I think that the autumn fish frenzy has started. If so, this is an unusual year. It is unusual not because it has come early, but because I seemed to have discovered it before other fishermen have. That would be a first.
The fish frenzy is a month on the Upper Mississippi River when the panfish eat aggressively, and catching fish is easy and fun. I think it happens when water temperatures start to drop, and the fish instinctively prepare for winter. As I write this blog outside on my front porch, the temperature is in the high eighties, so I question whether the water in the river is cooling much, but that is what I’ve always thought happens.
Usually I know the fish have started biting because I see fifty or more boats on Lake Onalaska. This year, more by accident than anything else, I was out on the lake twice before the armada arrived.
Lake Onalaska is the widest part of Pool 7 on the Upper Mississippi River. Beneath its surface are the riverbeds of both the Mississippi and Black Rivers. The location of the Mississippi River riverbed is easy to see, as the Army Corps of Engineers has it marked with buoys for navigation. The Black River riverbed is less obvious, but most fishermen know it follows the most eastern shoreline right along the railroad tracks. This is where boats line up when the fish are biting.
Besides being fun, fall fishing is the one time of year when I bring fish home to eat. In the dead of summer, the flesh of the fish carries a muddy taste, so I release everything I catch. In the winter, fish caught through the ice are delicious, but I have a hard time catching them. It is the autumn catch that gets filleted, bagged, and tossed into the freezer compartment of my refrigerator. Just like the fish in Pool 7, I am storing up calories for the cold days ahead.
In early September, the feeding frenzy builds gradually. If I fish once or twice a week, I notice that the fish hit more frequently and more aggressively with each outing. The end of the frenzy is just the opposite in that it stops on a dime. One day I limit out on bluegills (the legal number on panfish on the Mississippi is fifteen fish per species), and two days later I don’t get a bite. For fishermen whose sole motivation for fishing is to catch fish, going out in late October or early November is a waste of time.
I’ve always assumed that the end of the frenzy coincides with the river turning (i.e., the cold water at the bottom of the river rises to the top), but like my reasoning as to what starts the frenzy, this is a personal theory, and I have no science to back it up.
On a marginally related subject, Wendell Berry died last week. This one hurts.
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