should happen to catch a tiger trout, consider it an event of nature equivalent to winning the lottery. The probability of a female brown trout and a male brook trout interbreeding in nature is exceedingly low; there isn't that much overlap between the species even if they live in the same stream. Brook trout typically occupy the cold headwaters of a river system while brown trout predominate in the warmer water downstream. Both species are fall spawners, however, so if there's significant natural reproduction in a trout stream that has both brook and brown trout, there's at least a chance that a few tigers will be produced each season.

But the odds against catching a tiger trout don't end there. Only 35 percent of the young tigers that hatch successfully grow and mature into adult fish, even within the safe confines of a hatchery, because of genetic diseases inherent in the hybrid sac-fry. Tigers that do mature tend to be more aggressive feeders than either brook trout or browns. As a result, tiger trout are relatively easy to catch and offer a high rate of return when stocked in streams, lakes, and reservoirs.

That first tiger from Timber Coulee was the last one I saw for another decade, but I'm happy to report that I've been catching many more tiger trout from Wisconsin's Driftless Area spring creeks in recent seasons. The year 2003 was a red-letter trout season, in part because I caught two tigers, one from a Grant County stream and another in Crawford County. Surprisingly, 2004 rewarded me with four more tiger trout, two from Vernon County and one each from Pierce and Richland counties. Things are definitely looking up for the Wisconsin trout angler who wants to go tiger hunting! All of these recent tiger trout were caught from different streams, but always from stretches inhabited by good numbers of brook and brown trout.

Recent conversations with former DNR fisheries personnel Roger Kerr and Dave Vetrano about tiger trout in the Driftless Area agree with my own experiences. Roger recalls turning up no more than a half-dozen tigers in twenty years of stream surveys, and usually that meant just a single tiger trout in a stream with thousands of brook trout and browns. However, both Roger and Dave have seen tiger trout become more numerous in recent years. As brook trout continue to make a comeback in many southwestern Wisconsin watersheds, tiger trout have gone from being “exceedingly rare” to “a bit better than rare,” according to Dave. His electro-shocking crews now find three or four tiger trout each year. Roger characterizes the chance of catching a tiger trout as “about the same as the chance of seeing an albino deer or a doe with antlers.” Most of the tiger trout that are turning up in stream surveys are less than a foot long.

Longtime Wisconsin trout angler and guide Bob Wagner once lived along the headwaters of a Richland County trout stream. Bob reported that in 1997 he personally observed a thirteen-inch male brook trout spawning with a twenty-inch female brown trout. In the seasons that followed, Bob caught quite a number of tiger trout in that stretch of the creek, as many as eight in a two-hour session on the water. This is an incredible statistic when compared with states like Pennsylvania, where veteran anglers consider themselves lucky to catch one or two tiger trout in a lifetime.

Some Wisconsin anglers question whether the increased presence of tiger trout is a positive development. Their concern is for the native brook trout and whether the genetics of a wild brook trout population might be “polluted” by nonnative brown trout genes carried by tiger trout. I think that tiger trout are a good thing. They're an indication that brook trout are becoming more numerous in a river system, and that brookies are moving downstream into traditional brown trout areas as the health of a trout stream improves and water temperatures become colder. Since tiger trout are sterile hybrids, there's no chance of genetic pollution by these rare mules of the trout world. More tiger trout in a stream are tangible proof that the quality of trout habitat is getting better and that natural reproduction is taking place.

If a day comes when you catch what appears to be a mutant variety of trout from a stream in the Badger State, take a closer look. Does your trout look more like a brook trout than a brown, and yet it can't be a brookie? Are there twists and turns of mottled olive markings edged in black on the trout's back? Did the trout hit aggressively and fight like a demon before you brought it to your net? Then take a second look at that trout, and maybe a third and a fourth. You may have caught a tiger of the valleys, a fish of uncommon beauty as rare as a meteor shower or a display of the northern lights.

The Scuppernong River has the most unique name in American trout fishing. It begins in several large springs that pour out from the base of an interlobate moraine in southwestern Waukesha County, just twenty miles west of Milwaukee as the crow flies. Spread out a topographic map of the area and you'll easily find the moraine, because most of it lies within the boundaries of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. Trace the line of the moraine south and west to the little village of Eagle and you'll have moved your finger along the divide between the Scuppernong River and Fox River watersheds. As a trout angler, you'll also have noticed a cluster of trout waters in the area, which might be a surprise so close to a major city. Small trout streams like Genesee Creek and Jericho Creek meander south and east from the moraine until they lose themselves in the Fox River, which crosses the state line into Illinois. These streams are well known locally and have a strong following of anglers, some of whose families have fished them for generations. Several large springs drain west from the moraine into the various branches of the Scuppernong. Many of these springs feature spring ponds: Paradise Springs, Scuppernong Springs, McEwan Springs, and McClintock Springs, to name a few. Because a large part of its landscape has been shaped by continental glaciers, Wisconsin is blessed with at least 278 named spring ponds spread across twenty-four counties, a higher density of this special water type than anywhere else on earth. Unique fishing environments tend to produce distinct regional styles among anglers, and Wisconsin is no exception. Fishing spring ponds here has been refined into an art form.

The earliest photograph I have of me fishing was taken on a private spring pond in Langlade County one sunny summer morning in 1966. It shows a towhead kid not quite six years old casting a spinning rod rigged with a nightcrawler and a bobber. The fixed gaze and intense concentration on the kid's face show two things: (1) he's there to
catch fish
, not just play around on the dock; and (2) his life is already ruined. I can even remember details. The rod in my hand is a nifty 5-foot Garcia ultralight with a Mitchell 308 reel on it. If that doesn't work, I've got a heavier 6½-foot Shakespeare “Wonderod” with a Mitchell 300 laid out on the dock within easy reach of where I'm standing.

Despite my best efforts, the only fish I remember catching from this pond were creek chubs. My dad and my cousin had some better days on it from time to time though. In his freezer, my cousin always seemed to have a couple of orange-bellied brookies that were eighteen to twenty-four inches long, and in the late '60s he often won the local
Field & Stream
big fish contest with brook trout from his pond. In fact, the fishing was so good that he wanted to make more spring ponds from the seeps and tiny streams on his property, and therein lies a story. I can tell it now because the principal folks involved are all dead, and the land changed ownership several years ago.

Somehow my cousin was able to come by some dynamite. Looking back, and I still have some old family photos of the event, it must have been quite a bit of dynamite. At any rate, my dad, several cousins, and some friends who were ex-military types strategically placed the dynamite in an area where the ground was boggy with spring seeps. Somebody lit the fuse and they all ran for the hills. Wives, kids, dogs, et cetera were already on top of one of those hills, the better part of a mile away, with cameras, tripods, and such set up like Cape Canaveral. I remember our blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala flying down the two-rut “road” at the base of the hill, and then my dad and the rest of the guys running to the top and lighting cigarettes. We waited. And waited. Legal niceties weren't discussed by any of the adults present. When I was five years old I just figured my folks knew what the hell they were doing.

Then like a silent movie a vast pillar of Antigo silt loam, black as sin, vaulted into the sky and hung there for a long moment before crashing back down amid the popple and birch. A mighty, booming roar like thunder followed several seconds later. Then all was quiet and people started breathing again. The dogs, however, were convinced that the world was coming to an end and refused to budge from beneath the '58 Chevy. Years later my dad told me he saw forty-foot aspen trees completely covered with mud around the blast zone. We do learn from whatever doesn't kill us though; my cousin built the rest of his ponds with a bulldozer.

I started fly fishing Wisconsin's spring ponds during my undergraduate years at Northland College in Ashland. The headwaters of the White River on the old Henry Ford estate had some nice ones, and I still think of the Delta-Drummond Road through the Chequamegon National Forest as “Trout Alley.” Beaver Lake, Nymphia Lake, and Perch Lake were good to me in those early years despite my lack of experience and limited opportunities to fish.

The spring pond I've come to know best is the one I've fished several days each year since it opened to the public in 1985: Paradise Springs Pond, near the village of Eagle in Waukesha County. The spring at the head of the pond flows at a constant rate of about five hundred gallons per minute, or some thirty thousand gallons per hour, making it one of the largest springs in a region where springs and artesian wells are common. European settlers used Paradise Springs (also called Minnehaha Springs or Eagle Rock Springs) as a source of drinking water since at least the 1840s. Trout were stocked in the pond by L. D. Nichols shortly after 1900, although it isn't clear if native brook trout were already present or no trout lived in the pond prior to this initial stocking. Nichols dammed the outlet of Paradise Springs and built a water-driven turbine to generate electricity for his house and grounds, one of the first electrified homes in the area. Trout continued to be stocked by multimillionaire Louis J. Petit when he purchased the property sometime before 1920. Petit, known as the Salt King because he made his fortune with Morton Salt, built a horse track, a tennis and shuffleboard court, and a beautiful fieldstone springhouse featuring a domed copper roof. Nichols's dam is still in place, as is Petit's springhouse. The copper roof lasted until about 1970, but has since been removed.

Paradise Springs changed ownership several times after Petit's death in 1932. Augie Pabst (yes, of Pabst Blue Ribbon fame) inherited the property from Petit and sold it to a gentleman named Frank Fulton just after World War II. The paperwork barely had time to dry before Fulton sold the works to Gordon Mertens. Mertens built the Paradise Springs Hotel in 1948, but business must not have been too good because the hotel was transformed into a bottling plant during the 1950s. Lullaby Baby Drinking Water was marketed throughout the region until the bottling plant closed ten years later. The building was removed in the 1970s when the State of Wisconsin acquired the property, and with the help of the local Lions Club, Paradise Springs was restored to its present condition. The Southeast Wisconsin chapter of Trout Unlimited has also done good work at Paradise Springs in recent years, stabilizing the banks and keeping the pond accessible to anglers, including those who get around with wheelchairs.

I didn't know about the spring pond the first time I fished there. February 23, 1985, was a dim, overcast winter's day, but I'd read in the trout regulations that Paradise Springs
Creek
was open for catch-and-release fishing upstream from County Highway N north of Eagle. When I arrived at the now-familiar parking area shortly after dawn, my heart sank. The creek was microscopic, and chock-full of downed trees. But I'd come fifty miles to fish, so with what I call grim determination and Teresa calls sheer cussedness, I tied a #14 Gold-ribbed Hare's Ear Nymph to the tippet and waded into the stream just above the culvert where it flowed beneath Highway N. Nothing happened as I worked my way upstream beneath giant oaks, Norway spruce, and scotch pine, but I kept going and cast wherever I could to wherever a trout might hold in that tiny creek. The unmistakable sound of falling water grew louder as I fished upstream, and finally I came around a bend and saw the tall spillway of Nichols's dam ahead of me. Climbing up the dam from below was a bit of a trick given the ice, snow, and frozen ground, but I was a lot younger then.

Sure enough, a beautiful spring pond opened her arms to greet me as I came over the rise. I can still see it in my mind's eye: a smooth expanse of blue-green water stretching a hundred yards ahead, with the barren, dripping trees and low clouds reflected in it like Japanese calligraphy on parchment. Then a fish broke the surface only fifteen feet away, and I flipped the little nymph into the pond a few feet off to the side of the rise. The hare's ear sank immediately and I watched as the leader pulled under, bit by bit. There was a sudden acceleration in the sink rate, I struck, and a fat nine-inch brown trout leaped into the air, head shaking and body twisting, the first of a dozen fine trout I caught before reeling up at noon.