Driftless with Mike Warren

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara Yusei Rods, Lines, and Flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Hey everyone, the Tenkara Cast is back. My apologies for the long absence. No good excuses. I've just been a little bit out of it. I took a little break. You know, the book came out and I felt like there was a little bit of weight off of my shoulder, kind of started working on promoting that, doing other stuff as well, and thinking about what to do with a podcast going forward.

1:08I mean, there's always topics to discuss. There's definitely no shortage of that. But, you know, I kind of wanted to change things up a little bit. When I started the Tenkara Cast, I was kind of envisioning have a little bit more of a storytelling flair with the cool edits and that kind of thing. But that turned out to be tough to do. I did a few episodes on that, had some help as well. But, you know, it was hard to keep up. So I kind of started doing a little bit more kind of monologues, if you will. And that's all good. But, you know, I think going forward, it will be fun to have more people on board. and I've had a few people asking me when is the podcast going to come back online and I've been saying like well pretty soon and I had a really good suggestion from Mike Agnetta from Troutrages not too long ago where he said that you'll be fun to have a series of podcast episodes where I talk with guides in our Tenkara Guide Network about the waters where they take clients and I thought it was a great idea I had done a couple of podcast episodes that I call Destinations, talked to John Gere, talked to Vito Rubino about their waters and where they are.

2:27So I was just kind of expanding on that, talking to guides about the waters where they are located that tend to be Tenkara perfect, good waters for Tenkara. so now we're here june 14th it's been a couple months since i've released an episode and just today i talked to mike warren from trout buddy he's a guide in a driftless region where i was fishing not too long ago and we are gonna give you a little bit of a introduction to this area so stay tuned for future episodes about different areas if you have any suggestions for future podcast episodes. We'd love to hear them. Just drop us a line, you know, email info at tenkarausa.com via Facebook or Instagram or however you want to get a hold of us and share some suggestions. That'd be great. And you can always go to tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast to drop us a note, a comment, to see more resources about the episodes in particular that we discuss.

3:28And if I can take a quick second to ask for a review, that would be greatly appreciated. A listener, if you go to iTunes on your phone or online and just type a quick review, that really helps people find this podcast. And another little plug here, the Tenkara book, as most of you are probably aware now, is out. The book has been out for a couple months now, and it's going really well. We're just about to go into our second print, just about done with a batch that we printed first time. So I'm excited about that. Feedback has been really good. If you already have a book, give us a review on Amazon. That's the best way that people have been finding the book, I think, or on our website as well, tenkarausa.com. All right, so we have Mike Warren with us online here. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about a new-to-me area, the Driftless region of Wisconsin, which I had the pleasure of fishing with Mike recently.

4:33Mike is a Tenkara guide. He's been taking a lot of people out in the water there with a Tenkara rod. Mike, why don't you tell me about the fishing in your area, introduce it to our listeners a little bit. Well, if people aren't familiar with what the Driftless area is all about, it's an area that's about maybe 125, 130 miles tall and maybe about 50 or 60 miles wide that encompasses southwestern Wisconsin, a little portion of Iowa, northeastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota. The epicenter of the fly fishing and trout fishing and in this case, tonkara fishing is a county that is referred to as Vernon County with Barroquo being the kind of the magic center. The fishing this year has been incredibly good.

5:36I hear from a lot of people that compare us to some of the other more famous parts of the country, and that's great. I love to hear that. We fish mainly native brown trout, brook trout. There's the occasional stocked rainbow that escaped from a pond someplace, and there is a very scarce amount of tiger trout as well. and I haven't seen one in a couple, three years. But it's a great fishery with a lot, a lot of water. Yeah, I was amazed. I've been hearing about the driftless for years. As a matter of fact, one of our suppliers is in Wisconsin. And back in the day when we started working with them, he sent me this DVD about fishing in the driftless region. I'm sure you're familiar with it. it was a very heart of the driftless exactly heart of the driftless and i'll look up a link see if i can put that on uh tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast for our listeners uh but that was my first introduction to the driftless and so i had this idea and i've been meaning to go there for years um and i finally got a an excuse to go when um matt's man put the the event together the Midwest in Catafest, which he's been doing for like three years.

7:03So I got to go there and fish for a couple of days. You know, we did have a lot of rain, so we couldn't fish every day the way I wanted. But I was absolutely amazed because, you know, the impression that I had was going to be, you know, more like very, very narrow, meadow-y kind of streams. But, you know, the first stream that we fished, which shall remain unnamed. You know, it was very much a very diverse kind of stream where he went from a mountain stream look into like a spring creek kind of like, you know, slow meandering meadow stream and then he went to like more of a typical spring creek kind of look to it all within a couple of miles. So I was absolutely amazed by that beautiful crystal clear water as well. So the diversity of water because then you and I fished in a stream that was completely different a couple days later. But that's something that I loved and the diversity of water and also the access.

8:07Is that something that really attracts a lot of people out there? Yep. One of the things that I was out with a client yesterday and we got talking about one stretch of stream that we fished that was maybe 500 yards long. and there were numerous little fast runs through it. There were some really nice pools that were maybe 50 to 60 feet long. And then the further we worked through the stream, we actually found some holes that were maybe 6 to 10 feet deep. So if somebody wants to fish deep water with weight, they can fish deep water with weight. If they want to fish fast-running water, we've got plenty of that. The beauty of what they've done here in Wisconsin now is that the state has done a phenomenal job in working with the landowners. And I think you and I talked about this a little bit when you were here, But they have a program where they lease a lot of land from the landowners in exchange for trout stream improvements.

9:24And the farmers and the landowners have really worked really well with the state so that there's a lot of public access. and it's well marked pretty well marked and it's getting better all the time and somebody can come here I always would suggest they come and hire a guide so they know exactly where to go but but you know I think that with some of the maps that are out there people will be able to see that there's really you know three four five hundred miles worth of stream within maybe a 50 mile radius of the roqua that they could come fish and and not have to go knock on doors yeah that was something that was very interesting i mean on and you had a good point about hiring a guide what i found was interesting was that there's tons of access and i did see a sign i wish i had taken a photo of it talking about um it was like a stream access place i mean it looked like private property but there's little signs in one stream that I fished on my way out of town that clearly indicated there was a stream access kind of a place open to the public.

10:38I'll make a point of taking a couple of pictures for you and send them to you. Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah, I'll be happy to put that on the post. But then the other thing, too, that was interesting, there was, you know, you mentioned like 500 miles of streams, and that's very true. but what I noticed in a couple of streams that I drove by is that it seems like the stream was very hidden by either trees or very tall grass some of them were clearly visible but like actually the one that you took us fishing I think it would have been a little bit tricky to kind of identify where the water was you know if especially if the grass was any taller because he right by the bridge you kind of seem to cover the water a little bit. So it's like these places where you're looking in the distance and it looks like a grassland, but then when you're on top of it, and of course if you have a GPS, you might see a little blue line, but I think that's a cool thing about having a guide out there, somebody who knows the area, you have all these hidden kind of streams. Right, and you know, it's interesting because we talked about the diversification of the streams that we have.

11:44But one of the things I like about guiding here is that if I have an elderly couple, for example, call and want to go fish, maybe they want to go fish in a more open space. So, you know, pasture lands and such where the grass might not be real high. Some of the, you know, might not be real difficult to navigate fish from the banks quite a bit. And then when we get that really experienced guy that wants to come out and go to those hidden spots, you know, we've got a lot of those, too, that maybe he has to, you know, be a little bit more creative with his casting and a little bit more, maybe a little bit more Rambo in him, so to speak, to get in and out of his dreams. But for the most part, we can find a spot for anybody. Absolutely. There's no ifs, ands, or busts about that. But there's even a few stretches of creek in a couple of the towns where a stream will go through that have handicap access.

12:50So, and I don't know if we, actually where Tenkara Fest was in Coon Valley, there's multiple handicap accesses right there in Coon Creek. So there's a lot of good stuff going on. And we're pretty proud of what we have here. and the word is definitely out and we're seeing a lot more visitors and going on to the business side of things in a way the economic impact, not just for me as a guide but the hotels, the restaurants and such that you saw in the Baroque, West Beach and Valley area has really been big. Yeah, no, it was a terrific area to go to and yeah, I could see the access I mean, it's something I think the local government and the people realize that it brings in And tourists, you know, kind of, you know, I think somebody made a mention that without fly fishing, you know, that region wouldn't have a whole lot of an economy, you know. So it's something that luckily they're not, you know, the local government is not taking for granted, you know, and the local businesses, I'm sure, you know, they're not taking that for granted.

14:01They're valuing it, realizing how valuable that kind of resource is. Absolutely. absolutely and the uh and i forgot to no worries no worries i've seen that happening even on uh like i think i saw like a live show on bbc uh a little while ago and the phone went up i was like okay no worries this is casual but uh although i've got to wonder if there was maybe a client you know wanting to book a trip with mike warren you know i could tell you it was but it wasn't it was a friend of mine and i'm telling to find out when i'd take him fishing for free oh yeah well i'm sure this is a good time of year to uh to fish let's talk a little bit about seasons i mean i was there what has it been a month already uh close to a month i guess um yeah and that was beautiful uh but tell us what are the good times of year to go there? Well, you know, I tell people that we can fish, we can fish almost year round here. It takes, it takes some, it takes some ingenuity in certain months, but our, our season, we have two seasons. We have a, we have a, what we refer to as winter catch and release artificial only season that affects every creek that we have. That starts actually the first Saturday in January. So, you know, people think about Wisconsin fly fishing in January. That's, you know, that's testy, especially with some of the weather that we get here. We're snow covered, but the streams are all spring fed and they end up running fairly cold, you know, January, February. About the time we get into mid-March, we start seeing a little bit more activity and I'll start guiding people about the beginning of March, middle of March, depending on weather.

16:06Snow cover usually leaves. We don't have a problem, though, with snow cover like you do in the mountains of Colorado because our snow cover doesn't, we don't have a runoff period. It just lasts for a couple days and things, it's like having a rainstorm. So I always think of it like this. is that the day you pay your taxes, about April 15th, is when things really get going. And then a regular season starts the beginning of May, the first Saturday in May. The only difference then is that there are some streams that allow live bait and some streams that will allow for people to keep fish. So we go through the summer. May is exceptionally good. Late April is good. I say all the way to Father's Day, so about now. Then we start heating up a little bit. The weed growth comes up quite a bit. The stream banks will get a little bit more cover.

17:09Got to be a little bit more creative fishing in July and August. We have a great hopper season in last week of July, usually through the middle of August. That's a lot of fun. and then about Labor Day things all start to cool off a little bit and water is super all the way through the closure of our trout season here being October 15th so we're really almost a year-round fishery with the hot spots being April and May June and then a little deeper into the season September, October, but don't ignore the July, August, because we can still go get fish because of those spring-fed waters. They'll stay. If we get up in the headwaters a little bit, you're still going to find some sub-60-degree water and very fishable. And is the majority of the water there, is it spring creeks, or what are the water sources?

18:16The water source is coming out of the ground. It's all spring-fed creek. And then, of course, that's what starts things off. And I always refer to our creeks here, just like the veins and the leaf, that there's several main waterways or watersheds, let's say, that multiple creeks will feed into. And feeding into those creeks are multiple brooks. So those are all spring fed, and they all kind of converge into one another, and eventually all of them become rivers and feed into the Mississippi River. So if somebody wants to, I was out on Saturday morning literally fishing a creek that I could straddle. You would have loved it. but then I also went a mile down the road and I was fishing in water that was 40 feet wide.

19:18So extremely diverse, but all being spring-fed through the limestone bluffs that surround this area, nutrients are super highly concentrated and our fish populations are certain creeks that they are talking about they're talking about 3,000 to 5,000 fish per mile but with the size of our streams that's pretty concentrated so those are Montana Wyoming kind of numbers yeah no I saw an abundance of the trout, especially in the first stream that we fished, which was the day we got there, the water was crystal clear. And then, like, after that, it started raining. But we just saw a lot of fish. It was a big concentration. And talking about fish, let's talk about that for a second. Are we looking at all trout in the Driftless region?

20:19You know, technically, you know, I am a trout guide. But when we start getting into other portions of the driftless, keeping in mind that the Mississippi River goes flowing right through the driftless area. When you get into the upper reaches of the Wisconsin River, the Badax River, the Kickapoo River, you can start seeing some concentrations of smallmouth bass. you can see a lot of pan fish which I found on Tenkara equipment can be a lot of fun to catch and so if somebody wants a little bit of diversity especially in the southern portion of the Driftless area smallmouth has been very very becoming very popular to go fish with Tenkara so the I think one of the greatest things about our area here though is trout and the population the diversity of stream and uh and it's really a it's a trout guys you know it's a dream spot for a lot of trout guys yeah and part of the reason i was curious about the fish was because uh you know after the um Midwest and Catafest was done i went to Green Bay Wisconsin to visit a friend it was a three-hour drive um in about maybe 40 minutes to an hour um east i think i was still technically in the driftless region uh and i stopped to take a little break and i saw this wider much wider river like maybe 60 feet wide and it looked very deep the water was kind of dark like more of a ten and kind of color and i stopped to fish for a little bit and i started fishing i first of all was a very large river without a lot of structure you know so i was like okay how do i fish this but then after you know like fishing for i don't know 15 minutes not really seeing any signs of fish then i realized that yes i've heard that wisconsin has a large number of species you know and i had no idea what i was fishing for you know i didn't know if it could have been bass in the water i didn't know if it could have even been pike you know which i think you guys have in Wisconsin as well.

22:32So I just decided to stop fishing only because I had no idea what kind of fish there were in there. If I knew I could change my tactics a little bit perhaps. Yeah. The opportunities, you could have spent a week fishing between here and Green Bay. Oh, totally. I could see that. You could have fished for smallmouth and largemouth and you could have found pike rivers and even water big enough for walleye. I could rattle off different types of fish all day long with what we have here in Wisconsin. I'm guessing they're also all intertwined because not long after the large river, I started craving another break and I found a little blue line on my GPS. I was getting directions. I stopped and that's the place where I saw the sign saying that there was public fishing access. And it was a very tiny creek, you know, maybe 15 feet wide, crystal clear water.

23:39I mean, it was like gin clear. And I caught a couple of little trout, a couple of brookie trout. Actually, one was a brookie, but the other one was a brown that I caught. And I only fished for probably 15 minutes. And it was a little strange because it was actually right in between a couple of houses. In one particular spot, it literally looked like it was in somebody's almost front yard. It was actually kind of manicured, but the stream was between me and the house. But, you know, I just fished for a little bit. I'll tell you what, you see that all over the state. Even I have actually fished the Milwaukee River with my nephew. He only lives a few blocks from the Milwaukee River. We've gone down there and fished for smallmouth. And it's in the middle of a big metro area. So I think we're about as diverse as it's going to get. We just don't have any saltwater here, of course. Well, but then there's the Great Lakes, which is kind of like fishing saltwater.

24:45It looks like an ocean. Right. So we've got a lot of stuff going on here. You know, and we're pretty, you know, one of the things I wanted to mention to you today was that, you know, access to us here, you, if I remember right, did you fly into Minneapolis, I believe? And, you know, it's only about a two and a half to three hour drive down here from Minneapolis. The La Crosse Airport has multiple flights every day. Madison has got multiple, obviously multiple places being our state capital every day. And in Madison, you're within an hour of, you're really within 20 minutes of some great drought fishing there. And within an hour to an hour and 20 minutes to Viroqua and having all the options there. So it's pretty easy to get here. And it's, you know, there's a lot of other things to do here. I have a lot of clients that bring their spouses, and a spouse might not fish, but with the, I think you saw that there's a relatively large Amish population here.

25:59Yeah, I saw the buggies on the road early in the morning especially. So there's a lot of Amish shops. There's a growing wine business, especially in Vernon County. Lots of little wineries and vineyards and some great places for dining, too. So we can take care of it. It doesn't just have to be the guys' trip. Yeah, it seems like the access is pretty good. I actually flew into La Crosse. You did. I did, yeah. I didn't want to drive as much because we had the event and I was doing some other stuff too. But, yeah, Madison looked like another good option. And La Crosse itself was a cool town. I mean, it has tons of options in terms of places to stay. We were planning to camp the whole time that we were there. We camped the first night, but then the rain was kind of relentless on the first day of the event. So we just found a pretty inexpensive hotel room in La Crosse.

27:03When I have clients come into La Crosse and stay here, there's hotels in a very low budget range all the way up to four-star with great dining. There's a lot of bars and restaurants in La Crosse. It's a river town. There's a lot of shopping and a lot of parks. and so there's plenty of things to do here other than fish, but there's so many miles of water here that you could fish for a long time. Yeah, exactly, and that's what this show is all about, right? It's a podcast. But, yeah, it seems like there's a lot of other ways to spend time as well if people want to make a good vacation out of it. I would imagine that there's plenty of opportunities. But talking about, you know, like I feel like we talked about some of the good stuff, But, you know, I mentioned this little stream that I was fishing and I caught a couple of brook trout. And at one point, you know, like I'm kind of starting to feel a little itch on my leg.

28:06This was a hot day, like actually the days that around the Midwest fast was kind of a little chilly. So I had like, you know, full long sleeve shirts and jackets. The last day I was just in a T-shirt and shorts, I think. And I started feeling a little tickle on my leg and I looked down and it was a tick. I think we should probably talk a little bit about that just as a heads up for people. I understand a tick situation there can be kind of bad. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I actually, like I said, was out yesterday. I actually had two. But the biggest thing is that first and foremost, if somebody wears waist-high waders, they're great. even field waiting pants can help quite a bit I really recommend long sleeve shirts I also will give a plug to our friends that make buffs I highly recommend those just to for a lot of things right now we're having a little bit of a gnat issue if we're going to go down the road of some of the not so great things here. We got gnats right now.

29:22Oh, I saw a photo that you posted a few days ago. I just saw that on Twitter. You put cotton ball on your ear to keep the gnats from coming in. But there's a little trick. I take and spray down a cotton ball, stick it in my ear, and I never get my ears buzzed anymore. But also it helps keep the gnats from around my face. None of this is to scare people away from the area. I think I just want to make sure people are mindful. It's not that big a deal. I think a tick is more like an alert to me. I think I don't use much bug repellent, but I think that can help keep ticks away. Actually, the popular thing around here and the shameful plug for a company that doesn't support me at all, but there's a company out there called Buggins. It's a product called Buggins that is an all-natural product. I know a lot of people out there don't want to use as much Chemicals is what we're used to. But this bucket is awesome.

30:24It's made out of all herbal type products. And it is fantastic against the gnats. And I'll spray down my sleeves quite a bit with that. And I think it helps a lot with ticks and such. You know, the biggest thing is that, you know, when we get done fishing over the course of the day, just to make sure that we're not carrying any ticks out with us and go through proper removal process of a tick if you do have one. I don't think it's as, you know, yesterday I had two, which was highly unusual. I have actually, as a guide, gone through entire years without getting any. Yeah, and it's not to blow it out of proportion. I mean, we have ticks everywhere, you know, in the country. It was just something that I hit the area, I think, when the rains kind of brought them about or something like that. We've started to heat up quite a bit right now, but the grass has still got a lot of moisture in it, and there's a lot of bugs out there, and ticks are just part of the bug deal.

31:28Do you know how to spell Buggins, by the way? Yes, just like it was on, B-U-G-I-N-S. Okay, cool. I'll look it up later, put a link as well. The only problem with Buggins is that it smells like perfume, and your spouse might not like it when you come home with that. Well, it might be better than smelling like strong deet and other stuff. Exactly. But talking about bugs and buggins, talking about bugs, let's talk a little bit about flies. I mean, of course, our listeners probably know a little bit of the tenkara take and not switching flies and that kind of thing. But tell me, what do you think works good for flies there, if anything particularly different? You know, there's a lot of things that work based on time of year. Of course, the traditional Western fly fishing person is going to be trying to match hatches.

32:30We have so many hatches that you'd have to probably have a full backpack. But I live on a subsurface. I live by my three S's and that's the San Juan, the Scud, and the Squirrel. And you saw what a pink squirrel is while you were here. And the pink squirrel is basically a nymph that looks a lot like a Scud or a grub that has a little pink top on it. and it's just one of those bugs that's kind of that local bug. And also on top, a lot of folks, I find exceptional performance every day with Elkartatus, BWOs. As we get deeper into the summer, we'll have fun with hoppers. and then go to fly for the last couple weeks from here has been a killer bug it's just been I don't want to say it because it's a pun but it's been killing it lately and I should mention talking about bugs too I did remain with the tenkara approach and I did try at least one or two of your flies too to see if I could notice a big difference and I will report that I caught plenty of fish on the tenkara of flies. Absolutely.

33:56Yeah, and they worked well. I think I, you know, I tried pretty much all of the kind of flies. I got there a couple of, one day before the event, and I got a chance to fish with Jason Randall, who is a fly fishing author, and I'll put a link to his books. And also Ed Engle happened to be in the area. And Ed, of course, is known for imitating bugs with very tiny flies. You know, that's one of the things that he's known for. And we fished the some of the streams away from Biroqua, not far away from Biroqua, and they were matching the hatch, and I was using the Tenkara flies, and we were all catching plenty of fish, even though there was hatches going on as well. And I know they were a little bit skeptical when they first greeted me. I was fishing already, and then they saw me like, yeah, I tried that hole. What are you using? And I was like, well, this is just the fly I'm using, and I was catching enough fish to keep me busy. so the tenkara flies worked and when i was fishing with you too like we're fishing this very narrow murkier kind of stream and i got a fish here and there is not a particularly hot day when we started it got a little bit more productive later in the day but then i kind of switched back and forth a little bit you know some different tenkara flies some of your flies and it was about the same number of fish you know so i think uh if you're If our listeners are staying with one fly, I would imagine most of the year I work, at least in late May, you work just fine.

35:28Well, and I think that with one fly fishermen, traditional tenkara fisher people, I don't see an issue with bringing your tenkara-only theory to Wisconsin any time of the year. our fish here are you know I refer to them every once in a while as chamber of commerce fish because they can be a little bit aggressive and the and I fish both ways and I'll fish a little bit of western every once in a while as well as we've talked about and the I am not a huge believer in the precise matching of the hatch especially when you have a hatch like yesterday when there was a when there was a huge amount of gnats in the air and they're coming out of the water and and to match a size 22 nat and let a fish try to pick it out of the million that just came out of the water sometimes you got to throw them some you know some chunk of bacon in a way you know uh and uh and let them pick something else.

36:41We were very successful with lots of different flies. It helps to have experience, and that's worth having a guide with you. And talking about guides, of course, I'll put a link to Mike Warren's profile on tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. If you go to that page, you'll find the Driftless episode that you're listening to, and you can look up Mike's information, his contact. But, Mike, if somebody wants to look you up, how can they find you? Is there a website, Twitter? What do you want to share with our listeners? Websites, Twitters, and phone numbers. We like to – I like to think of ourselves as a very friendly non – we don't like to give unwanted lessons around here. We'll help people with their fishing. So we call ourselves Trout Buddy, and it's at www.troutbuddy.com. The Twitter is Trout Buddy or Driftless Guides, and they can always call me at 608-792-2521.

37:53Well, yeah, so to our listeners, hopefully you enjoyed listening and learning a little bit more about an area of the country that perhaps you were not aware of, the driftless. I actually talked to a couple of friends here in Colorado who fish a lot, and they were not familiar with it. So I was kind of a, you know, sometimes we assume that all the good fishing areas are well-known, but perhaps not all of them are. The driftless is one that I think people should be aware of because it was just a lot of fun. And I'll post some photos and a couple little videos that I have. It's already on our blog, actually. If you go to tenkarausa.com forward slash blog, you'll see a little trip report that I did. but yeah hopefully you guys look at Wisconsin as a place to go vacation and the Driftless area is a place to fly fish it was fun oh and before I forget maybe I should ask you very quickly you know Wisconsin the famous thing there besides of course fishing is the cheese curds tell us about that is that something people should do in there in Wisconsin well the cheese curds are are the they're not a delicacy here like they might be elsewhere, but we like our cheese curds straight out of the vat, a little warm and a lot squeaky.

39:14And then, of course, everything goes better if it's batter fried, and there's lots of batter fried cheese curds. And, of course, you can't really have cheese curds, especially batter fried ones, without some local beers. and we have plenty of those here too. What is the main beer in town? I forget the name. It was really delicious. The only one here in Wisconsin comes from the New Glarus Brewing Company called Spotted Cow. Yes, that was a really good beer. I enjoyed that with my deep-fried cheese curds. And only sold here in Wisconsin so when you drive here take some home to your friends. Yes, Spotted Cow and cheese curds. I enjoyed that very much. I brought some cheese curds back. It was fun. If you ever need some fresh ones, just give me a shot. I'll overnight them to you. All right, I'll do. If I get addicted to it, it'll be your problem. All right, Mike. Well, thank you so much for introducing our listeners to the Driftless region and for making time for us to have this episode, and I appreciate it.

40:22And hopefully we'll fish together again soon there. I can't wait to come back. Thanks for having me, and maybe I'll come out your way and you can show me some Colorado water. Sounds good, Mike. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode with Mike Warren about the driftless region of Wisconsin. I did notice that we didn't discuss equipment to use in the driftless region for Tenkara, but I should say probably the ideal rod for that whole area is the Sato, which goes up 12 feet 9 inches. that's what I brought with me part of the reason that I decided to pack that with me for that trip is because it fit in my carry-on that I was taking without any problem so I take that you know in the airplane and the Ito which tends to be my favorite rod just a little bit too long for my carry-on that time and it turned out that the Sato was perfect because the streams are not super wide at least the ones that we fished as Mike mentioned there are some bigger waters but not very big anyways so the sato turned out to be good for that and there were several situations where things got a little bit tight and it was very handy to have this rod that was under 11 feet long so that's kind of my recommendation for rods between in our lineup of tenkara USA rods in terms of lines any line would do most of the time i was using a line just a little bit longer than a rod but a line the same length as a rod would be just fine as well the fish in some areas were very spooky so a slightly longer tippet might be handy like a five foot tippet will be handy but most of it will come down to your to your approach you know just walk very slowly minimize the amount of movement that you're doing on the rod and that kind of thing so just a little note about the equipment and that kind of thing in case you were wondering thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast.

42:18I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music, on our website www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast And until next time on the Tenkara Cast Thank you.