The driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin holds one of the highest concentrations of trout water in North America. The glaciers that flattened the rest of the Midwest never crossed this corner of the state, leaving a maze of wooded ridges and valleys cut by hundreds of limestone spring creeks. Add the Lake Superior tributaries up north, and Wisconsin quietly belongs on any list of serious trout states.
The glaciers that flattened the rest of the Midwest never crossed this corner of the state, leaving a maze of wooded ridges and valleys cut by hundreds of limestone spring creeks.
The creeks are the story. Vernon, Crawford, Grant, and La Crosse counties hold names that driftless anglers trade like secrets: Timber Coulee, the West Fork of the Kickapoo, Black Earth Creek, Castle Rock Creek. Decades of habitat work turned degraded pasture ditches back into cold, narrow, meandering streams full of wild brown trout, and the fish are often abundant enough that the challenge is presentation, not finding them. Summer terrestrials are the local religion: a foam hopper or beetle worked tight to the bank will move fish all day.
Northern Wisconsin is different water entirely. The Bois Brule runs through pine forest to Lake Superior, carrying native brook trout in its upper reaches and steelhead, salmon, and lake-run browns in season. The Wolf River drains the Nicolet National Forest with freestone brown trout water that fishes well all summer. Between the two regions sit hundreds of small lakes and warmwater rivers with smallmouth and pike for the dog days.
Wisconsin's catch-and-release season opens the creeks in early March, and the general opener lands the first Saturday in May. The best fishing runs from April through June and again in September and October. Brule steelhead run in spring and fall. Winter closes most inland trout water except the early catch-and-release creeks.