MILK and COOKIES

Early spring is the time for my annual sojourn to Wisconsin to fish the many spring creeks in the southwestern part of the state with my friend of many years, Virgil Anderson of Mt. Horeb. 

On the first day of my visit we decided to fish the Blue River. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources state in their fishing guide that 20-inch browns are not uncommon in the Blue and many other streams as well. If the Blue didn’t pan out there were several other streams not far away.

We fished for nearly the entire morning and only hooked one fish. Virgil got an adrenaline rush when one of those not uncommon 20-inch browns chomped onto one of Chip’s Gitters. After being on a few seconds it got under some logs and broke off. We decided to go back to the car and take a break and spend the afternoon on Castle Rock Creek. 

Arriving back at Virgil’s Cherokee, we placed our rods carefully on the roof. Virgil opened the back and pulled out a couple of folding chairs. It was time to enjoy Wisconsin’s favorite fisherman’s refreshment, milk and cookies. Well…not exactly. 

After a long morning of fishing and walking a few miles,

the “milk and cookies” went down pretty well, so well that  we had another round. Amply refreshed we put the chairs   back into the car and headed merrily for Castle Rock. 

As we were about to turn on to the county road that would take us to Castle Rock a milk truck went by in the same direction that we were going.

“I’m going to pass that truck before we get to that steep hill ahead”.

We got by the truck just at the base of the hill and started a steep ascent on the narrow road. Virgil glancing in the rear view mirror remarked, “That guy behind us is flashing his headlights.”

“I won….”.  At that instant a scraping sound came from the roof of the car followed by the sounds of clink, clink behind us. 

“Oh Fiddlesticks!” we both yelled at the same instant. Well…not exactly. 

I turned in my seat as Virgil hit the brakes. $900 worth of Orvis fly rods were lying in the middle of the road, and that truck was about to trash them.  Lucky for us the truck driver had seen the rods on top of the car and anticipated that they would slide off going up that steep hill and was able to stop in time.  Except for a couple of minor dings to the reels, the rods were undamaged. 

We were fortunate. We were not the first fisherman to drive off with rods or some other item on top of a vehicle. A friend of mine did it late one evening when moving from one fishing locality to another. When he realized what he had done the rod was no longer on top of the car. He drove back and forth over the route that he had taken but never found the rod. 

The lesson here is never to put anything loose on top of a vehicle. Most quality rod manufactures guarantee their rods for 25 years, no questions asked. If the truck behind us had trashed the rods we could have returned them to Orvis and they would have repaired or replaced them, but there are no guarantees that cover lost rods.