Next Year's Water

Record breaking December snowfall in Madison,
for the second year in a row.

This marks the last entry in this blog for 2008. Being an optimist, I'm trying to take the lemons (HUGE snowfall) that have come my way and turn them into lemonade (next year's water). December 07 set a snowfall record for southern Wisconsin that I thought would not be broken. Turns out that December 08 was even bigger and snowier! In the immortal words of Greg Brown, "who woulda thunk it?" Every shovelful that I threw up on the pile next to the mailbox, I tried to imagine as water in a lake in a few months. I also tried to block out the buzz of snowblowers that surrounded me as I use a shovel to move the snow, unlike all of my neighbors. The top of the mailbox is about four feet above the curb. Thankfully, I finished the driveway before I ran out of space to throw the snow. The next few months look to be fairly quiet here in Wisconsin as there is no "boatable" water to speak of. Canoecopia looks to be the next big thing. Should be another fun event and a great way to usher in a new spring!

An Amazing Photo

An incredible image by
John Van Den Brandt

This is one of the best photographs I have ever seen. Besides the fact that an egret is fairly rare to begin with, I am left wondering how John managed to be in the right spot at the right time to get the bird striking this pose.

John Van Den Brandt is the owner of Wild Wind Images. He appears in our most recent movie talking about wildlife photography, which is where I got to know him a bit. If you click on the picture, you will see a larger image on John's website. The egret is the June 2009 image from a calendar full of amazing shots that John took.

Season ending musky from Hayward Fly Fishing

The big one that didn't get away

Larry and Wendy, our guide friends from Hayward Fly Fishing Company, sent us this today. It is their season ending musky. 52+ inches, 35+ pounds, on a fly, out of a drift boat, on the same stretch of the Chippewa River that we floated this summer making our movie. 5 degrees when they left their shop, 20 degrees at the put-in. I suspect the adrenaline they ingested catching this fish more than made up for the temperature!

Poling remains at the top of the list

Poling occupies the #1 spot on my list of most interesting things to do in a boat. I keep coming back to a wonderful 12 minute online movie about poling, featuring an Old Town canoe and an East Coast river that Life on Terra has produced. Very watchable.


This podcast, as it is called, is one in a long running series to which I keep returning. It looks like the podcast series is part of the program at Montana State,in Bozeman, Montana. It's the first program I have come across that looks to specialize in the sort of nicely produced outdoor-oriented content that I enjoy watching as well as producing. This series also spends time on the people and personalities behind the content rather than just the content itself.

Good stuff.

"inland waters kayak fishing" has been released

After a few months of virtual heavy lifting as well as watching some very talented people do their own heavy lifting while filming and editing, we would like to announce that Quietwater Films' fourth movie, "inland waters kayak fishing" is now available.

Jimbo Meador (front) and John Reinders (back) navigating a stream while poling their Native Watercraft Ultimate kayaks

Jimbo Meador, John Reinders, Wendy Williamson, and Larry Mann provided the paddling, poling, and fishing while we were out on the water. Damon Hennessey and Christina Smith did a wonderful job behind the scenes working the camera and editing our footage. And of course there are the boats. Even though they are inanimate pieces of plastic, those Ultimate kayaks are worthy of thanks for the wonderful job they did floating everyone around on the lakes, rivers and streams of the Chippewa Flowage, a slice of paradise in northern Wisconsin. The two muskies, numerous smallmouth bass, northern pike, along with "all the ones that got away" also made for some nice days fishing as well!

What happens when you impulsively buy canoes

An Arkansas canoeing friend relayed this set of pictures showing the outcome of his purchasing four canoes from Wenonah, in Winona, and then road tripping the four boats all the way to Arkansas on a Subaru Forrester. One trip.

Winona trip

A Field Day at Gordon Creek

As part of an ongoing documentary film project, we spent a gorgeous fall day out on Gordon Creek this week. With blue skies and some quiet, I could not ask for a better day to be out on a creek. Having a third grader at home who loves bugs and worms and other cool things, the pleasures of small things close to the ground are front of mind for me. With both still and video, I almost always am lucky enough to find something small and up close that I used to just pass by. Today was

The Farmer's Almanac says something about fuzzy caterpillars and the oncoming winter

no exception. Thanks to my third grader's gift of perspective I saw this little black and orange fuzzy caterpillar on a road trip. Not sure where it was going but it was putting the energizer bunny to shame.


My fuzzy 100 leg friend was just the start of a great afternoon. We were out on Gordon Creek to walk it with Kathleen Falk, the Dane County Executive, and an enthusiastic caster of flies. Jim Gentry and Mike Schmidt from the Southern Wisconsin chapter of Trout Unlimited were along for the walk as well. Today was a big day for Dane Country as they were announcing another land purchase along Gordon Creek. It was a big day for SWTU and Quietwater as it was a chance to get some time with a major player in the stream restoration activities in western Dane county. I continue to be impressed with the effort that goes on behind the scenes in stream restoration. It looks to me like about 95% of the effort happens between people and across tables, sometimes even coffee is involved.

Two critical pieces of stream restoration - people who care about the land and the machine that does the last 5% of the work.

Jim Gentry and Mike Schmidt, from SWTU, have spent countless hours writing grant proposals, learning their way through the vast spaces of restoration infrastructure, meeting landowners, and working with numerous levels of government. Finally they swing a hammer and get to build a few lunker structures, although not as many as one might think. The end result is a stream left in better shape than it was when they started.