BAGLEY, Wis. -- Summer has minted a new day on the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin.
Though the eastern bluffs have worn an orange halo for the better part of an hour, the sun has yet to reach the bottomlands.
Here in the cool shadows, the brown river spreads wide, its current imperceptible.
Dawn or midmorning? Pond or mighty river?
The Mississippi moves to its own beat, creates its own realities. Nature accords such privileges to our continent's grandest river.
Mark Twain called the Upper Mississippi the "finest part."
"Along the Upper Mississippi every hour brings something new," Twain said in an 1886 interview with the Chicago Tribune. "There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages -- everything one could desire."
That's quite a statement from a man who earned much of his considerable fame downriver.
But it's impossible for a pair of modern day explorers to disagree.
"Look at all this life," said Matt Bichanich, nosing our boat into a narrow channel.
We're still within the border of the Badger State, but these backwaters have the feel of the Everglades.
The scene includes lily pads, 2 feet in diameter, and great beds of arrowhead rising a foot above water.
Although Mr. Twain didn't list it, the river is also known for outstanding fishing.
For the day, Bichanich and I were on a quest to sample the largemouth bass in the area.
We crawled top-water baits over duckweed and other vegetation, hoping to draw ambushes from fishy predators.
For the first two hours of light, the bass were unresponsive. Perhaps the fish here, too, have a unique sense of time.
As the sun topped the bluffs and kissed the bottomlands, the tune changed. First a 30-inch northern pike ate a rubber toad fished by Bichanich.
Then a 15-inch largemouth hit a swimming jig I cast along a weed edge.
The rising sun had set in place a cavalcade of hatching insects and feeding fish.
"This is some of my favorite fishing of the year," said Bichanich, sales manager of Uncle Josh Bait Co. in Fort Atkinson, Wis. Working a weedless rubber toad, Bichanich had frequent hits -- and some misses -- from bass.
And though Bichanich fishes much of the best bass water in the nation in the course of his job, this stretch of Mighty River is also his favorite destination.
"We often don't realize what a great resource we have here at home," said Bichanich, a Milwaukee native. "Compared to so many other places, we have extremely high quality fishing and low fishing pressure."
Angling for bass and panfish on the Mississippi, from La Crosse south to the Illinois border, has improved in the last two decades.
It's one area on which you could say Mr. Twain was wrong:
"The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise," wrote Twain in "Eruption."
But dredging, damming and ditching damaged the river. By the late 1900s, many natural island systems had eroded away, existing only in memories and old photographs.
Recent engineering projects have restored sections of the river and the fishery.
The projects are part of the federal Environmental Management Program. Partners include U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge, the natural resources departments of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin and the public.
Seventeen projects have been completed since 1985 in the Wisconsin waters of the Mississippi River, from the Chippewa River south to Illinois border, said Jeff Janvrin, Mississippi River habitat specialist for the DNR.
One project has rebuilt islands near Stoddard in Pool 8. Another has dredged Spring Lake in Pool 11.
"We sometimes say if you build it, they will come," Janvrin said. "It takes a little bit of patience, but it's certainly true here."
The projects improved overwintering habitat for backwater species such as bluegill and largemouth bass as well as allowing vegetation to take root.
Five years after the projects were completed, adult bluegill and adult bass in fall electro-shocking surveys increased from zero to 600 per hour and zero to 150 per hour, respectively.
The river has always been a popular fishing destination. It's hard to imagine it being any more popular than it is today. A formal tournament is held at least once a weekend in his district, said Janvrin.
Bichanich and I worked waters just minutes from a Bagley boat landing, but with no other boats or buildings in sight, it felt like wilderness. Much of the river in the Upper Mississippi Wildlife and Fish Refuge has such a character.
We encountered scores of great white egrets, wading the shallows. Several squadrons of white pelicans flew overhead.
We even spotted several alligators -- gar, that is. They ignored our casts.
The bass action improved as the day wore on. Although most of the bass were from 12 to 15 inches in length, a few stretched the tape to about 18 inches.
It was a day of action and scenery.
The sun had dipped below the Iowa bluffs when we turned for home. We encountered a couple of other boats of anglers at the landing; we kept our accounts modest.
Mark Twain was quoted as saying: "Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish."
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