root and pike river fly fishing salmon (racine county, wi)

Every week during work me and Neal will spend 10 minutes a day talking. We both work for the same company even though we are in separate buildings. We get together on the phone to talk about previous fishing trips, discuss current conditions, or to strategize our upcoming weekend outing. This week was no different as we made plans for early Saturday morning to hit the local tributaries for whatever salmon were left over. We both woke up later then planned but got out there in time to have a very relaxing morning.

Last weeks rain brought in a decent run of late season fish. That water has disappeared leaving the rivers depleted again. We were prepared for low-water conditions again and spent most of our day trying to sight fish deeper pools on the Root and the Pike rivers.

The Root River was flowing around 40CFS and the Pike River was flowing in the single digits. We spent the morning on the Root combat fishing shoulder to shoulder. We would try to hold down a small section of river real-estate but it was inevitable that somebody would creep up and try to fish the same pools. It took all of two hours before we had enough and decided to hit the road. As we left the only thing I noticed was a completely full parking lot with more people arriving.

We made our way south to the Pike with hopes of receiving some solitude. There were 2 cars parked on the bridge and that look far more inviting then the parking lots we just left that had probably 20. Far less people were fishing the Pike and there were far less fish but I guess that only makes sense! Neal hooked up and landed a nice fish on his first cast. The rest of the morning we walked a good distance and only came across a handful of fish all of which were sitting in the deepest pools.

neal with a low-flow coho

another look at the fish