The End.....
Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 04:16PM 
It's an old cliche, but it's true. Even a road to nowhere ends somewhere. For a few friends and me, that road ended at a truly magical spot we simply call, "The Milking Parlour". Each year, we try and visit the parlour at least once. It's sort of our fishing hideaway. See, years ago, a family in the Winnebago Valley rehabbed the old 
family farmstead. They cleaned up the house and opened it to visitors. They also turned the milking parlour out back into a basic apartment. Cost per night?$25 bucks. Yes, that's one reason we love Winnebago Valley. The other? The pristine water of Winnebago Creek, which runs through roughly three miles of farmland down there. Visitors to the parlour have fishing access to that otherwise, tough-to-get-to water. First morning out, we hiked through the tall scruff along the edges of 
the stream and found a bit of fishable water. I decided to try out big, juicy grasshopper patterns. See, late in the summer, big trout sit and wait for hoppers to pop off the bank and accidentally hit the water. In the world of trout, eating a grasshopper compares to you or I sitting down to a 20 oz. rare slab of prime rib (with plenty of horsradish). On my very first cast, the fly slapped down on the water about 12 inches from the bank and a gold dart burst out from under the bank's grassy overhang and gulped down the fly. In my first twenty minutes of fishing, I brought to hand a dozen, glowing, fall trout. Too bad I had only two of those grasshoppers along. By mid-day Saturday, too many toothy brown trout had torn both flies to shreds. I switched to other patterns, only to find the fish seemed to favor the pattern i no longer had in my fly box. 
Darn. I love to end the season down there. See, Minnesota and Wisconsin close their trout seasons each Fall so spawning brown trout can sort of do their thing without fishermen getting in the way. I believe Minnesota and Wisconsin are the only two states that close their seasons. Oh well. That's why we love it so much, I guess. One other note from the trip. Some time back I had lost my favorite fishing net, which my grandfather had made for me three years before. When I mentioned to the landowner at Winnebago that I thought I might have lost it down there and he should watch for it to someday wash up along a bank, he chuckled. Ten minutes later, he walked back over and handed me the net I had lost a year-and-a-half earlier. His son had found it alongside Winnebago Creek. I told you. It's a magical place.....Hey, thanks to Jacob Gibb of Jacob Gibb Photography for the great shots in the story!
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