Gettin’ away from it all in Michigan

by Jim Stuard

I am by no means a great fisherman. I don’t have mad skills that make other fishermen stop in their tracks to watch me perform. I don’t tie flies that make me the envy of the tying community. But, and it’s a big BUT, every once in a while all the stars align and I turn out a decent fishing trip where I’m not ashamed to say I caught a lot of fish. That’s how I’d describe my last trip up to the Au Sable River in Michigan last July. I’d been to my friend Paul’s place once a year for the last two years. We’d found a common bond in woodworking, a former trade of mine, and fly fishing. Fly fishing is something at which he’s exceedingly good. When you get used catching fish which under any other circumstances would be considered fish of a lifetime, you should be able to wear the badge of “good.” I’m talking about steelhead and the other star quarry that Paul has angled for over the years. At this stage of early retirement he’s into catching the wild trout of the Au Sable river. They consist of Brook trout, brown trout, and Rainbows that glow like a gem in your hand when you catch them. They’re mostly smaller than the lunkers he caught in his headhunting days, but the fight is shorter and there are more of them. I think it may be all about the strike to Paul. More on that later. 

The Au Sable presents itself as the model of a classic trout stream. It’s a spring creek with incredibly stable, moderate flows and wading is very easy. It doesn’t suffer the fate of other trout rivers that are subject to those damn, dam releases, or being too far south where the river temperature invariably rises to the point where it’s dangerous for trout to live. I’m not here to romanticize trout. There are better writers who can and do deify that fish to the point that it would be swimming around with a big freakin’ halo on it’s head. I like to fish, and the quarry is incidental to the surroundings, company and current inventory of decent liquor and cigars. I can say that, on the weekend that is the subject of this article, alcohol and tobacco were in good supply. Such is the price of admission to fishin’ paradise. 

On the two previous trips I’d made to Michigan you could count the fish I caught on one hand. Paul, and for that matter all of his friends, would say; “The Au Sable is full of wild fish. They’re hard to catch and they’ve seen every fly that you’re gonna throw at them…” Well, the Au Sable IS full of wild fish, but either dumb luck or sympathetic fish conspired to let me catch a few during my first forays up north. I emphasize – only a few.  I went there this year with no expectations beyond driving by Dundee and stopping in the humungous Cabela’s to see what there was to see and go fishing, drinking and smoking with friends. Not necessarily in that order. I brought some really nice maduro cigars and some tasty small-batch bourbon. With my admission paid my plan was simple; get mosquito bit and catch a good buzz after enjoying fruitless walks down the middle of beautiful streams. My modest expectations failed to prepare me for what lay ahead. 

I arrived on Friday evening and, as is the custom, the really serious fishing started after 8:00 p.m. It can get too toasty for fishing during the heat of the day. July evenings in Michigan can get comfortably chilly and that’s when a decent spinner fall of either Grey Drakes or Mahogany Duns comes off. You don’t want a cloud of bugs. You want just enough so the fish can start picking them off the surface in a regular rhythm. That’s what happened on this trip. I totally get dry fly fishing now. I’d seen little snippets of it in past trips but this was the Big Kahuna of experiences. In my heart, I know that nymphing and streamers would probably yield more and bigger fish, but to see any fish rise to dry flies you’ve tied is a sublime experience.

The previous year I’d tied a box full of grey and mahogany spinners that didn’t receive a lot of use. I just didn’t catch that many fish. I also time my trip to try to catch the, sometimes huge Hexagenia Limbata hatch. These mayflies are like caterpillars with wings; they can come off like a cloud – or not at all – purely based on the weather conditions. A proper Hex hatch will make an otherwise cautious, law-abiding trout as dumb as a box of rocks. They come out in the dark during the hex spinner fall and start carelessly gulping spinners off the surface. It’s the trout fishing equivalent of a bums rush and is not to be missed. There are guys that will go just for the Hex hatch and sit on a stream bank for hours till dark. You see them there smoking pipes and chatting, waiting for the eventual spinner fall that occurs around 10 p.m. I only had one good hit on a Hex fly and it was last year during the same time. It was pitch black out. I was thigh deep in a run that had held big fish in the past and I was gently floating a foam Hex spinner down a run when I hear the tell-tale ‘galloup’ of my fly being eaten. My (at that time) brand new, self-made Scott rod bent till the tip touched the water for a blissful five seconds before the fish did a couple of really good head shakes and threw the hook. No fishing story is complete without telling about the one that got away. 

Well, over three years of trips I’ve never actually seen a real Hex fly other than the gigantor spinners that I tied, which now collect dust in my fly box. We hope beyond hope sometimes and the whole group I fished with was using them, even though nary a Hex came off. Without the big bugs I knew I’d have to satisfy myself with teasing the big fish’s little brothers – and catch them I did! I’m not going to brag. I’ll simply say this; outside of some ludicrously good days bluegill fishing with a cane pole when I was a kid, and a recent trip to the Ohio river where I caught 25 fish of 5 different species under some insane conditions, this was the best fishing trip I’ve ever had!

That weekend I had my game on. I started catching fish from the git-go. I really didn’t think anything of the first night. I fished a nice Scott A2, 9’ 5wt that I’d built the year before. It’s the best trout rod I own, and makes me look good casting. I can’t really ask more than that of a fly rod. That night I brought 8 or 9 fish to the net. Most were brook trout in the 9 to 12-inch range. That’s considered a good fish on the Au Sable since a brookie grows at 25% the rate of a brown. Brookies tend to be smaller, but are just as shy and can be spooked by the wrong presentation. 

The Scott was more rod than the diminutive brook trout required. The next morning, during a short wade in front of the house, I used a Bass Pro White River 6’9” 4wt. Casting this is like shooting a bb gun; it’s that accurate. I won the outfit at a Buckeye United Fly Fishers meeting a couple years back and finally had a chance to fish it to its potential. It’s accurate, even for a caster of my limited skill. It will easily turn over a #10 streamer, though that wouldn’t be necessary this trip as the Fishing Gods had smiled upon me, and I started catching fish. A lot of fish. I stopped counting after 25. I’d never been that much into fish counting anyway…

This is technical, spring-creek fishing at its finest and I came prepared. I brought five rods. Semper paratus (always prepared). Not all the rods would see use, but it occasionally pays to play the part of boy scout. In addition to the aforementioned Scott and White River rods, I brought an 8’6” 4wt Orvis Trident TLS with the accompanying Battenkill large arbor reel. I also brought a 6wt Pflueger that is better suited to bass fishing near home, but what the hey. It was my first ever fly rod and I’ve only recently learned how good a fishing tool it really can be. Finally, I brought my Redington 10’ 6/7wt. It’s a purpose-built steelhead rod, but it’s supremely easy to cast from a float tube. I’ll tell you about the lake fishing I did in a later blog post.

I’d never been able to fish the Orvis rod comfortably, and I asked Paul to take a look at it. In the space of five minutes he’d fixed the problem. The reel had a 4wt Orvis Wonderline spooled up, and it cast like a brick. I thought it was my poor technique, but when Paul suggested a heavier line I loaded up the 5wt reel off the Scott.  That Orvis fires casts like bullets. Go figure.

Overlining the rod didn’t make it a delicate casting tool, but I had learned a valuable lesson. Gone are the days when I buy outfits that don’t immediately feel comfortable in my hands. In my defense it was my first really good fly rod. I had no idea how to cast it or whether it was set up correctly. I traded four fly tying desks for the outfit, and I still consider it a great deal. I’m sure some line experimentation down the road will be apropos. That said, the 5wt reel stayed on the 4 wt rod for the remainder of the weekend. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with a 4wt Wonderline that casts more like a 3 wt. But that’s what the trips to Cabela’s are for!

One of the nicer things about fishing those stretches of the Au Sable was that I really didn’t share the water with too many people. That’s the nice part about fishing private water. You can boat and wade through, but since the land on both sides is privately owned it’s easy to find yourself completely alone.  My last night of fishing, I was out with Paul desperately seeking Hex flies after a very good evening of fishing. It was nearing 11 p.m. and we weren’t in the mood to miss out on any of the superlative liquor waiting upstream, so we decided to hump it out of the river. That’s when I made a supremely stupid mistake. I unstrung my rod and started hiking out of the woods. Unbeknownst to me, I’d snagged the tip section of my Orvis rod on a tree and left it out there in the dark. I don’t have a lot of expensive equipment but this was, by far, my most expensive rod. It was a serious bummer, requiring some major consoling and several fingers of bourbon from my fishing buddies. On a happy note, the owner of the property went out the next morning and found the tip section decoratively hanging in a tree. Strike one up for ‘more luck than brains’. From now on I never unstring a rod unless I’m standing next to the rod tube it came out of. 

This trip was also my first opportunity to fish a Trico (pronounced Try-ko) hatch. In comparison to the possible nighttime blitz of aircraft sized Hex flies, the Tricorythodes hatch that comes off in the mornings consists of flies that you can barely see. At best you’ll notice cloudy formations at a distance. Up close, they look like dirty specks on your hand. The only fly I can tie for that hatch is a Griffiths Gnat. Anything else, I leave to the tiers with better eyes and more patience. I fish a size 18 and it looks huge compared to the actual Tricos, but the fish didn’t seem to mind. The Griffiths Gnat is supposed to imitate a cluster of Tricos, something any self-respecting trout would see as more economical than picking off individual flies. You’re not going to bring in a lunker during a Trico hatch, but if you use light tackle, in the 2-4wt range you can have a blast. 

When I started fly fishing fifteen years ago. All bright eyes and a bucketful of wild optimism, this weekend is what I’d expected of the sport. Back then, I tied on my first wooly bugger and tried catching fish on a local stream to absolutely no effect. The older, more experienced Au Sable fishermen didn’t really focus on the smaller fish like I did. I concentrated on the strike. I couldn’t get enough of it. I didn’t care if the fish was a dink the size of my hand, or something bigger. I just wanted to fool the fish. I just wanted the strike.
I’ve caught steelhead that fought for five or ten minutes and left me with a sore arm for a few days. I’ve proudly worn the bruises inflicted by the fighting butt. One day I’ll start serious headhunting and, God willing, I’ll get it out of my system. But that weekend, in that state, in that river, it was all about the strike.

Joe Cornwall calls the moment of the strike a supremely Zen moment - one where you think about nothing else. It has the complete focus of your attention and nothing else matters. Maybe.  Or maybe I just like the rush of seeing the fish hitting something you tied that morning with no expectation of it being hit at all. I fished exactly the way I was supposed to. I hit all the right pockets and seams, the classic cover that the books define as “fishy.” And I hooked fish after fish.  I’d started out the trip with grim determination. I’d become comfortable with being someone who wasn’t going to accomplish what they’d set out to do, but they do it anyway. I compare it to changing a diaper without getting any of the contents on you. That’s where being a Zen, Stay at Home Dad comes into play.

In the end it got to the point where I caught myself laughing out loud when I got a strike. Call it me being incredulous. Or maybe it was just the enjoyment of the perfect, Zen moment. Either way, that’s what’s going to keep me out there on whatever river I can find, in whatever time I have left on this planet.

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