VIROQUA – Duke Welter of Viroqua stood on a sandy stream bank in the middle of a slice of Vernon County recreational heaven, also known as a public hunting and fishing ground.
Fly rod in hand, he took a quick glance over his right shoulder to look for trees or other potential obstructions, lifted the graphite wand with his left hand and with one deft movement flipped 20 feet of line upstream onto the riffling water.
A second later his indicator – a floating fly – was tugged under the surface, the sign of a strike.
Welter lifted the rod again, this time to the weight of a brown trout.
“Now that’s exactly where a trout should be,” Welter said. “Don’t you just love it when a fish plays by the rules?”
After 30 seconds of to-and-fro Welter worked the 14-inch-long trout to hand, used a forceps to flip the fly out of its lip and watched it swim away.
It had hit a scud pattern, the dropper on his two-fly set-up.
“Your turn,” Welter said, motioning me forward as if I were taking the next dance from a shared partner.