Strange Fish Challenge - Final Day

After the great success of Day Six of the Strange Fishing Challenge it was time to regroup.  I'd caught 10 different species (albeit some repeats from early days) in my slightly altered Stop Watch day.  As that put me at 19 I could actually just include the sturgeon I'd caught a couple of weeks ago and call it good.  But that would lack a certain...panache.  I want to go out on an over the top note.  Or at least have fun catching that last species.  Several scenarios were under consideration to get me to the magic number.  And if this sounds like a political hack counting Electoral Votes, well the comparison is not unfounded.  You need a couple more EV's to win the Presidency it does not matter if they come from North Dakota or California.  You need one more species to make 20 and a 50 pound sturgeon and a half ounce minnow are both winners.  So...

1. The Sturgeon Scenario.  I could go back to the dam at Menomonie and fish until I get one.  That would be fun, but sturgeon are sneaks and teases.  You see them jumping all over the place but to get one to bite is another matter.  And as spring warms up the water quality of that river drops fast.  So maybe, but only if I go there soon.

2. Yellow River top to bottom.   I've been meaning to get up to a place called Miller Dam near Gilman Wisconsin.  It sounds as if crappies - a common species I need - are often caught there.  I could then fish the Yellow River back home and replace one of my geocaches along the way.  

3. Down to the Mississippi.  With the theory that anything connecting to the Mississippi might have all sorts of weird fish in it, there is some appeal to driving over to Mondovi and fishing the Buffalo River all the way down.  Google Earth shows at least a dozen spots where it or its feeding creeks could be fished.  As with any new territory there would be more tackle lost and it would be another day long expedition.  I can find almost nothing online about fishing this river.  I consider that a plus.

4. Keep it Simple.  If I just catch a minnow off my dock I'm "done and dusted" as my UK friends would say.  Minnows have proven themselves wily and worthy opponents, but I'd have patience and pilsner on my side.

So....which will it be.....?

I couldn't stop wondering what was in the Buffalo River, so off I went.   But first I stopped in Mondovi Wisconsin, where a small creek that feeds into the river had been dammed up to make Mirror Lake.  I'd read that the lake had been drained, dredged and stocked in the past year or so and that raised some interesting possibilities.

In the spillway below the dam I got this guy right away.  It's a sizable Black Bullhead, and is also Species #20. 

  Then I moved up to the fishing pier on the lake.  And check this out:

It's a Rainbow Trout!  It is obviously a stocked fish and I'm not sure how well they'll do long term in this spot long term but this guy was hungry on a Monday Morning.  Number 21.  And for good measure the same site yielded this:

A very pretty Green Sunfish.  Number 22.

And the Buffalo River proper?  Fished a half dozen spots with nary a nibble.  

And that's a wrap.  As it turns out it is possible to catch 20+ species of fish in seven days of effort.  It helps a lot to do your fishing in the spring, and to add a road trip or two.   

I probably caught a few more than 22.  Some of the small minnow like critters are very hard to sort out.  And of course if you unfairly add the ones that I got within inches of the shore I'd guess I was close to 25.  But no picture means no ID and no count.

I might venture out a few more times in the week ahead.  I have some night crawlers left after all...

Perhaps a retrospective of the Seven Day Strange Fish Challenge will be forthcoming.  I certainly learned a lot in the process.