Early Spring Paddle
by Jeff Seering
April 15. Tax Day. But I already filed my taxes weeks ago and received a small state refund.
The day was sunny, warm and forecast to be in the 70s without much wind. So it was a perfect afternoon to make my first paddle down the Baraboo River of 2024, going from LaValle to Reedsburg.
It wasn’t my first paddle of the year. I went kayak fishing on the Wisconsin River several times earlier with the first trip on Feb. 7. Paddling the Wisconsin is different than paddling a smaller river like the Baraboo. The wider river means not having to deal with log jams. The Baraboo is narrower with many trees leaning out over the river at various angles, trees that turn into log jams when they fall. I am a careful, experienced kayaker with a boat that isn’t very tippy. The few times I have tipped or gotten wet have involved working around and through log jams.
In most years I wait until May to try the Baraboo, because I don’t want to take a chance of taking a dip in very cold water on a river where there isn’t easy access to help if you need it. 2024 has had an especially warm winter and spring, so this year the first trip would be in mid-April. I had two goals for this paddle: 1) to scout new log jams for future clearing and 2) see if I would see more wildlife than usual because the foliage along the river hadn’t broken out yet. And I also took along a fish pole I used in an unsuccessful attempt to maybe hook a big northern or a bass.
My last trip down the Baraboo from LaValle to Reedsburg was in the late summer and the river was pretty clear then. It was still surprisingly clear of jams on this trip. The river was low, a a little below six feet on the LaValle river gauge I looked up[ on the internet. Between LaValle and the Highway 33 bridge there were three spots where I had to do the kayak limbo, bending low to sneak beneath overhead tree trunk across the river. After a heavy rain Tuesday, the river was up half a foot by Wednesday and I never would have been able to duck under those trees but instead would have had to do a stand, sit on the log and step over to clear those jams. There was another tight spot about halfway to Reedsburg where I rocked my boat over an underwater log. My son and I will likely go down river in May, when the water gets warmer to do some cutting.
I usually see deer on that stretch of river but only saw four this trip, two I spooked right along the bank that bounded into the woods and two more about a hundred yards away from the river. I did see two raccoons, a dead one sprawled out like it was resting on a log jam trunk and a very live one along the left river bank that quickly scurried out of sight.
Birds were the stars of the trip. I saw dozens and dozens of wood ducks, including several brightly colored drakes. Wood ducks like the Baraboo River but I’ve never seen so many on a trip before. They are skittish and usually fly ahead before you get real close to them. Noisy Canada geese also were part of the trip, noisily honking as I approached them. Their honks often set off nearby out of sight sandhill cranes to join the cacophony of sounds. While I heard a lot of cranes I only saw a few flying and a few along the river banks.
The Baraboo River neighborhood also has a decent population of bald eagles. There is a new nest about a third of the way down from the top of a solitary white pine. You can first spot it east of the second big bend after the Highway 33 bridge. I saw two eagles, one on the nest and the other on a tree along the river. Closer to Reedsburg I spotted another eagle, which flew ahead twice as I paddled downstream and then settled in a third tree where it finally stayed and warily glared at me put as I paddled by.
Some birds were mostly missing on this spring trip. There weren’t any cliff swallows nesting yet under the highway bridges this trip and I only saw a couple of kingfishers. Nor did I see any herons, blue or green, this trip, perhaps a little too early for them. A bird first for this trip was spotting a swan. It swam ahead of me for a couple miles before I finally got close enough to pass it and only then did it take to wing and flew upstream a little ways. It was something of a green/brown trip. The river water was murky and the banks had new green grass emerging through the brown dead grass of last fall. Trees were budding but not leafed out.
All in all, it was a peaceful, mostly quiet days on the river, except for the interruptions of the rise of geese and cranes. All in all, not a bad way to spend Tax Day.
