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My drinkin' days are over; I'm still trouble bound - Slaid Cleaves
"This place is so fucked up. Where else could you find a thread with a Debbie Gibson song, a chapter from Fyodor Dostoevsky, and a sweet under boob pic like that on the same page?" - Hogleg
"You may not be smart, but your car gets good gas mileage". - Stovetop
You can''t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. Frank Zappa
No kidding.. Potty mouth wants to go to BC this year. I’m already mourning our summer dry fly trip out west but the yearly routine will resume in 2027, hopefully following more snow pack.
Now that this mayfly season is weaning away, it’s got me reflecting on some of the outings this spring, so I’ll start from the top:
Trout/turkey camp
We had a real winter this year.
Enough to lock most rivers up. Enough to focus on things like skiing at Midwest ski resorts.
Things changed in a big way when the first warm spell we got was coupled with non stop rain for 2 weeks. So what would have already blown out our rivers with weeks of hard rain turned into flooding when all that rain melted several feet of snow in a matter of a few days.
Things were slow to say the least. Everything behind. Even during ‘normal’ springs dry fly fishing in Michigan always feels spotty and inconsistent at best. They’ve the endless flow of nightcrawlers, crayfish, sculpins, chestnut lampreys, shiners, stocker truck rainbows, and in most rivers salmon fry, steelhead eggs, and sucker spawn to eat instead of breaking the surface for a size 14 dry fly. So needless to say we weren’t necessarily optimistic after hearing stories of brown trout in peoples basements after flooding and biblical worm dumps. And I don’t mean biblical lightly, there was a video that circulated Michigan fishing circles that you could make an honest claim there was more worm than water, in one river stretch.
But we went fishing.
Because we said we would 3 months prior and took pto and told the wives.
Trout and Turkey camp to be exact. The usual suspects. Steamin (beans), trav, and Bear. We had perfect (for us..) weather which means lows in the 30’s and highs in the 50’s. Fishing was spotty and inconsistent, and so was the turkey hunting. But we were outside and together, which I’ve learned to not take for granted as we get older. If youre wondering how old, we are in the age bracket where all 4 guys brought their own individual 6 man tents with full sized cots, mattress, 2 chainsaws, a fryer to deep fry walleye from the Detroit river with homemade Tatar, and to never wake up with a hangover because that shits not worth it anymore— if that helps stratify our age bracket. Yet young enough for bear to still not bring his rain jacket on the day it rained (why risk it), and for me to walk a mile through a thicket too stubborn to realize I was going the wrong way one morning only to collect my share of ticks and eventual lymes disease from one I missed.
Nevertheless, it was good to be up north
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One morning I stumbled into the exceedingly rare situation where there were bugs, and fish were eating them. Which I understand isnt a novel concept in fly fishing, but it does feel like something short of a miracle when it when it’s 40 degrees and you’re sitting on the bank covered in wool after being cooped up all winter.
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..Then when the first nice fish you hear turns out to measured in feet instead of inches, taking cripples off the surface with slow rise to the left, then a deliberate right downwards turn to get back behind his root wad, your cold yet calm bank sit turns into palpitations, heavy breathing, frantically controlled fly changes, etc.
When the fishin gods have approved a catch by some attempt of mercy; it eats your fly, you set, manage to get downstream of the fish, chase it across river and get a little wet while doing so, and fit him in your undersized wading net. Sometimes it just happens like that.
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Bear and I focused a on a stretch I’d consider ourselves tourists on. We fish it yearly at most, don’t have much for exact addresses, just an idea of the type of water we’re looking for and a handful of prior years memories. Which is fun compared to our home water, because it adds an extra element of necessary communication and of course wishful thinking. Luckily brown trout hang out in spots brown trout like and northern bears tend to know where that is.
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That evening there was more bugs than the day before, yet no fishing eating them.
And so was the next.
We burned the shit out of a couple Yule logs, shared fishing and turkey hunting stories until it got dark each night.
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And for a long weekend we were all up north. Hoping for more days where there are bugs and fish that eat them.
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I usually drop em in the grass and then fish out another cast or two while I wait for them to get tired enough to hold still - that way you can actually tell how long they are against the rod. - JT
Fishing stayed spotty and inconsistent into our peak mayfly season with continued rain and high water. Which really is a good thing, both for the trout and for our newly rearranged rivers/log jams with new trout lairs to learn. But when you’re looking forward to mayfly season all winter you think selfish thoughts of a hungry big trout sipping your sulphur spinner, not them hunkered under the banks digesting worm balls.
Some guys; that fish most days, said that even with semi-consistent bugs the fish decided to eat them good maybe 2 days a week. Which, as mostly a weekend guy, felt like a bit of an optimistic report when the 2 days you fished had zero fish looking up.
But, ya just go fishing. Most days turned into pretty evening floats. Priding yourself on “not needing trout to have a good time” watching mostly swallows but the occasional much welcomed scarlet tanager or oriole eat the only flies that hatched. Then watching the swallows turn into acrobatic night hawks later on, still eating the only flies that hatched.
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Then other nights birds are an after thought during that magical 45 mins between the golden hour and sundown.
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Its been noted here that newbies sometimes get a rough treatment. Here is one response, written by Old Dog, that might help those thinking of making their first post understand a little bit about this place. After you read this take a moment (or two or three) and look around and get a sense of this place. If you're still interested make your intro and join the fray. —Jed
- By ScottP
- By DeShootnestGent'man
- By Mr. Don