Bruun (L) and Pallot, smallmouth fishing in Wisconsin. August, 2025.

A Flip Fable

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Stan Beaulier’s pickup, towing a five-owner Clacka, idles by the Grand Motel’s parking lot, which is occupied by our ancient gang-of-four fly-gear fiddlers. A fine young guide, Stan wears sandals for shoe-demanding river bottoms and is frequently laughing while spouting common and Latin names of Wisconsin’s eleven native turtles, cardinal flowers, and five different redhorse species known only to McClane’s.

Badger 2, loading at Antigo, Wisconsin, 1921. A.J. Kingsbury photo, MCRM collection. December 1978 Gazette.

The DrakeCast #69: Wisconsin’s Locomotive Fishing History

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I first met Israel on a steelheading adventure in Southeastern Alaska back in 2018 (a trip we documented in an earlier episode of the podcast). It had been a while since we had seen each other so this past summer he drove sixteen hours north to join me on a search for the best fishing Wisconsin has to offer: smallmouth bass on poppers. It took a couple of days but we eventually found an entire river teeming with willing, surface-feeding fish. But seeing as he had driven all that way, on day three, we decided to shift gears. Or as Israel phrased it, “We absolutely waylaid smallmouth all day yesterday on poppers. So we figured why not kick ourself in the [expletive] and try and go after musky today.”

Something that looks sort of like a mayfly. PC: A.J. Swentosky

Summer Doldrums

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A sharp sun is pinned overhead, drilling into the back of my neck like a hot desk lamp. I’m alone in a rowboat on a lake, a shallow depression with the sort of soft marl bottom that squelches unpleasantly between the toes. Its shape is the result of glacial waves that once buried northern Michigan in six thousand feet of hard, gray ice. In late June, with a ring of leafy oaks surrounding the lake and the air hanging wet and heavy, the fact that there was even snow here three months ago seems unlikely, and a mile of ice, impossible. When it’s hot here it seems like it’s always been hot, and always will be.

Idaho's world-class smallmouth water. PC: Visit Idaho

Dworshak Dreams

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A float tube is the wrong vessel for Dworshak Reservoir. The lake is more than fifty miles long, nearly twenty thousand acres, in some of the wildest country in Idaho. A friend who hunts elk in the surrounding forest, usually from a boat-in only campsite, refers to the lake as “Big D.”
I knew all of this before I showed up there in early May to search for smallmouth. Yet there I was, shouldering a float tube to a beach a few hundred yards from the launch, trying to avoid hearing the jet-boat crowd laughing when I strapped fins on.

Biggie Smalls Featured Pic

Photo by Kendrick Chittock

Biggie Smalls

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There was no doubt it was a steelhead. Until it wasn’t. The grab had been so jolting, the head shakes so violent, that no consideration was given to the fish being anything but a steelhead. Yet there at my feet, in six inches of water, lay a brown smallmouth of grotesque proportions. Pulsing and flexing, flaunting its outsized strength.

The best fly fishing books.

Stocking Stuffers – Fishing Books

Drake Magazine Back Issue Content Winter 2017, Flies, Fly Fishing Art, Fly Fishing Industry2 Comments

Smallmouth: Modern Fly-fishing Methods, Tactics & Techniques Tim Landwehr & Dave Karczynski $29.95 Stackpole Books Most of the how-to flyfishing books at your local library come from accomplished anglers that aren’t very good at writing. This book isn’t one of them. Lifelong smallmouth guide Tim Landwehr of Tight Lines Fly Fishing Company in DePere, Wisconsin,…