Ice Breakers

Date: January 27, 2008
Location: Theodore Cleaver Memorial Creek
Air temp: high 30s
Water temp: ???
Hatches: Little black stone flies
Fish landed: 0

Present members of the Fly Anglers Guild :|: Upper Midwest Chapter, for this outing were:

Slim Shady (non member)
Booter
Xan
TP

Like most Minnesota winters, this one has sucked my balls. So far, we have been on a roller coaster ride of bitter wind chills, broken up by 2 to 6 day stretches of tolerable temps (20s+). The worst part is that as the presidential election season hits high gear, there is not a single candidate that favors wholesale nuclear destruction of Canada for sending us this cold air.

During one of our recent reprieves from sub zero temps (where it almost got up to a balmy 40 degrees), we decided to take advantage of the MN winter season.


We headed to the southeastern region to fish a creek I had never been to. The snow made walking tough, and wide swaths of one of the river's branches were still frozen over. But, it was a glorious day to not catch any fish.

TP stalking his prey

The Cleaver is a fairly narrow stream that twists and turns across the valley. It demands highly technical casts to the fish piled up in nearly still water. Needless to say, it was a quadruple skunking. The highlights of the day were Booter's massive dump at a Rochester McD's, and finding a shard of glass in my beer during our post trip meal.

Booter assuming position #3-C

Still, it is a creek I would definitely revisit later in the year, and it sure was nice to wet a line for the first time in '08.