Signature Streams of the Midwest's Driftless Area 2010

Signature Streams of the Midwest’s Driftless Area 2010

            Scattered across the Driftless Area, from Decorah, Iowa to Spring Valley, Wisconsin, from just west of Madison to the Rochester and Chatfield Minnesota areas, lie a dozen or so “signature” streams that gather publicity like  spider webs gather mayfly spinners in May.  

In some states, they would be considered “blue-ribbon” streams, Le Cordon Blue of trout waters, but we don’t have any designation like that in any of the states where these (mostly) spring creeks flow. 

            You may love them, or you may avoid them.  Maybe, like me, you’ll take in a chunk of some of those well-known waters whenever you get a chance, because they often harbor big trout and spectacular atmosphere and because they’re known quantities of high quality. 

Maybe, on the other hand, you’ll remember the old line about a New York nightclub, allegedly uttered by Yogi Berra, that “Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.”  Yogi might’ve been right, whatever he was trying to say.  If you agree, you might be left to fish only 9,000 or so other miles of Driftless Area trout streams that aren’t the signature waters. 

            These signature streams share many attributes:   the classic Driftless look and personality of bluffs and limestone cobble, rich vegetation, insect, bird and animal life, strong populations of naturally-reproducing trout in large part.  Some flow through wider valleys and have more actively-farmed land than others. Grazing cattle within a fly’s cast aren’t uncommon.  Every one has had some, or much, habitat work done over the years, and most have been appreciably improved in stream health by that work and other nearby conservation practices. 

            If you visit a fly shop, the dry-erase board instantly gives you the lowdown on the nearby signature streams: what’s hatching, what flies to buy, water conditions.  From the nearby urban areas, anglers flow out and most of them seem to aim for these streams.  To find the best fishing on these waters, smart anglers walk and explore, to fish away from the weekends,  and aren’t deterred by wet weather other than electrical storms.

          So assume you have a relief map of the four states of the Driftless Area, like the one above, and start, say, smack at the middle of the 24,000 square mile oval.  Think of it like a clock face, the old fashioned kind with hands.  Where the hands intersect,  you’d find two signature streams everybody, just everybody, knows: Timber Coulee and the West Fork of the Kickapoo River.  Now move to the five-o’clock position on the 24,000 square mile oval.  There, you’d find Black Earth Creek. It’s no secret.  It’s been featured in Trout Magazine and almost every other national fly-fishing publication, showed up in John  Ross’ book, America’s 100 Best Trout Streams, and always makes the Midwestern Top Whatever lists.  You might move toward six o’clock and find the Big Green River, then to northeast Iowa  and find Waterloo Creek.  Continuing clockwise, you’d come to the Root River, Trout Run and the Whitewater River  in southeast Minnesota, then over past high noon to the Kinnickinnic and Rush Rivers in western Wisconsin.  There’s a bit of a gap along the northeast side  of the Driftless, where streams are less fertile and have seen less habitat improvement, but eventually some may be added in that area.   You could quibble with this list, suggest  a few others, but most  of these streams fit into most anglers’ perceptions of the high-profile cream of the crop. 

            And you could quibble with the assertion that the Kinni, Rush and Whitewater are Driftless streams, since they each start outside the unglaciated area and flow through it, as they have since the era they drained melting glaciers from outside the area.   But their bedrock, valleys and water quality all resemble the classic driftless steams so closely that it would be a quibble not worth debating.

            What do they have in common? 

            First, it’s the topography, the bluffs and the valleys.  They’re lovely in any season, but especially spectacular in spring and fall.  My favorite day on Waterloo Creek was in mid-October, as the autumn colors peaked and rutting bucks patrolled their territories where the hillside oak savannah and the valley-floor prairie met.

Second, it’s the riverine habitat, high-quality, cold and fertile.  Stream projects on most of these streams have stabilized banks, sloped vertical edges to gradual vegetated banks that absorb the power of  floodwaters.  You’ll find overhead cover of a  variety of types, a key need for larger trout.  In these waters,  zillions (a truly scientific term, of course)  of scuds and mayflies and caddis thrive among ranunculus and elodea, a rich biomass as part of a healthy coldwater food chain.

Third, it’s the opportunity afforded by the first-rate trout fishing. The Big Green is renowned for offering very, very large trout for anglers to pursue, but almost every one can offer up a wild 20 inch brown, and some have very healthy native brook trout populations. Exploring the Root or Black Earth Creek reveals a variety of habitat types and significant numbers of spots where large trout live.

In Wisconsin’s  Driftless Area signature streams, most of the trout are either naturally-reproducing browns and brooks, or stocked trout spawned from feral fish,  brought into a hatchery each fall and stocked at the fingerling stage after special rearing efforts help them keep their wild characteristics.  They may start and grow slower than domestic strain stockers, but they survive and carry over well in the wild.  And it’s likely in coming years they will be needed less and less as stream habitat continues to be improved.    “I’ve been amazed,” says WI DNR Fisheries Biologist Dave Vetrano, who during his 30 plus year career has been a key actor in the effort, “at how quickly these streams can recover. You can measure it in years, not decades.”

            Fourth—and most important to many who are enchanted by the area--it’s the  aesthetics, the atmosphere you can soak up on every minute of every outing.    As Jim Humphrey, long-time trout fishing writer and the unexcelled appreciator of the attributes of Midwestern waters, puts it, “it’s not the fish, it’s the atmosphere.   For example, take the lower Kinni—the Gorge.  It has this spectacular atmosphere, though you can find better fishing in other places.”  The Gorge, or the Canyon to some people, offers several hundred-foot-tall limestone bluffs, weeping limestone where springs seep out and create fantastic rock formations, oak savannahs along the river. 

            “You need to appreciate the shimmering of light on the water,” Humphrey counsels. “These are places you lose track of time, where the richness of the experience can overwhelm you.  Just a transcendent experience.”  

            He’s getting at something key about these waters there: we each have fished  trout in places of less-than-transcendent beauty, places where you can concentrate fully on the fishing because the surroundings are austere, or unappealing, or frankly ugly.  One might surmise Humphrey would rather fish smaller fish in these Driftless surroundings than a leviathan in a post-industrial Holocaust site replete with chunks of concrete and protruding rebar, as many anglers do in Lake Michigan tributary streams.   But he wouldn’t have to settle for smaller fish there.

            Two less apparent factors are crucial, one historic and one much more rooted in our time. 

            Historically, most of these waters owe a key part of their health today to foresighted conservationists back in the 1930s who started thinking of ways to stop widespread soil erosion that was killing both agriculture and drowning the streams in a flood of sediment.  Led by visionaries like Aldo Leopold in Wisconsin and Richard Dorer  in Minnesota, they reforested denuded hillsides, worked to stop awful gully erosion, installed contour strips for hillside crops. Every generation since has moved conservation efforts forward, to the point that today we look at watersheds across the region as sites for widespread, multispecies habitat work.  Helping the effort have been several key USDA programs, including flood control dams up high in coulees, crop set-aside programs like the Conservation Reserve Program, and funding for stream restoration, says Vetrano.

            It can’t be assumed that many farmers don’t care about their lands, either.  Throughout the Driftless Area, plenty of grazing lands edge these streams.  Some are beaten down and overgrazed, but others illustrate that working lands and healthy trout fisheries can co-exist where landowners have a strong stewardship ethic, says Iowa DNR Trout biologist Bill Kalishek of Decorah.  Waterloo Creek is a great example. Another is Bohemian Coulee, which flows into Timber Coulee near Coon Valley, Wisconsin, where miles and miles of grazing land edge the stream, teeming with healthy brown trout. 

The future, in some places, will be found in managed grazing along restored streams.  In other places, circumstances will permit native prairie restoration or Conservation Reserve grasslands adjacent to streams.  One of my friends never calls his favorite restored stream valley, rimmed by native restored prairie, by its assigned geographic name. He just calls it, “Paradise”.

            That habitat work has been experimental and changing.  Floods have washed out habitat work in some places, but have also showed where it could withstand raging waters.  As watersheds healed, clogged springs reopened and flowed again, reducing water temperatures and making drought-resistant base flows.

            Wisconsin DNR fisheries biologist Dave Vetrano was surprised when the impacts of stream restoration on the West Fork of the Kickapoo began to show up in those reduced temperatures and increased flows. “We thought back then that on these streams, maybe we could have a brown trout population with some natural reproduction.  Now, we’ve got healthy brook trout fisheries in some of them.  Maybe we just didn’t set our sights high enough.”   

            There’s no doubt states’ fisheries conservation efforts have benefited every one of these signature streams, especially over the past 30 years.   They couldn’t have debated browns versus brooks if they hadn’t conserved watersheds and restored the degraded habitat.  

            Rooted more in our time is the need for access to these waters.  Once, it seemed, anglers were welcome to walk along most every stream on the angler’s path.    Those unofficial trails reflected a community’s recognition that it was OK to walk streamside, even on private lands.  More  recently,  more landowners posted their land and kept anglers out unless they had the right to wade the streams themselves. Today, active streambank easement purchase programs are well under way in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Kalishek happily reports that Iowa has just begun its first concerted easement purchase effort and devoted $1 million to the task.  Efforts are also beginning  to work with land trusts, counties and other entities on acquiring public access rights along streams.

            There’s the formula for signature steams: dramatic topography and geology, beguiling scenery, first-rate fishing, habitat restoration and access.    It’s  no wonder so many of us are so smitten by these waters.