It’s a weekday in late September, and all is quiet on Wisconsin’s Brule River.

The clouds played keep-away with the sun early in the morning, and the clouds won. Now the green of pines and balsam fir are muted, and even the maples seem to honor the day’s somber mood.

Boot prints of the weekend anglers remain in the mud along the trails, but the anglers themselves are long gone. Only a few are about today, and each has all the river he wants.

Tom Tasker of Spooner, Minn., is fishing just up from the mouth of the Brule, and he can’t figure out why he isn’t catching fish.

“The river is high, and it’s got a little color,” Tasker says. “There should be fish in here.”

Like many of those who come to the Brule in fall, Tasker is throwing hardware. Spinners, mostly.

He says he’ll take anything that hits, but he would prefer a couple of coho salmon to eat and a couple of steelhead just for the thrill of doing battle with them.

Steelhead, brown trout, cohos, Chinook salmon — they’re all in the river now. The salmon and brown trout will drop their eggs this fall. The steelhead will hold over until spring and move farther upstream to spawn.

“I always take (vacation) this week and the third week in October,” Tasker says. “We usually hit ’em one time or the other.”

He throws his spinner at the far bank. He watches his line swing downstream. No fish comes to inhale it. Time to move upstream, he says.

In spring, fishing the Brule comes with a sense of urgency. The fish come in fast when conditions are right, and they move upstream with one thing on their minds. Anglers jockey for favorite bends and runs in an effort to outguess the fish.

All of that hurry is gone now, in late September, especially during the week. The river can still take some big runs of fish. Far more steelhead come in during the extended fall run than in spring, most years. But there’s plenty of time now.

The river and its valley couldn’t be more gorgeous. Yellow needles litter the trunk of a leaning white pine. A red-phase grouse flushes just off the trail, testing an angler’s heart rate. A red maple leaf, curled at the edges, rides a riffle downstream.

At the Copper Range Campground just down from Jack & Edna’s, campfire smoke drifts through the pines. Aaron Larson of La Crosse, Wis., tends a pot of water on his campstove. A 29-year-old carpenter, Larson says he worked every weekend this past summer. He comes to the Brule with a purpose.

“I wanted to get some serenity,” he says.

His yellow Lab, Ellie Maie, has come with him. He has come in a small Ford station wagon, with firewood, a tent and a cooler of food. He’s here for the week. He comes almost every fall, a tradition he inherited from his dad and an uncle. He’d like to catch a steelhead to take home and smoke, he says. He has fished just one morning, without success.

“I fished here for four years before I ever got a fish,” he says.

Larson still speaks with awe of a day he spent fishing near the mouth of the Brule, catching steelhead after steelhead in a rain.

“It was ‘The Run,”‘ Larson says. “There were fish bumping into your legs. I caught 11 of ’em. It’s gotten me sucked into it so I’ll come back every year.”

His coffee water is starting to boil. Ellie Maie lies next to the picnic table. The river whispers in the distance.

Larson will get back to the river soon enough. Right now, he’s after some serenity.