nice water trail and was able to order bluegill at eatery in town
https://youtu.be/L7biAOlek5E
That was the very last leg of the Pnet Wisconsin River trip that we used to do. Not everyone took it though. Those who had a long drive home usually took out at Bridgeport.
It is a delightful leg though… after spending three days on the Wisconsin River there is a very definite “change in character” as you gradually close in on the Mighty Mississippi. From about Millville down the vegetation changes, the water color, usually wind conditions, relatively sparsely vegetated sand banks become incredibly fertile mud banks. Depending on the relative levels of the Wisconsin R. and the Mississippi, there are parts of those channels leading up to the Wyalusing landing where sometimes there are legs that you are actually have to paddle against a pretty stiff current. The vistas, big before, become huge once you break out of the sloughs…
Thanks for posting this. Folks should see it. Did you get up to see the passenger pigeon memorial?
yeah I got to the passenger pigeon memorial, overlooks, indian mounds, and sand caves- a lot to do in the area, current was pretty stiff against in the sloughs (I was in a wavesport y whitewater kayak which didn’t help) The main channel of the Mississippi had a lot of holiday boat traffic (Sunday before the 4th of July)- tubers being dragged behind power boats, jet skis and speed boats all causing wakes- didn’t try filming during any of that, I just quarted the waves initially and then surfed them back toward shore. Only saw 1 barge and it stayed out in the middle of the channel.
That little slough area at Wyalusing is a nice introduction to slough paddling in general. I have a favorite place on the Mississippi a ways north of there that I don’t make time to visit nearly often enough, but at that location there’s an estimated 100 miles of small channels and countless islands within the bottomland woods along a stretch of roughly ten miles of river. It would be very easy to get lost back there if you don’t have a really good map, and that’s part of the charm. Before all the navigation dams were built, most of the Mississippi in this area had countless miles of backwater channels. In fact, to the locals, some particular locations within the large impoundments are still named for the backwater sloughs that were there before being inundated by the dams. Sadly, many of the few sloughs which remain are quickly being lost to sedimentation, and that’s another side-effect of the dams.
Speaking of eating bluegills, I used to know a guy who would regularly make the nearly 100-mile trip to the Wyalusing backwaters just to fish for bluegills from a canoe, the fishing there was that good. I’ve seen people pull large numbers of channel cats out of there too.