LADYSMITH - We picked the Flambeau River because of water levels.

Dairyland Power has been lowering the level of the Dairyland Flowage in order to work on the dam, giving an extra jolt of water to the Flambeau downstream.

When we launched our canoes late Friday morning, the river was not high by any means, but there was enough water to float our canoes. I've been on midsummer float trips in low-water years that involved as much walking and dragging as floating. It's better if you can float. And you get off the river before dark.

We made an unscheduled stop at a sports store in Ladysmith, where I asked for directions. Before we left, Dennis Vanden Bloomen of Eau Claire purchased $50 worth of flies and lures. For him, that was showing restraint.

Mike Swenson of Eau Claire purchased the last two white mice lures in the store on the advice of the owner. He said to catch smallmouths, toss the mouse onto a lily pad and jerk it off. It sounded good, but in my experience the rocky Flambeau has not been good habitat for lily pads or mice - especially white mice, which are mostly found in research labs.

The guy also advised using a chartreuse spinner bait. That sounded more practical. The chartreuse would show up well in the Flambeau's brown-stained water. Swenson got a couple of them.

Brian Elwood of Hudson bought a few shaggy wet flies. He was planning to exclusively fly fish on this trip.

Vanden Bloomen and I were playing the roles of river guides for a charitable cause - our services were auctioned off at a Trout Unlimited banquet. Our clients for the day both work for Xcel Energy, so there was some risk that our electrical service might be cut off if they didn't catch any fish or if we got them stuck in a thunderstorm, as we did with the last people we guided.

But Friday promised to be a good day - not too hot and not too cold.

We hadn't gone too far when Swenson cast one of his new spinner baits into some fast water and had a strike. A promising start.

The spinner bait was a good choice for the snag-filled river. Swenson would bounce it off of rock piles, through shallow water and over logs. It was impressive what he could get away with without getting snagged. Unfortunately, it didn't impress the fish after that first bite.

Elwood worked the shoreline with a small popper on a fly rod and had a couple of bites before catching a smallmouth. Vanden Bloomen caught a bass on a small rubber crayfish imitation, a logical choice because the water was thick with crayfish of all sizes.

When we regrouped toward the downstream end of Ladysmith, Vanden Bloomen gave Swenson one of his imitation crayfish, which came salted in a bag, like pretzels.

Swenson tried it for a while, with no bites.

He also tried the white mouse, although - as suspected - we didn't find any lily pads on the river. And the mouse didn't float. It was an underwater mouse. But it did have an interesting side-to-side motion.

Vanden Bloomen later tried the mouse and caught a northern that wasn't particular about whether the mouse floated or sank. We broke for lunch, which is a good thing to do when the fish aren't biting.

After lunch we switched the lineup in the canoes, and I was the guide for Elwood.

His luck changed when he changed to the tequilly fly, which according to fly fishing lore was tied by a female fishing guide in Colorado after a night of drinking tequila. It has a copper-colored body and green rubber legs.

I don't know how it works in Colorado, but some Wisconsin river guides think it's a good crayfish imitation.

Elwood found he had one in his fly collection, although he didn't know the colorful history of this fly.

He put it on and began getting bites. It may have been that we were in a better spot on the river with some better cover, but the tequilly fly probably didn't hurt.

He fished it slowly, and the bass took it without a lot of commotion. He missed a few but landed three along a stretch of bank where the water was deeper.

The evening was calm then - good conditions for the popper - and we tried it with better success.

But we realized we hadn't seen our companions for a long time. So we stopped fishing and paddled. We paddled by some houses that I didn't remember being there the last time I was on this section of the Flambeau, and I was beginning to wonder if we had passed the landing.

I've done that before.

But we came around a corner and found the landing and our friends waiting.

They'd had enough canoeing and fishing for the day.

So had we.

I think I'll tie some of those tequilly flies for the next trip.

Knight can be reached at 830-5835 or joe.knight@ecpc.com.