I just placed my order for a Rise Level 7 wt. If it doesn’t get to my house before April 1 that is just fine by me. I won’t fish it until after then anyway because I bought it for chucking big streamers at browns on the Au Sable. That season opens on the 1st of April this year on the Au Sable’s Big Water thanks to new regs. Hopefully I will be there the week after the opener and I will wait to string it up until then because there is just something about buying a rod for a purpose that says “no, just wait for the right time”. If I get to string it before then for a good reason I will surely post a review. In the mean time you can stop buy the Roughfisher and read this. Either way, I’m pretty excited to be adding this  7wt to the arsenal as I don’t own a rod of that weight and I like what Rise is doing. Visit the Rise site and read all about it. 

I have been pretty satisfied with the TFO TiCR 6wt that I have been using as a streamer rod. As the flies grow bigger the need for a heavier stick to throw them with has grown too hence the purchase. My 6wt. is a build from a friend and it is a slick rod. The black blank, black guides and anodized silver real seat make for a pretty stealthy looking rod. Its not anything super fancy or high dollar but it was built for me with the components that I chose so it will stay with me for a long time. The guy that built my rod is Doug Enslen. He is an old school streamer guru. He was my streamer fishing mentor (though I seem to need some more mentoring sessions!), he builds some of the sweetest rods you’ll ever see under the name of Au Sable Rod Co., and he wades like a goddamn heron on speed. I’m not exagerating, the guy moves down a river unlike anyone I have ever seen. There are times that I would’ve sworn that his wading boots were actually more like running shoes. His boots seem to never touch the bottom, he never splashes, and there is barely a wake behind him. He slides down the river quickly and gracefully only stopping when he sees a spot that looks like it’ll hold a big fish. Fishing with him is a solid lesson on how to cover a lot of water in a sort time and somehow avoid drowning in the process. I look forward to the day I get to row for him and watch him work a streamer from the boat. It’ll be a good lesson for sure. Doug doesn’t build rods commercially but he should because he does amazing work. Its sort of a friends only gig and I am lucky to have had the benefit. As I said before, I love that rod that he built for me and it will still see its fair share of time on the water but sometimes the 6 just isn’t cutting it for the really big stuff so it was time step up.  I’ve been shopping for a bit and I stumbled on Rise via Moldy Chum and took a look.

I think what Rise is doing as a start up is right on target with the kind of company that I would like to support. They are a guide based co. with a healthy portion of the profits going to conservation and they seem to be pretty grass roots and I like that sort of thing. Yeah, the rods are built overseas. So are a lot of them that are affordable these days. I guess that’s what we’ll have to get used to in a global economy. I work for a US auto maker and not buying an American made rod probably makes me a hypocrite but so be it. If I had the $600-700 to throw at one of those sticks I would surely do it but I don’t so I am happy to be supporting a new company that is doing the right thing.

The picture above is Hannah Belford, a Rise team member, via the Rise Blog. I added the red fish pic because a few of us are headed to FL in May to chase reds, baby tarpon, and snook in canoes and I can’t wait. Should be good fun!

In other news… its snowing again here in NW Ohio but I guess that’s to be expected for Feb. We’re on the up-swing for spring though and the second part of  steelhead season is coming fast!

As for the fishing… eh… not so great but with a few high moments. Like I said we only managed to catch a few fish at night and missed a few more but there is always the one that makes standing in a river at midnight worth the trip. I went out alone one night for about an hour and a half and got myself in position to cast to what sounded like a few good fish. After several drifts with a hex and no takers I switched to an iso and started throwing parachute casts downstream to a fish I heard slurping. Less than a half dozen casts and my line went tight. It was of one of those moments that I have heard about so many times in the past. You hear the slurp and then in less than a second you’re on to a fish that in my case I wasn’t expecting. Unfortunately for me, as fast as it happened was about as fast as it ended. It was a good fish and I know this because it bent my 5wt. to the butt without much effort from me, i.e… my dumb ass didn’t set the hook, and it sounded like a toilet flushing when it rolled and then, BINK, it was gone. Maybe the hook set itself because the fish broke me off which made me feel a little less like a dipshit. In hindsight getting broke off is probably better than getting a fly thrown at me in the dark. Did I mention how dark? I’m pretty sure it was a new moon and where we were there isn’t exactly a lot of city lights to brighten the sky.

As far as this hatch, the hex, goes. I have made several attempts to connect with it and have basically decided that if you’re not there for a week you are wasting your time. This is not to say that a trip up North is not worth it, it always is. Its just that in my experience with this hatch, limited as it may be, its tough to be in the right place at the right time if you don’t “know” the water. Probably well worth shelling out the coin to hire a guide for the night and take notes for next year. Or, the next several days. Whichever the case. Hopefully next year it’ll be the latter. Hard part about the whole thing is anteing up when you own your own drift boat. Even harder is when your “crew” owns two and a jon boat that would do the job just, well… nearly as well. What the hell. Its just fishing after all. Nobody died and everyone has a good time regardless.

The rest of the trip also brought a few surprise fish though I’m not entirely sure why I found these guys surprising.

That’s a happy Thomas J with a couple of good Au Sable smallies.

As I said, I’m not sure why I was surprised because I have caught warmwater fish on this stretch before even further up stream. It souldn’t have been a surprise but for whatever reason it was. Tom was hitting the “scum lines” hard in search of who knows what and these guys were the result. Not worth complaining about in the least.

I’ll finish with a few more pics from the trip.

This is Kwakerz learning why “trolling” with a sink tip and drinking whiskey might be a bad idea. He wanted to save that fly.

Side channels are a great place to escape the canoe traffic in the main flow.

Hands down. One of my favorite runs in the Trophy Water.

What would I call a Grand Slam on my home water? What would a Hat Trick be on my home water? Then came the real question…

WTF is my home water?

What kind of flyfisher can I be with no home water?!?! I started searching through the pics of places I’ve been searching for a place to call home.

Unknown- PA

Mad River- OH

South Branch Au Sable- MI

The local whore pond- OH

Rocky River- OH

Au Sable Mainstream- MI

Unmentionable- OH

Unmentionable- OH

I started to find  myself in a bit of a panic as I realized that not one of these places is less than a half hour away from my house.

Then I remembered this:

and how the guy that took these photos, while he loves living on this nice little river, gets a little reminder from Mother Nature every once in a while that she is still the boss.

Then the  panic resided and I realized that it doesn’t matter where I live, I can call any body of water home. Being on the water has always been home for me. Ever since I was a kid I have always felt better when I am near water and I’m guessing that I always will. Sure, I would love to have my own personal lake/pond fishery to manage and call home but for now I’ll be very happy to have the Midwest’s waters, cold and warm, to call my home waters.

Now back to Hat Tricks and stuff…

What is a Hat Trick on your home water? What about a Grand Slam? No need to mention the name or place if you don’t want to. (Remember, a hat trick is three and a grand slam is four. That was the part the had Foul Hooked all pissed off so we better get it right here)

Firstly, finding a 14′ jon boat for a resonable price wasn’t as easy as we thought. It seems that everyone wants to get rid of their 10′ or 12′ but not the 14′s. We did find what we were looking for eventually and luckily it was only a few miles from my house. Let me just say that picking up (literally lifting the damn thing) a 14′ aluminum boat in the middle of the winter when its full of ice and leaves and stuffing it in the back of an S-10 sucked. It was cold as hell and that boat must have weighed and extra 100 pounds with all that crap in it. I never imagined it could be that heavy but then again, I’m about 6′-1″ and 160 lbs WITH waders on and guy that I bought it from was even punier than I am. Believe it or not, at my size, I have been called a “puss” before.  Never the less, on my way home I hit the DIY carwash tipped the thing half out of the bed of the truck so it would drain and powerwashed most of the ice and leaves out then called a buddy to help load the thing into my garage when I got home. The next day I walked out to discover that the powerwash job, while effective in removing all that shit from the visible parts of the boat’s interior, had released one of the most “interesting” smells I have ever been exposed to. It was as if the seats had been acting as the freezers for a cryogenics experiment gone horribly wrong. I sort of felt like I had just single handedly destroyed someone’s life long science experiment that was hidden away under the seats of this vessel. It was pretty nasty but at the same time, in the dead of winter when nothing outside has a smell other than the smell of cold, there was something kind of comforting about it. It smelled like years upon years of decaying earth and animal matter but it was concentrated in my little 20×20 garage. Kind of like when you fart in a cup and then cap it with your hand to pass it to your buddy. I have never done that by the way… only a victim.

Since the boat was closest to me, I went to pick it up and I was trusted to make the right decision. (Did I mention that this project was a partnership deal? You see, this is what you do when you can’t afford your own boat. Find a willing partner and split everything. Just make sure its one of your favorite people to fish with so you never have to argue about who takes it where and when.) Anyway, as sweet as it was, that stench made me wonder if I had made the right decision. After getting together with my new co-owner and getting all excited about our possibilities with this thing my worries went away in a hurry. Here’s what we came up with for our blank canvas.

She’s a real beauty eh? 14′ Ouchita jon boat circa 1972. 48″ beam and 36″ bottom. The beam and bottom dimensions are important. They played a major factor in altering our original plan to deck almost the entire boat. It would seem that 36″ bottoms and a raised center of gravity aren’t a marriage made in heaven. Here is a little picture story of how this boat evolved.

“Holy shit. If this thing is tippy now, wait until we go up another 6 inches with the decks!”

So we were on to a plan B. Rear seat removal to maximize interior space.

Since we removed the seat that contained half of the flotation for the boat, we replaced it with pink foam and then a sheet of 1/4 ply.

Then it was off to the metal shop to get the anchor system fabbed up.

And then on to the paint shop and presto…

$700 drift boat and trailer.  That’s the grand total minus the beers. You really can’t beat it… or so we thought. There is a whole other side to this story that involves a few more boats… deals to good to be true, boat theft and so on… I’ll pick that up later but for now here’s the rest on this one.

You can see the anchor set up in the pic below. Lead to the rower’s side.  Also, if you look to the back of the boat (which is actually the front if your floating downstream) you can see the leaning brace we came up with. Basically what we did was bend galvanized steel tubing  in a few directions and came up with a bracket that they will slide in and out of easily for transport. There are leaning braces at both ends so you have two angler capability in addition to a rower.

The funny and sad part of this whole story is that the two of us that own it have only fished from it once so far. Like I said, there are now a few more boats. One of which is for sale by the way. Shoot us an email and we’ll tell you all about it.

Here we are up on the Au Sable for the ASBWPA Fall Clean Up in Mio, MI. We played garbage barge for the Trophy Water stretch between the Mio boat launch and Comin’s Flats. I think we had a grand total of 13 bags betwen what we collected on our own and bags we picked up from other crew members doing foot duty. The pontoon on the right is the second installment to the armada and part of the “deals to good to be true story”. Its also the one for sale. Best part of the clean up story beyond all the trash we collected? The jon boat got its name while the owners were spotting the truck. It was dubbed, very non-politically correctly but very fitting, THE SHORTBUS.