Early Season Fun but please pick up!

The Ultimate Betrayal
by John McArdle


My son and I spent the weekend in Readstown Wi. We stayed at the Kickapoo Crossroads Motel which have big rooms , nice and clean and they have a restaurant adjacent to the hotel rooms. 65 dollars a night for off season seemed a little pricey but convenient location for early season trout fishing. Crazy Franks Discount store located in the same parking lot provides for a few extra laughs. Reads Creeks, which flows into the Kickapoo river, provided some nice action for brown trout. The thing that was most troubling about the weekend was the amount of garbage that was left behind by fisherman. Early season anglers as well as regular season fisherman had litter dropped at stream edge all over our travels. I know spring is the dirtiest time of the year because the snow has covered all the sins of the summer but the things we found were mostly fresh. Trout fisherman are supposed to be the keepers of the stream which is why this is so troubling. When I first fished western Wisconsin I was astonished at how the land owners seem to work with the fisherman.Ladders over barb wire fences had me very surprised. Over in sand country trout fishing access is very limited and most land owners have their land posted tight with no chance of wading the deep pools on their land. I know of more than one confrontation that involved a shotgun and trout fishing trespassers. As adults, we need to pick up because that's what adults do. The easiest way to show disrespect to a land owner and put fishing privileges in jeopardy is litter. The way we can preserve our water and our fishing area for years to come is by simply picking up your trash.The great thing about it, picking up has an immediate effect on your surroundings. Its not something that has to be approved by the D.N.R. and brought to the senate for a vote .The other great thing about picking up trash costs absolutely nothing. Take a bag with you and just pick up a few things when you pack in .
The fisherman in western Wisconsin have it very good but all good things will come to a end if you don't follow the simplest of rules. Take the privileges that you have for access to streams seriously . The ultimate betrayal is litter to a land owner so please be an adult and pick up!