Patten Lake

It has been many years ago when I fished this lake. I believe I was about 13 or 14 years old at the time. Today oops yesterday was my 79th birthday so it has been a long time. I guess back then I was completely overwhelmed by this trip and this lake. I was invited to come up to Wisconsin by the father of a friend of mine. I had never been to Wisconsin before so the whole thing was a great adventure. One afternoon the father called to me saying "get your flyrod Jack it is time to go fishing. It was somewhat of a sultry afternoon about five pm. I grabbed my flyrod and we went into a cove very shallow and covered with weeds of some kind. The dragon flies were thick here and were dipping the water to lay eggs I guess. I tied on a self tied dragonfly pattern and began casting. I had never seen anything like this. I had caught a few bass back home in Central Illinois in small ponds but this was really exciting. The bass were everywhere waiting just beneath the surface for a dragonfly to hit the water and bam it would be the end of another dragonfly. The were fooled by my home made dragonfly too. I do not know how many bass we caught that afternoon but there were a bunch of them. They were not big fish but lots of fun to catch. We released most of them even back then keeping only one fish per person to eat for supper. In the sixty five or so years since that trip I have caught many bass but I believe this was the most exciting trip I have ever taken. I have never been back to this lake and have found several lakes that had bigger fish but I still think this probably my real introduction to bass fishing and since then I have been to the north woods in Minnesota and Wisconsin but I think I remember this lake more than any others. I rated it average compared to some other lakes but it is above average in this near octogenarians memory.

Patten Lake has produced excellent caches of large bluegills and walleyes in spring and early summer. I have also seen large bass fishing for pan fish.