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Fishing the Wild Wisconsin (Guest Article)
by Ted Peck

The character of our Wisconsin river is like the metamorphosis of a sleepy caterpillar into a frenetic Wood Nymph butterfly--in reverse. There is undeniable power in the brown, boiling water of this broad-shouldered stream as it tumbles over shallow sand near Prairie Du Chien where it crowns the Father of Waters into a state of Grand River majesty.

Although the beauty of the lower Wisconsin river is undeniable, it pales in comparison to the natural grandeur found some 400 miles upstream near Merrill where the river races past the first few dams like a speeder blowing by a toll booth. Twenty-six dams attempt to harness the river's power between headwaters at Lac Vieux Desert and confluence with the Mississippi some 435 miles downstream, earning the Wisconsin a nickname as "the hardest working river in North America". The river drops 435 feet between these headwaters and Merrill past places like Whirlpool Rapids and 1,315 foot long wooden tubes at Grandfather Falls before even considering access to fishers who would like to make a cast without hanging on to the gunnels of a canoe for dear life. There is plenty of wide-eyed water between access near the hospital in Merrill and a take out point some nine miles downstream behind the lumber yard in Brokaw, just above the city of Wausau.

But it can be fished with due caution. And considerable success if you're sharing a boat with an avowed "river rat" like Todd Koehn. Koehn is the only guide working the upper river, ghosting his jet-powered flatbottom over and around foreboding boulders with piano-sized dimensions in pursuit of smallmouth bass and muskies. Both of these premier gamefish species are present in these wild waters in both numbers and dimensions which make the upper Wisconsin river the best kept trophy hotspot in the state.

Koehn keeps two Beckman landing nets near the stern of his flatbottom boat, the larger of which has ample mesh to cover a main battle tank. Commenting on the size of the larger net gleans an omniscient smirk from the portly Koehn, who describes the larger "toothers" which swim here as "whopping big pigs". We never got a chance to use this net in three recent days on Koehn's river. But we didn't fish for muskies much. In the couple hours we did throw bucktails and Suicks for the official state fish we hooked up once and saw two more muskies. And they were whopping big pigs. Another muskie had Koehn diving for the smaller landing net when he thought the 30 inch fish, which refused to show itself in the rootbeer-colored waters, behaved like a substantial smallmouth bass.

Koehn doesn't bother netting smallies less than 20 inches long, simply hoisting smaller specimens which whack his #4 Mepps Black Fury spinner over the gunnel to be unhooked and quickly released. This bait is ideal for the wild waters of the upper Wisconsin river, imitating crayfish which are the primary forage base for chunky bass which seem to wait behind every boulder. Koehn smirked and even snorted when I tied an obnoxious yellow X-5 Flatfish on, growling that smallmouth bass don't eat bananas. A minute later he had to make a bullfrog-on-a-dragonfly stab with the net as 22 inches of defiant smallmouth tried to take the banana bait under Koehn's boat for the fourth time. The Flatfish, a crankbait called the Timber Tiger, and Koehn's Black Fury Mepps kept the Beckman wet. But none of the fish was a "two-footer".

"There are 24-plus-inch bass in this neck of the river" Koehn says with authority. "But they don't want to leave...and with all the rocks and wood to dive into so close to their ambush points the big ones often get away". Most anglers would be content in tangling with a five pound riverine smallmouth on a daily basis. Not Todd Koehn, whose avowed mission in life is besting the 9 lb. 1 oz. state record smallie caught in Indian Lake over 50 years ago. "This part of the river is virtually untouched with most fish growing old before even seeing a hook" Koehn opines "something I'm trying to change one smallmouth at a time--before setting them free to fight again".