STANLEY — Bill Schreffler reminded me of a heron as he waded purposefully in a calm bay of Mead Lake, an impoundment on the South Fork of the Eau Claire River in Clark County.

In his right hand was his favorite fishing tool, a 12-foot, telescoping cane pole. For storage, or for hiking through brush, it collapses upon itself into about a 4-foot staff. But when he is ready for business, it extends to 12 feet with a thin, sensitive tip.

On the tip was a length of 4-pound test line. On the other end of the line was his favorite jig, made by Falls Bait in Chippewa Falls. The jig had a bright orange head and a small, plastic silver minnow.

He gently flipped the jig within a couple of inches of the dense cattails bordering the shoreline. He let it sink, then worked it back toward the surface with the silver minnow fluttering. A dark form darted through the stained water. The rod tip bowed. Schreffler smiled.

The thin line made a high-pitched whine as it whipped through air and water while a crappie made a dash away from shore, then pivoted and headed back toward the cattails.

Soon I was dropping a crappie into our live well -- a mesh laundry bag I tied to a strap of my waders.

For the first several minutes of fishing my main job was operating the live well as Schreffler kept teasing crappies out of the cattails.

He had tried this shoreline before earlier in the month, but the crappies weren't in yet. Now the water had warmed and crappies were here. When the water warms further, the bluegills will be here, but not yet.

The spring is progressing at its own slow pace.

We started fishing in early afternoon, late enough to give the morning sun a chance to warm the water. We were in a bay sheltered from the wind, which would mix the warm water with cold.

I cast a dark fly with a gold bead head I had tied to resemble a pattern Schreffler liked. I experimented with a different fly with a white wing I thought might be better for crappies, but it didn't sink fast enough so I went back to the black fly, dropping it as close to the edge of the cattails as I could.

I began to catch crappies, too, but not as regularly as he did.

My retrieve was horizontal as I twitched the fly toward me. His presentation was nearly vertical as he dangled the jig in front of the cattails where the crappies hid.

A couple of other fishermen were trying their luck from shore that afternoon. They were hunkered down in the cattails like duck hunters, but the problem was they were almost sitting on top of the fish and casting beyond them with their minnows. Schreffler's heron tactics were more effective.

The lake bottom was hard and well-suited to wading.

A female red-wing blackbird scolded us as we waded past. She no doubt had a nest tucked in there somewhere.

We came to an interruption in cattails where a lake home owner had removed all the vegetation. I cast near the shore and caught a pumpkinseed sunfish, but with no cattails there were no crappies. And no blackbirds.

We fished our way back to where we started, also catching fish on the way back.
 
We kept our waders on and drove to a different shoreline, where Schreffler had found bluegills earlier in the week. We were in the wind here. We waded out where we could cast into the cattails with the wind at our backs. But the wind had chased away the bluegills. Crappies were here, though, and I waded along the edge of the cattails, catching crappies on a wet fly. He followed, dropping his jig into pockets in the cattails that I had missed and pulling out crappies.

As we accumulated more crappies, Schreffler seemed to get more selective about the fish he kept. I would catch a crappie and he would say "nice fish" as I slid it into the laundry bag, but he would catch one that looked, from my vantage point, about the same size. He would say "too small" as he tossed it back.

I picked up a floating slip bobber and found it attached to a mass of red monofilament fishing line that was tangled around a stick and around a big yellow bullhead. He had swallowed a hook and apparently broken the line.

I kept the slip bobber and the bullhead but threw away the monofilament so it didn't tangle up anything else.

Some of my earliest fishing experiences were with bullheads, but after cleaning fish and frying some up for a late dinner that evening I concluded bullheads were harder to clean and not nearly as tasty as crappie fillets. There was a reason I switched to crappies and bluegills in my old age.

We decided to try the Eau Claire River. As we arrived a young Amish angler was heading out with his horse and buggy and a stringer of crappies.

I switched to using a spin rod and small jig, usually tipped with a minnow. The walleyes had been biting in the river, but water levels had dropped and the walleyes either had been caught or had drifted back downstream.

But I did catch crappies in an eddy and then a 33-inch muskie.

Schreffler stayed with his cane pole and caught crappies and bluegills and had another muskie bite off his jig. He has caught a few on his cane pole and 4-pound test line this spring. His cane pole also is a muskie rod.

I hooked another muskie, a larger one, but the crappie jig pulled free. It was just as well. Catching a big fish on light tackle is fun, but those muskies already are working hard swimming up the river and looking for a place to spawn. They found their progress blocked by the dam at Mead Lake.

Muskie season didn't open until last Saturday.

We left with a stringer of about 10 fish Schreffler planned to give to a neighbor. That's the definition of a good neighbor: someone who donates fish and fillets them first.

On the way out we encountered a 6-foot fox snake -— the biggest I've seen in Wisconsin outside of a zoo. We were heading up the slope and he was heading down, but he ducked into a crack in the rocks and disappeared before we ran into each other.

You see all kinds of things when you go fishing.