No Amount of planning can put you in the right spot at the right time. Period. Every year we plan a trip towards the end of trout season on the Trophy Water of the Au Sable. Every Year for the last five plus years we have planned to be there and have been there at the right time (legally), right at the end of the season. And this year just like the past years we would put flies in all the right places… again. This year, the first year of the new regulations, was going to be different. Its the first year that we could be there later. We could be there after Sept 30th. We could and would be there when the big trout would be on the prowl and in their pre-spawn mode. Feeding on and attacking anything that gets in their zone, their territory. This year the big trout were going to be reckless and stupid and eat flies no matter where the flies were placed. That was the plan until the weather gods came in and said “nope”, this is not your year. The weather gods decided that for our trip, the five days that we spent up north, the weather would be more than perfect… for every other thing that did not include fishing big streamers for big browns.The week before and the week after were perfectly miserable for everything else. Our week was perfect. Perfect for everything but trout fishing.

As any band of dedicated streamer fisherman would, we made adjustments. We took every one of those bright, sunny, warm and not so great days to fish for big trout days as an opportunity to hone our skills. We changed flies every ten minutes, came up with names for those punk ass browns that should have eaten the fly that they just took a swipe at, and drank more beer than we have ever consumed in a single weekend during this yearly trip. We made the best of a bad fishing weekend and turned in to a great drinking weekend. We spent the weekend doing target practice. We tried to put flies in all the spots you might never have thought of and rowed back to get them when they got wrapped in trees. We put flies in those oddball shallow water spots and caught fish. Small fish but hey, inches in the boat are inches in the boat right?

I will say with pride that, based on the other folks we talked to, we turned and stabbed more 16″+ fish than what we heard from anyone for the weekend. All in all, between two boats in five days, we did see well over a dozen 20″+ fish move to a fly. Of those I can say with confidence that over half were in the 24″ class. I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t know for a fact that five of those were my own. I got the skunk for the first two days but turned good fish on both those days. The trip wasn’t a total skunk. We did boat a few teeners. We didn’t spend a ton of time taking pics of those fish but they were there. They ate something and we were happy to have it happen.

The pics are here but if you come here often, you have already seen them.

You can read the rest of this story right here at The Drake Online with its fresh new look. Its an older story from last year or the year before but well worth the re-post here for the obvious reasons.

I sympathize with “The Junkie”. I know the pain of his addiction. Literally, I can still feel it in my elbow on my stripping arm from the last two trips up north. Tennis elbow has a partner in the world of fly fishing and it doesn’t come from casting. It comes from the answer to questions like this one:

“Dude, how is it that we are using the same fly and the same rig and you’re getting twice the hook ups on the same amount of follows?” He said.

“Strip faster.” I said.

Now I’m paying for it everytime I get the milk from the fridge. Streamer fishing for a few days from a boat can be tough on an old guy like me.

We’ll be hitting the ASBWPA Clean up gig on Sept. 12th. Click the link for details and contacts on that one. The Trophy water gets a solid pounding from sloppy canoe folks all summer long and it needs your help! (Fisher folks too but its easier to blame the canoes for the obvious reasons)  ASBWPA makes it worth your while with prizes and a BBQ afterwards.

The upstream clean up is also well worth it for the same reasons. Rusty Gates from Gates Lodge and Anglers of the Au Sable has been running this one for many years. It covers three rivers, the Au Sable main, South, and North branches and is also followed up by a BBQ. Rusty gets a load of  folks up there. We’re hoping to see some of them make the jump and help us out downstream this year to level the field a bit but either way, the river will love you for it no matter which section you choose. Check the Anglers site for details on Rusty’s clean up.

Again, BOTH gigs are on Sept. 12th. Hope to see you there!

I’ll keep the boat story short but remember I said it has been four long years. Most everyone I know has been tired of hearing about it for at least 3.5 of those years or less so I’ll try to keep it short. Basically, my mother-in-law married a guy (a fly fisher) about 5 years ago with a real knack for buying all the gear he could get his hands on and enough of it so that he would always have someone to fish with even if it meant loaning gear. Well, he passed away about 4 years ago and one of his f(r)iends was storing a few boats for him. That “storage” quickly turned into hiding them from their rightful owners/conversion after the funeral. The boat in the post below was one of the boats. There are two more. After four years of chasing this slippery douchebag I got that one back. Thanks to those of you that helped with that. We’ll see what happens with the others. They could require time in court and I don’t know if that’s worth it.

So anyway, on to the trip. It was a good time despite the fact that the fish were being dickheads. Two of us managed to get up there early enough on Friday to get a quick float in. Mio to Comins in about 3.5 hrs. I said quick didn’t I? Probably a good thing since my dumb ass fell in pretty early in the float. Thank you Mr. Down coat for keeping me warm!

Mental note, when the water is high and a little off color, its better to pee off the boat rather than hop off and go to shore.

Mike moved a bunch of fish that day but only one was of any size. The rest were the standard stockers that never fully committed to the fly.

It was a beautiful evening for a float and when we got off the water we were looking at this. Looks like a potential storm but its just a normal Northern MI sky in May.

I would have suggested we hang around at anchor just before the ramp and have a few more beers but my toes were feeling the 50 deg water temp and with air temps dipping in to the 40′s we shored up and headed to camp.

Shortly after we got to camp and got set up, the others arrived. We quickly lost one to the warm comfort of his tent and after several beers and some of Kentucky and Iowa’s finest we all hit the sack. We had big plans for the morning that were fortunately not coming until 9 a.m.

Huron Pines and ASBWPA sponsored stream banks restoration project at USFS 4841. This type of project was a first for me. I have been to numerous clean ups but never a project like this so I was looking forward to getting started as it seemed at first like it would consume a better part of the day. I was amazed at how fast we got it done. We split up into two groups and banged out two erosion walls including the demo of an old one in about two hours.

No, its not through his finger, just his glove but he did it twice so I thought I’d put two pics of it up.

Here is the completed project. Big thanks to all that were involved. I look forward to the next one!

We managed to get on the water by about 1 p.m. Put in at Mio again and had trucks spotted to Mckinley. Figured/hoped we’d get off the water after dark but with the help of a big breeze and the flow being up we made it to Mckinley before sunset. Thankfully the breeze let up in the afternoon. I was starting to get tired of fighting it and teaching someone to row in that shit just isn’t fair. We did actually land a few fish even if they were just stockers and most of which were caught near the stocking points. I think I got the only brown of the weekend. A whopping 8″ fish that ate a 4″ fly that he hit twice. I love it when that happens. Makes you realize that in most cases, going big on streamers is the right decision. The fly was a 2/0 olive version of the SHF. I’m pretty sure that fly should go in to a museum somewhere if it isn’t already. Thank you Mr. McCune. I’m pretty sure that someone put on his stripe for Saturday but I won’t mention who.

Mad River tilt shift

So anyway that’s what we did the Mad is a seriously small stream, very clear and to Caufields  credit there were some bugs and some fish caught. Perhaps a first? Either way it was a beautiful day on a very nice stream. Thanks to some peeps at Madriver Men TU chapter for the location tips. Tight lines.