Smith: At season's end, finding optimism in trout and the people who love them in the Driftless Area

GAYS MILLS - At noon clouds parted above the coulee and bright sun jolted the mid-October scene to life.

In the distance, a tree-covered ridge was peppered with red and yellow. A few hundred yards away, black cattle grazed on a lush green carpet on the valley floor.

And a rod's length away, a silvery trout, dotted with red and blue, swirled on the surface of Tainter Creek.

The beauty and richness in this corner of Crawford County gave credence to the outdoorsman's wish: If I were king, October would be 90 days long. 

The reality was plenty good, however.

Together with John Motoviloff of Madison, I set out to fish and explore the Driftless Area on the ides of October, now also known in Wisconsin as the last day of the inland trout fishing season.

Under a regulation change initiated last year, the close of the trout season was extended by 15 days. 

And then on the day after the season, I joined a tour of stream restoration in the region led by Duke Welter of Trout Unlimited. 

Welter, TU outreach coordinator for the Driftless Area Restoration Effort (DARE), has organized the trips for the last dozen years as a way to highlight work being done in the region. The tour is attended by anglers, land owners, land managers, fisheries biologists, stream restoration experts and others. 

"Even if you can't fish, there's never a bad time to be on the stream," Welter said. 

The same can be said of any visit to coulee country. 

Last week, the apple harvest was being processed in orchards around Gays Mills. The fall colors were subtle, but beautiful, and most trees still had nearly their full complement of leaves.

A lutefisk and meatball dinner was planned for later in the week at Utica Lutheran Church in Mount Sterling. 

People come from "states away to eat our traditional Scandinavian fish," the church said in a flyer posted in Gays Mills. The meal is served family style and includes lutefisk, lefse, meatballs, rutebagas, potatoes, coffee and Norwegian pastries.

Motoviloff and I had a different fish meal in mind. 

We set out first on an unnamed creek outside Gays Mills that had produced good catches of trout in the past.

It ran clear and of moderate volume, but yielded only one small brook trout. Was it a lack of skill on our parts? Or were there just very few fish?

One thing was clear: The creek had been hammered by high, fast water during the floods that wracked the area this year.

On each stretch we explored, plant roots dangled from exposed, vertical banks. 

We decided to move a few miles to Tainter Creek.

The water was bigger and ran slightly turbid. But the gently sloping banks were green and intact. The farm's owner grazes beef cattle along the stream but frequently moves the livestock to other pastures.

The action on Tainter was completely different, too. Our first casts were met with bites.

Over the next hour, we caught more than a dozen fish, mostly brook trout but also several brown trout and one sucker, ranging from 6 to 14 inches in length. We kept two trout for dinner and said thank you to the 2018 season.

The disparate experiences, mere miles apart in the same watershed, helped highlight some of the teaching points during the next day's stream tour.

The Driftless Area was once the poster child for erosion and stream degradation. Poor farming and logging practices in the 19th and 20th century allowed huge volumes of soil to wash off the hills and into the creeks.

But the application of science and will helped reverse the script. In 1933, Coon Valley in Vernon County served as the nation's first watershed to demonstrate successful soil control measures such as contour planting and crop rotation.

And more recently, the region has earned a reputation for stream restoration and its attendant ecological, cultural, recreational and economical benefits. A key juncture in this movement can be traced to 2006 when Trout Unlimited launched the Driftless Area Restoration Effort (DARE).

With multiple partners, DARE works to restore watersheds, improve water quality and assist fish and other wildlife to benefit the environment and local communities of the Driftless Area.

The Driftless, known for its lack of "drift" or "leavings" from the last glacial period, is a 24,000-square-mile region marked by scenic coulees, springs and streams in southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and northwestern Illinois.

The area is home to about 5,700 miles of trout streams, according to Trout Unlimited. Not all the waters were created equal. And some were poorer than average but have been improved to trout fishing stardom.

With many valleys burdened under 10 feet or more of soil eroded from nearby ridges and hilltops, the Driftless Area was a target rich environment for stream restoration. 

Tuesday's tour visited two Wisconsin sites, Beaver Creek in Sparta and Weister Creek near La Farge. Sixty-five people participated in the tour.

Thanks to ongoing restoration, Beaver now provides ready access to trout fishing in the city limits of Sparta. 

Weister flows through a rural Driftless landscape, including a portion of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. About 2 miles have been restored over the last three years. Another one-half mile is scheduled for projects in 2019.

The quality of the work on all rehabilitated streams has been put to the test by massive rain events and flooding over the last decade, including "100-year" or greater floods in 2008, 2016, 2017 and 2018. 

This year's floods in August and September qualified for federal disaster aid. 

Not all Driftless Area stream restorations have survived the severe conditions. 

But the banks on Weister largely remained intact, with newly planted grasses holding soil in place.

The changes in the fish community haven't yet been assessed in Weister. But in many cases, dramatic increases in trout populations are seen.

At Gilbert Creek near Menomonee, for example, a pre-restoration survey found 100 trout in a mile of stream. Three years later, Welter said, it had 2,700 trout in the same stretch.

And Kady Creek near Elmwood went from 270 fish per mile to about 5,000. 

One tangible improvement was already seen on Weister. The changes helped reduce flooding this year along 24 Valley Road, said Gail Thomas, proprietor of the The Goose Barn cafe near La Farge.

Bringing more anglers and other tourists to the region is welcome, too, Thomas said.

Trout fishing had an annual economic impact of $1.6 billion in the Driftless Area in 2015, according to a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse study released last year.

In part due to continued stream improvements and increasing awareness of the high-quality angling opportunities in the region, the value increased 45% since a similar review was done in 2008.

Welter said the severe flooding has helped teach many lessons about stream restoration.

One is the value of gentle sloping to allow the water to naturally move onto the flood plain rather than tear into the bank. 

Another is the resilience of the fish population. Adult trout can weather high, fast water by sheltering behind a rock or moving as necessary. Young-of-the-year trout may not fare as well.

"But the overall effect of floods is not devastating to trout populations as long as they have good habitat," Welter said.

Electro-shocking carried out over the next year will help assess the status of fish populations throughout the Driftless.

Architects of the stream restorations are taking notes of what has failed and what endures, and incorporating the best practices into new projects in the region.

In the wake of the terrible flooding, fish biologists note two silver linings: the torrents exposed spawning gravel in many new spots, increasing the potential for natural reproduction; and if the 2018 year class of trout has been diminished, the surviving older fish will likely grow faster.

As Motoviloff and I found, some – and likely most – streams are in excellent condition.

And then there's a broader point.

"These (restoration projects) are good for communities," Welter said. "One of the things we have found is they are non-partisan and bring all types of people together."