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I’d planned a late spring fishing trip to Minnesota’s Driftless region with my friends, Mike and John. The timing was perfect; the hatches would be at their peak and the rivers low and clear.
And, it would have been perfect… if it hadn’t started to rain. As we drove south from the Twin Cities multiple thunderstorms pummeled the area with up to nine inches of rain. Tornadoes touched down to the south of us, and Decorah, Iowa was flooded for the second time in as many weeks.
Every river we crossed was swollen beyond its banks and ran the color of a latte. Still, Mike, who’d organized the trip, remained positive, even upbeat about the fishing. We were told that the tributaries to the larger rivers are, for the most part, spring-fed and remain fishable even after the severest deluge. Mike’s Dog, Moose, seemed to buy it, but John and I remained guardedly skeptical.
The first day we fished a meadow stream born from two spring creeks. While a bit off-color, it fished well. The larger of the two spring-fed tributaries was clear and it fished like a dream. We leap-frogged up the stream, trading water as good friends do, and we caught fish… surprisingly large fish, given the size of the creek.
And so, the week unwound. The weather cleared and the rivers dropped. Minnesota poet, Larry Gavin, joined us, and we all enjoyed a wonderful day of fishing together on the Pine River. The day was humid and hazy when I snapped some photographs of John thoughtfully selecting a fly. In the moment I had no idea that those shots would eventually be used as reference material for this painting, or that it would grace the cover of his next book, Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers. The image also illustrated his story “Minnesota” in the Fall 2019 issue of TROUT.
The image is available as a signed and numbered, limited edition print on our website.
