Enchanting River

by Roger Ager

 

Recently, a friend named Mark and I had a pleasurable evening fishing on one of our area waters. Our quarry – the strong-pulling and good-eating channel catfish.

 

We arrived at our destination, a resort on the riverbank, about 7:30 p.m. and began rowing a rented boat upstream a short ways to the catfish spot. It was a perfect evening on the river. The sky was clear; the sun was just about to disappear behind the trees. The temperature was about 70 degrees. A slight breeze was coming down the river channel out of the north.

 

The place teemed with life. Dragonflies and swallows darted and dived about, taking hatching flies from the water. A muskrat swan along the shoreline with a clump of grass stems in its mouth, probably heading for the den.

 

An eagle soared above, head turning from side to side looking for a fish dinner. A whitetail doe stepped from the woods into the knee-deep current for a drink. A pair of noisy honkers went over, heading upstream.

 

After dark, the birds and dragonflies were replaced by bats whirling and diving in and out of our lantern-lit area. Two great horned owls called to each other from different locations in the woods on the east bank, ready to start the evening’s hunt.

 

Fish of all sizes surfaced and jumped clear of the water around us. Occasionally, the sound of a huge sturgeon coming clear of the water and crashing back echoed up and down the river.

 

From 8 p.m. to midnight, seven channel cats between three and nine pounds came to the boat with just about as many lost. All in all, it was a great fishing trip in about as beautiful a spot as can be found anywhere.

 

The river is the lower Flambeau in the township of Thornapple, Rusk County, Wis., a few miles downstream from the Ladysmith open-pit copper mine now under construction. I’ll drive out here again next year for a try at the catfish. I wonder if it will be the same; I doubt it.

 

For a few pennies in a few pockets, we are jeopardizing a clean-flowing stretch of river and all the wonderful wild things that live in and around it. Is it worth it? I say no.

 

Roger Ager

Chetek

 

(Printer in the Eau Claire Leader, Voice of the People 1991)