Coulee Region Trout Unlimited

This is from an article I wrote for the Winter 2024/25 issue of WisTrout, enhanced here with additional photos and links.

The Driftless Area covers about 24,000 square miles (over 15 million acres) and goes by a host of names - the Coulee Region, bluff lands or bluff country, the Paleozoic plateau, or a host of other names. The Driftless Area occurs because Lake Superior's depth along with the highlands between the Driftless Area and Lake Superior helped divert glaciers around this area. Although often treated as a rather homogeneous area, it is much more diverse than we often recognize.

The greatest density of spring creeks in the World in a unique cultural and geologic setting - what's not to love?

I can't be the only person that has this wish that I could go back to see what the world looked like before our human population boomed.

The Scientific Fly Angler blog will be rolling out, in part, on the Coulee Region TU website. Please share these posts widely!

Take a tour along Vernon County Highway P from Coon Valley to near Hillsboro and see what the Driftless has to offer.

I present my idea of what the fishing seasons are in the Driftless Area and seasonal fly, food, and drink choices.

Relative to the vegetation of the Driftless, establishing a clear picture of what the streams and their riparian zone were like is tougher.

The question mark hopefully tips the reader off that there is some speculation but I will try to bring in some peer reviewed science, some data from Wisconsin streams, and personal experiences of myself and those I know that fish a lot in the Driftless Area. I am less familiar with what other parts of the state might be experiencing but I would interested in your comments about your experiences in the Driftless and elsewhere. (comment at the bottom of this post) Hexagenia lim

A post on the history and flies of the Wolf River got me to thinking about the Driftless. As you see, the area and the trout fishing we maybe take for granted has not always been what it is now. In fact, it really was not that long ago that Driftless fisheries were mostly stocked and not self-sustaining like they are now. Today, over much of the Driftless Area, if it is a blue line on a map, it holds trout. It has not always been that way, a fact we should celebrate but also