By Topf Wells

As you drive CTH KP between Cross Plains and Salmo Pond, keep an eye out for a new DNR fishing easement sign and a large path through a cornfield.  Park the car, grab your fishing gear, and follow that yellow brick road.  What could be better than Oz or Kansas?  A newly restored piece of Black Earth Creek. 

Dan, our stalwart DNR fish biologist, and Vince and Abe our equally stalwart Fish Operations Crew, just completed a huge and difficult restoration of Black Earth Creek.  The habitat they created looks as though it could become the happy home for thousands of trout.  They used just about every technique in the current DNR playbook.  Especially noteworthy is their use of the trees and brush they cleared.  Almost all of that went into log sills and brush bundles in the stream instead of being heaped into burn piles.

My only fishing advice is to make sure you are equipped with plenty of 2 or 3X tippet; I don’t think this is fine and far fishing water. This had to be a tough project because of this year’s high water and the presence of some oxbows and backwater areas.  Some of the work occurred during this year’s heat wave.  Finally, this area seems to be the staging area for all the mosquitoes in western Dane County.  Do not visit without your favorite mosquito repellant.

Thanks to Dan, Abe, and Vince for a job exceedingly well done.

And, we helped:  this is one of the projects SWTU supported with a donation of $2,500. Way to go, us.