I get glares from TOO and BOB but TSWITMLM just smirks.

Oh, you have not met my family; introductions are in order: As always, there’s the Big, Old Brunette (BOB) and her two daughters, The Step-Daughter I Adore Like She Was My Own (TSDIALSWMO) and her younger sister, The Other One (TOO) and Her New Beau, (HNB). A last-minute invitee is My First Wife (MFW) with our only offspring The Son Who Is Too Much Like Me, (TSWITMLM) and next to him is, of course, My Mother, Big Sigh (MM,BS) a recent widow. The Grand Kids X 2 (GKX2), whose mother is TSDIALSWMO are there as well.

Photo copyright 2010 by Spappy Jones.

Intermittently under the table, on the couch and whining at the back door is Lucy, Our Incontinent Beagle (LOIB) who adores MFW much to the annoyance of the BOB and we all have congregated in Our Little Love Nest (OLLN) for Christmas dinner. Joining us is the BILFM, a recent widower who is the BOB’s brother-in-law from Minneapolis, an infrequent visitor and a terrific guy.

The Fly Shop did well this Christmas season, the whole year in fact and I’m beat from several 60-hour weeks but happy to have my family here as long as they behave. In a prior life, I was in the food service business and after standing on my feet all day at the shop I find that cooking relaxes me. It also brings out my creative side; it drives me to the other side of my brain, if you will.

“Could somebody let LOIB out?”

Some think that being a fly tyer is creative but it’s glorified factory work. I’m a production fly tyer who annually cranks out 600 dozen flies and they all need to match the original pattern with precious few variations so there is no creative outlet for me there. Researching menus and spending time in front of my stove at OLLN is a creative outlet I crave. When I cook for my family, I need to be creative and here’s why.

TOO is a militant vegetarian. There are already some ill feelings between us about my stocking animal parts in the Fly Shop as fly tying materials, but I digress.

Her sister, TSDIALSWMO won’t eat cooked tomatoes but fresh ones are O.K. (or is it the other way around, did I not see her eating a pizza?), garlic does not agree with the BILFM and the GKX2 will eat everything they recognize but nothing they don’t. The first B in the BOB is because I cook for her well and often. MM,BS feigns a cholesterol issue except for ice cream, a sweet that she cannot live without.

Her hunger for sweets is a leftover scar from her battle with alcohol, (BWA) which she has won triumphantly. I found the hard way that the BWA is somewhat hereditary so I have had my own issues to face and my BWA got in the way of a whole lot of living. I love my family and my BWA was affecting them so I waged my own quite war because when it came to Martinis I knew my limit but I got drunk before I got there.

“Can’t you hear LOIB whining to get back in? Somebody let her in!”

So I now drink non-alcoholic beer, cook without garlic when the BILFM is in town, omit cooked tomatoes from the menu (or is it fresh, was TSDIALSWMO eating a B.L.T. earlier?) and go lightly on the butter when MM,BS is here. GKX2 kind of fend for themselves and are fairly good eaters except when TOO is in town and then they become pickier.

Good Eaters are who Foodies like me love to cook for. When TOO announced earlier this year that for Christmas she was bringing HNB, my first thought was: “Is he a Good Eater?” OLLN was getting too crowded and my BWA was rearing its ugly head, maybe just one real beer? This thought aloud brought a glare from the BOB. No, we have guests for dinner.

“Push LOIB off of the couch, would you please?”

Back to the GKX2, they were not thrilled to find out from TSWITMLM that the mushrooms they used to eat are a type of fungi. The word mushroom is fun to pronounce when you’re a little person but the word fungi is not. Based solely on the pronunciation, mushrooms are now out.

The salad course went just O.K. TSDIALSWMO picked off the fresh tomatoes wordlessly; the GKX2 would not eat the mushrooms after TSWITMLM’s fungi comment and the dressing did have a whisper of garlic but the BILFM did not seem to notice. MM,BS, MFW and the BOB were fine.

My Blanquette du Veau with fresh pasta was a disaster. Too much cream for MM,BS and TOO was livid that I had an innocent calf slaughtered for a dinner to celebrate the birth of our Lord, an act I found comforting in an Old Testament kind of way. “Am I the only one who hears LOIB whining to be let out?”

MFW, a farm girl who followed in her mother’s footsteps and cooked everything to death was never a foodie. She had her own peculiarities with food; she called them noodles. Fettuccini, linguini, angel hair and even macaroni were never referred to as pasta down on the farm; they were noodles.

When MFW asked to have the noodles passed to her, TSWITMLM snickered at his mother’s hick-ness and the GKX2 who knew the home made effort in the serving bowl borrowed from MM,BS should be called pasta, immediately put their forks down. TOO alternated steely glances between me and HNB who was shoveling in the Veal; he’s a Good Eater!

One of the GKX2 hopped down off of his chair to let LOIB inside and I noticed that LOIB seemed far too happy to see him. I looked over to see that he had pasta in one hand, fungi in the other and was feeding LOIB; she’s a good eater, too.

“Stop feeding LOIB!”

Desserts were individual Pannetone bread puddings; a delicious but questionable menu choice. I had forgotten that the BOB liked neither raisins nor currants, the pudding base had both eggs and cream so MM,BS was honked off but her mouth was too full to object. There wasn’t a suggestion of garlic in the dessert and the BILFM was looking a little bloated from the salad dressing but he devoured his pudding anyway. MFW was puzzled that pie was not served as it always had been on the farm and why would pudding have bread in it anyway?

I told you, she’s not a foodie. Much eye rolling from TSWITMLM and I whispered to him, “that’s why I divorced her.”

He quickly reminded me that MFW had her version, which was this: Ever since Dad was a teenager, he liked to, um……… shop. The world was his shopping mall and he liked to have many stores to shop in. Marriage never stopped Dad from shopping around and Dad really used to like the younger stores that were not brightly lit and had a big shelf. His mother did not like his Dad shopping around so we needed to not be together anymore.

Now I happily shop in one store and one store only. Have for 18 years.

O.K. back to dessert where one future relative was happy but TOO announced the white flour was poison and for her, dinner was so over and flounced away from the table.

“Whose shoes is LOIB throwing up on?”

OLLN was turning chaotic and my BWA was raging. Christmas Day Steelheading on the St. Joe River in Indiana was looking better and better.

Coffee after was no picnic, either. A half-caff here and a de-caff there and what do you mean you have no green tea? More eye rolling. “Dad, caffeine is so bad for you”; it’s the only thing TSWITMLM remembers from his health class.

“Fine, no coffee for me. Would you be happier if I had a Martini? And get LOIB off of the couch!”

We opened presents after dinner, the GKX2 were dynamos filled by sugar and laughter and the BILFM belched quietly while sitting in my easy chair. He is a terrific guy. MFW and the BOB sat at opposite ends of the couch avoiding each other like cats.

The BOB beamed while watching the GKX2 open presents and even TSWITMLM was in a decent mood although it was hard to tell as he had a new Ipod clamped over his ears. With a grunt, LOIB finally settled in under the dining room table.

When there was a lull in the unwrapping process I noticed that the BILFM was eyeing MM,BS and she was not objecting. Too much wine or maybe the BILFM was not such a terrific guy after all. The thought of them shopping together made my bile rise.

TOO and HNB were far too cuddly for my comfort level and then came an announcement that distracted me from the BILFM and MM,BS.

We’ll soon have GKX3, thanks to TOO and HNB. I hope one day to teach our newest GK to fly fish and I hope he’s a Good Eater.

Joseph Meyer is the owner of the One More Cast Fly Shop in Countryside, Illinois. Previously, he was an instructor for Orvis where he discovered his love of teaching the art of Fly Fishing. He commercially ties over 600 dozen flies per year and is a Certified Casting Instructor with the Federation of Fly Fishers. He has been published in the Chicago Tribune, American Angler, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Far & Away, and Hatches magazine.

Fly Fishing Tales

A friend and business acquaintance sent a parable to me today as, I think, something of a cautionary tale. It’s too nice not to share, particularly with fellow anglers. I am probably violating all sorts of copyright in sharing it this way, but what the heck:

The Virtues of the Trout Stream

Few experiences can be as cathartic as a day spent fishing on the river. Life’s nagging problems can safely be left on the bank, leaving us with a time for relaxation, reflection, and the appreciation of the natural wonders hidden in our busy world. What it took me a while to realize, however, was that the purity of the experience lends itself to exposure to some of life’s most important lessons. Perhaps if we were more willing to open ourselves to the teachings of trout, far fewer problems would be waiting for us when we get back to shore.

Tenacity

This is an often overlooked and simple solution to most of life’s problems, and fishing requires it in healthy doses. Whether fishing entirely new water or familiar settings under different conditions, an angler cannot give up easily if he is to succeed. So many things today come packaged with an expectation of ease. My generation especially seems to have largely forgotten that not everything in life will be given to us when we need it. The refusal to submit to finicky fish or poor conditions can turn a miserable day of fishing to a good day of catching. An extreme example is the angler who continues to fish through buffeting winds and driving rain. One wonders what things would be like if that person approached all of life’s problems with a similar veracity.

Adaptability

It may seem like an obvious lesson, but it is doubtful many fishermen really practice it like they need to. How many out there have ever refused to switch from the fly that was working yesterday, or move from the hole you caught fish in at this time last summer? If you claim to have not ever done this, you are lying, and your untruths have no place in the honest sport of fishing. But whether it is due to the fear of an unknown take on a problem or simple laziness derived from the reliable comfort of occasional success, people become entrenched in their approaches to situations. Nowhere is it more apparent than in fly fishing that no approach is universally applicable. If widespread success is to be found anywhere in life, we must be willing to try a range of solutions to any given obstacle.

Humility

I haven’t met many fishermen who suffer from an excess of humility. Come to think of it, I haven’t met many people like that in general. Very often, however, we are faced with situations in which all our efforts simply can’t get the job done. Trout have brains the size of garbanzo beans, yet every so often we can’t outsmart them. Humans like to think of themselves as apex predators; the smartest and most unbeatable organisms on the planet. What fly fishing shows us is that we are not the kings of every domain. This idea makes many people uncomfortable, so they blame problems on equipment, weather, or any number of external factors. But the plain and simple truth is that sometimes we do everything perfectly and still the fish just flat out beat us. And there is nothing we can do about it, save admit fault and marvel. The most important thing we can do is realize that sometimes we might not have a rung reserved for us at the top of every ladder.

Gratitude

Everyone once in a while, things seem to fall in to place. When they do, we are granted a prize for which we should be grateful. Sometimes simply being allowed to see a fish with a trout’s unparalleled natural beauty is enough, but the best thing about fish is that they are a reassuring glimpse of a realm far different than our own. They have managed to survive without so many of them annoyances humans have created, and will continue to do so. Perhaps it is the knowledge that such a world exists that helps us cope with the problems in our world. Whatever solace we take from trout fishing, we should never forget to be grateful for the experience, the fish, and the lessons we take from each.

Trevor Pellerite writes to T|N|T from his Upper Michigan home in Marquette — Robert Traver country. He is a senior English major at Northern Michigan University. After he graduates, he would like to become an outdoor writer and fly fishing guide.

On the River

I called it that because the Boardman ultimately empties into the Grand Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan, right in downtown Traverse city, a sophisticated northern Michigan resort town known for – among other things – its shopping. Once upon a time, when I had to be concerned about such things, I could drop the lady in my life in town with the cash and scoot a few miles out of town for some fishing. So everybody was happy, more or less. Though sometimes I would get, “But I thought we were going to spend our vacation together!” Never mind that there are 168 hours in a week and I was going to hog a mere 6 of them for myself. Besides, I would tell her, when you’re having lunch on the terrace at the Bean Pot, look down at the river and remember that the water you’re seeing flowed right around my waders a little earlier. It’s sort of like being together.

That’s how I came to secretly call the Boardman the “Compromise River.” You can bet that I had dozens of no-compromise rivers all over the state but trout streams being what they are, you don’t usually find them flowing through the basements of designer-label boutiques. The Boardman is a real Christian river in that regard and I was thrilled to discover its benefits. I even thought about presenting a marketing proposal to the Chamber of Commerce – ‘SHE SHOPS/YOU FISH!” – but had second thoughts when I realized the idea was self-defeating in the long term. True, the local merchants might have been grateful. But I couldn’t imagine a trout fisherman on every bend of the river for one thing. For another, I’d know that they were stooping to my level of sickness – paying (literally) for a few stolen moments. It wasn’t a club I wanted to start.

The Boardman really does flow right through downtown Traverse City and actually gets a limited salmon and steelhead run. The salmon are captured at a permanent harvesting station and stripped of their eggs, practically in the shadow of Milliken’s Department Store. At certain times of the year, you’ll see mom and dad and the kids with their noses pressed against the viewing windows of the egg-stripping station, Gucci shopping bags overflowing. I swear I once saw a guy cooling his credit cards in one of the raceways.

The steelhead are passed by the weir and one of the hot spots is the part behind the main post office, although there’s not much cover there and the fish are real spooky. (If you’re fly fishing on the boardwalk on the post office side, you must roll cast. Otherwise your backcast will hit the building.) But I once saw a kid not more than seven or eight years old hook what appeared to be about an eight-pounder on a Snoopy rod. His buddies dropped their rods with their lines still in the river, and ran shrieking up and down the bank following the action. The kid’s line was soon tangled in the others and a rod shot off the bank as the startled fish made a lengthy run. After two or three minutes, the fish threw the hook and the kid retrieved a tangled mess of monofilament and the other Snoopy rod. His buddies offered high-fives while shouting “awesome, awesome!” And to think, some of us started out on sunfish.

I’ve caught steelhead off the sandbar at the mouth of the river right behind the Holiday Inn, once in a suit and tie. In an earlier life I used to get to Grand Traverse City on business and once – having been through a serious nonfishing spell – I pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, popped the trunk, pulled on my waders, and grabbed my rod. Two minutes later I was waist deep in Traverse Bay, and about five minutes after that I was fast to a small steelhead that had mistaken my Mepps spinner for a cocktail-hour hors d’oeuvre. I presented the trout to the chef at the Holiday Inn, who promised me his best effort. (Yes, there were guests who seemed skittish at the appearance of a man in waders walking through the lobby and dining room with a largish, still-wet fish.) I checked in at the front desk and not long after that I was at the bar in the cocktail lounge, contemplating a wonderful dinner and thinking kind thoughts about a firm that would send one of its employees to Traverse City, Michigan. The bartender said – as he set my martini down – “I just heard that some jerk walked though the restaurant in waders.”

South of Traverse city the river flows through the lovely Boardman valley, finding its’ way through mixed pine and hardwoods, and then through meadow land. Here it’s a trout stream and a pretty good one if you know its secrets. Over the years it had become a favorite, and my buddy Pete and I fished it often. We liked it as an occasional alternative to the Au Sable and other rivers that could get crazy with canoes on holiday weekends. We stayed at a strange place called Ranch Rudolph – in the summer a combination mid-western dude ranch, campground, sometimes fishing camp, and in the winter a roaring snowmobile enclave. The river runs through the grounds and I especially liked the isolated, narrow meadow stretch just below the ranch. Now there is a privately owned horse operations on one side of the river where over-grazing has turned that once pretty little meadow into a hellish mess.

But there are miles of good water. From above the ranch to Brown Bridge Pond it’s mostly woodsy. Just upstream from where the river enters Brown Bridge Pond (really a small lake) Pete once caught an enormous brown trout during the Hex hatch. But the river has deep holes there and you have to know what you’re doing. Especially at night. Below Brown Bridge Pond and downstream from Garfield Road, there’s a lot of meadow water where grasshopper patterns can be deadly during late summer months. Bob Summers, the famous bamboo rod maker, lives and works on this stretch.

Early one Saturday, just before first light, Pete parked the car on a turnoff in the woods above the ranch. We had pulled an all-nighter, leaving Detroit at the bewitching hour. Pete drove; I kept the coffee coming.

For those of you who have done this, you’ll know that there are intermittent lapses throughout the night that are potentially fatal when the driver and the navigator have them simultaneously. For those of you who haven’t, you might remember all-nighters for high school or college exams. You’ll recall drifting off, and then waking up with a start. But safely at your desk. It’s another thing to wake up on the wrong side of the road in a deadly glare of oncoming high beams and the desperate roar of an eighteen-wheeler’s horn. This in the cause of the supposedly gentle sport. (The adrenaline rush is about the same as your first Atlantic salmon on a dry fly.)

We rigged up in the dim pale of the trunklight. I was uncertain what to start with and I finally settled on a slender streamer, a Black-Nosed Dace. I couldn’t see what Pete was tying on, but I knew it would be something wet. We spoke in whispers as though not wanting to wake the red squirrels, or the tiny chickadees, or the big black bear surely sleeping just behind yonder bush.

The plan was to fish downstream, leapfrogging each other, and end up at the ranch precisely at cocktail hour late that afternoon. There we would corral someone from the ranch to drive us back to the car, something they were always glad to do.

We got in near a giant old white pine that leaned precariously across the river. Many of its’ branches were rusty brown, a sure sign that the tree was nearing the end of its long life. These old warrior white pines still exist here and there, memorials left over from Michigan’s incredible post-Civil War logging boom. There has been a lot written about the early logging industry in Michigan, but in his wonderful little book Waiting for the Morning Train, Bruce Catton, the noted Civil War historian, wrote about growing up in Michigan and visiting some of the camps as a young man. Catton puts the Michigan logging industry in perspective, writing that enough pine boards were produced in Michigan in 1897 to build ten million six-room houses. That’s one hundred and sixty billion feet of lumber, according to Catton. Michigan was literally awash in big timer. The preferred tree was the white pine. There were millions of them, they grew tall and straight and they floated high in the shallow rivers of Michigan, making them the easiest to drive to the mills. By the early 1900s what had been one of the densest stands of pine each of the Mississippi River had been mostly leveled. Michigan had been transformed from a land of deep forest to a land of scrub.

The root mass of this big pine was pulling away from the bank and its tentacles were alive with ants, spiders, and other small critters. But it was very shallow there and no trout would hold under that potential smorgasbord, at least not with daylight coming on. So I stuck with my Dace and waded downstream, working out line and getting my arm loosened up. Minnows scattered and I felt pretty good about the fly. There was a nice little morning breeze and the sun was just beginning to break through the forest. Shafts of light did pirouettes on the river’s surface. I watched Pete slide quietly into a pool of diamonds just downstream.

My first trout came to the Dace from a small pool below a snarl of tag alder. It was a brown, not large – as none of the fish in this stretch could be. It was a beautifully colored trout and I held it up and whistled. Downstream Pete smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

I was very pleased, as I always am, with my first trout of the day. Sure, there is a satisfaction of knowing that – at least momentarily – you’ve got the right fly. Moreover, it’s also knowing that things are right with the world, at least in my little corner of it. After that first trout, especially if it has any size to it, my anxiety level drops tremendously. Suddenly I’m hearing birds, aware of water noises, smelling the smells of the forest, and actually realizing that I have a cigar in my mouth and am tasting it.

I released the fish and watched it scoot back into the pool. I climbed out and walked the bank down to Pete. I had the thermos in the back of my vest.

“That was the icebreaker,” Pet said. “What was it?”

I told him. “You want some coffee?”

Pete was warming to his task. He was working a small logjam. Cast, strip, strip, strip, cast, strip, strip, strip – and so on – until something or nothing happens. We have fished together for years and he is an intense fisherman for the first couple of hours. But not competitive. (He once caught three, twenty-five-pound steelhead on the same day on a visit to a British Columbia river, which I learned about practically by accident months later.) We glory in each other’s successes, large and small.

“What I’d really like is a beer,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been up all night.”

“Well, we have been except for one little indiscretion.”

“That could have been a serious whoops,” he said. And then, a little pointedly, “Why don’t you sit the hell down or move back. You’re casting a shadow on my pool here.” Subtlety is another of his attributes.

I did, in fact, find a very comfortable spot on the bank where, after unslinging my vest, I poured some coffee, relit the cigar, and enjoyed the beginnings of a beautiful day. I watched Pete work on the little jam. His fly landed next to a log and there was a wonderful boil and he was fast to a fish. The trout zipped out into the current, changed its mind, and charged back toward the jam. Pete led it carefully away from the logs and minutes later had it in hand, a twin of the brown I had caught earlier.

He admired it for a moment or two and slipped it back in the water. It darted under the logjam.

Brookie Dreams

I asked Pete what he was using. He held it up as he waded to the bank. He was smiling. A Royal Coachman streamer.

“Now I’ll have some coffee. But I’d rather have a beer. You got any more of those cigars”

“This is the last one.”

“Right.”

He reached toward my mouth and I swatted his hand away. Then he was going through my vest.

“That’s what I thought!” he said, unwrapping the dark A.C. Grenadier. “Two packs! And here’s the lighter.”

It was warming rapidly and I took off my jacket and stuffed it in the cargo pocket in my vest, noting that a package of cigars had disappeared.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied, grinning like a lotto winner.

“Need anything else while I’m at it?”

“I think I’m fine for now,” he said, blowing a puff of smoke. “Unless there’s a beer in there.” I shook my head.

“Then maybe you’d walk back to the car for the cooler?”

I flicked my still-lit cigar butt at his waders. He was laughing as he jumped out of the way. So was I. It was going to be a great day.

We fished downstream, doing exactly what we had planned, with a lot of jazz going back and forth about who was getting the better water. There were intermittent requests for cold beer. We each picked up a couple more trout nearly identical to the others, one a little larger, pushing thirteen inches. As the day wore on we began to see some bugs and finally some rising fish. Just above the ranch I saw what appeared to be a decent fish working below a riffle, but tight against the bank. So I camped on the spot and added some tippet material to my leader. The bugs were sparse and I couldn’t tell what they were, so – what else when on the Boardman? – I tied on a small Adams, a fly that generations of angler have used with success almost everywhere trout are found. The Adams was born on this very river in the 1920s, developed by local angler/tyer Len Halladay, who named it after an angling friend from Ohio. Little did he suspect back then it would one day be famous on trout waters the world over.

I wasn’t sure it would actually match what was hatching, but that of course is the beauty of the Adams. Besides, I wanted to fish with the fly on its home water.

At that moment Pete came by on the bank. “I see you have the juicier water again,” he said.

“This little nothing of a riffle? I stopped here just so you could have that good pool right around the corner.”

“I’m touched. But I don’t suppose that fish over there that’s sucking down flies every ten seconds had anything to do with it? “

“Is there something rising over there?” I said, shadowing my eyes. Like a machine, the fish rose again.

“If that’s a five-inch brook trout I’ll go get the beer,” he said. “By the way, these cigars are very good.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying them, I said. “I suppose you’re going to stand there and watch?”

“Of course. I want to see you blow this one.”

But it was too easy. A freshman at the Orvis school could have caught this trout. The fly landed a couple feet upstream from the fish, rode a line of slick water, tumbled onto the eddy at the bottom, and was neatly snatched.

The trout bolted downstream and it was clear that this was a better fish. The river was shallow and the fish scampered everywhere, the light tippet slicing the water.

“There’s still time to screw it up.” This came from up on the bank.

Gradually the fish tired and I heard Pete slip into the river behind me. He was at my shoulder as I worked it in. It was another brown, a nice one, a couple inches past the twelve-inch marker when laid against my rod. The small Adams was snug in the corner of its mouth. I faced the trout upstream, letting the oxygen-rich riffle water pour through its gills. A minute later it shot away, leaving a long wake.

Pete stuck out his hand, a big smile on his face. “Nice fish, pal.”

I was appropriately modest.

Cigar and Rod

I then went way down, leaving Pete a series of good pools, all on tight bends with deeply undercut banks. I was ready to call it a day, particularly after that trout. But I continued to fish as I moved along and took a mixed bag of browns and brookies, mostly in the ten-inch class, all of them on the now scruffy-looking Adams. Finally, I came to the ranch, its long, broad lawn running down to the river’s edge. I climbed out, propped my rod against a handy birch, slipped out of my vest and stretched. It had been a long but satisfying day.

I walked up to the lobby of the main building and inquired about a room. The kid behind the desk grinned when he saw me standing there in still-wet waders. I got the room key and went into the rustic bar, where I felt a lot less sillier, and bought a few cans of cold beer. “How’d you do?” the bartender asked?

Back down by the river, I sat on the bank, popped a beer open, and relaxed. It felt good to get the wader suspenders off the shoulders.

Presently Pete came around the bend upstream, reeled in, and lit the afterburner when he saw what I had. I never saw a guy in waders go that fast in the water. I handed him a cold one and he drained it. “That was the best beer I’ve ever tasted,” he said with a belch.

We freshened up in the room, retrieved the car, and headed for the bar. Over cocktails, we discussed the day. Pete had also taken several more fish on dry flies, and a nice one to boot. He’d seduced them with Bivisibles, or so he said, a fly I’ve never fished and probably never will. But he likes the damned thing. (“It has class. Class and it works,” he claims. Class? It’s a brown and white fuzz ball.) At any rate, we both agreed that the Boardman had given us a good day, good at least for that stretch of it. Streamers in the morning, some satisfying dry-fly fishing in the afternoon. No outsized fish, but we didn’t expect any. Just some classic fly fishing.

We were pooped and hungry and left the bar and found a table. The restaurant was nearly full. Most were out-of-state tourist types – “fudgies,” as they’re called. They had that look. (there are nearly as many fudge shops in northern Michigan as there are pine trees.) There was a group on the patio clustered around a big, half-barrel barbecue. Whatever was getting scorched smelled pretty damned good.

A chipper little waitress came over and handed us menus. I drained what remained of the martini I had carried over from the bar and ordered another one.

I didn’t have to look at the menu. I knew that a dude ranch – even a Midwestern version – would have a stockpile of steak in the kitchen. A couple of different kinds, as it turned out, and I ordered the biggest cut. So did Pete. Our waitress leveled with us and said the kitchen was a little backed up so it might be awhile, but she could bring our salads. I said fine and she looked at Pete. His eyes were closed.

“Sir?” she asked?

Pete jerked awake.

“She wants to know if you want your salad now?” I said.

“Yeah, sure.” His eyes fluttered. I said I was going to go out on the patio for a few minutes – I’d watch for the salad delivery. The waitress said fine; Pete mumbled something.

The group around the grill turned out to be a congress of adult Boy Scout leaders. There was much talk of merit badge training and so forth. My martini was the focus of so much lip-smacking attention I thought the glass was going to melt. I stood near a corner of the patio and watched a guy fish one of the ranch ponds stocked with rainbow trout that you can see but not catch. I have fished for them with grasshopper patterns (the grounds are alive with them at time) all the way down to Tricos on 7X. If the ranch ever becomes famous, it will be for a strain of rainbow trout that do not eat.

Turning, and peering through the window, I could see Pete, chin on his chest, eyes closed.

A guy sidled up to me and said quietly, “If I slip you ten bucks would you get me a double one of those – pointing at my drink – and take it around to the front of the building?”

I said sure, but there was the bar just ten feet away through the open door. I was curious – why didn’t he just hope in there and get his own?

“Because some of the organizers of this little shindig are from Baptist churches, and they have a real thing about certain types of refreshment. I’ve got a flask stashed in my tent for a quite little nightcap later. These guys are okay, but a Saturday night cookout without a see-through is un-American.”

I was glad to do my good deed for the day, and as I maneuvered through the dining room I discovered that salads had been delivered to our table. Pete was sleeping, sitting up with his arms crossed on his chest.

I carried that big wet silver bullet through the lobby, thrilled to be part of a clandestine operation. It added a little extra excitement to an already outstanding day. Out front I found my panting scoutmaster.

“You get the Citizenship merit badge!” he exclaimed as we introduced ourselves.

“I already got it thirty years ago.”

“Good for you. Then I’ll put you in for an Oak Leaf Cluster or something,” he said between sips. “ And here, take these.” He handed me a film canister. Inside were half a dozen of the prettiest Hendricksons I had ever seen. “I saw you get out of the river. I’ve been staring at these all day. I was hoping to get in some fishing myself. I tied ‘em,” he said modestly.

I thanked him, wished him luck, and back in the dining room gave Pete a shake. There was barely a response and I could tell that the lad was about done for. But I thought he wanted to eat, so I gave him another shake. This time his head came up and he looked at me through half-crossed eyes. “Pete, there’s your salad,” I said.

“Rest my eyes for a minute,” he mumbled. In an instant he was breathing deeply, his chin in his chest once again. I went to work on my salad, while I examined in more detail the fortuitously acquired Hendricksons, which not sat perkily on the tabletop. Our thirsty scoutmaster was, indeed, a lovely tier.

The waitress came by with a basket of break and gave Pete the eye. She looked at me with raised eyebrows. I smiled, my mouth full of salad. “Your steaks will be out in a minute,” she said. “Should I bring his?” I nodded affirmatively.

Minutes later she was back. The entrees were truly beautiful, big and sizzling, and just what the doctor ordered. I gave Pete a couple of good shakes – “Pete! Pete!” – and got no response except for a gentle snore.

I assaulted my steak, eating too fast, but luxuriating in every mouthful. I eyed Pete’s, wondering.

And then suddenly, with a big sigh, Pete leaned forward, crossed his arms on the table around his plate, and rested the side of his face directly on that big, perfectly grilled porterhouse. A sixteen-ounce, medium-rare pillow. I kept eating, but with less enthusiasm because I could see that my chances for a double portion had dimished.

The waitress rushed over, horrified. “It’s okay,” I said. “He likes to sleep with his head on his meat.”

“Is he okay!?”

He was fine, I assured her. He was snoring steadily and attracting the attention of other diners, who were smiling and pointing, doubtless having never seen a man sleeping on his supper.

I helped myself to his side order of onion rings.

The snoring got a little louder and his exhalations were having an eroding effect on his vegetable selection. At regular intervals peas skipped off his plate and across the table. I thought about him possibly inhaling a couple and wondered if that would wake him. A little girl came by and stood and stared. People in the farther corners would stand and stretch for a look, smile or laugh, and sit back down.

I finished eating and thought about various ways of raising Pete’s head to get at that steak – I’d slip the bread under there – but thought better as I recalled watching him smear himself with bug repellant a couple of times during the day. I couldn’t imagine that Deep Woods Off would improve a steak. The mother came and collected the little girl, but not before giving my fishing partner a good looking-over.

I ordered cognac, two of them, in case Pete came around. But he didn’t, so I was forced to drink his.

Finally, I started to get a little tuckered. I signed the check, left a tip, and after many minutes of prodding was able to partially rouse the sleeping beatify. In a daze he put an arm over my shoulder and I guided him out of the dining room – to a smattering of applause – and ultimately to our room, where he collapsed onto his bed. I removed his shoes, and that’s all I remembered until the next morning.

I wakened to hear water running in the bathroom, Pete came out, pointed to his face, and asked, “How did I get these crosshatch marks on my cheeks?”

Jim Enger has been writing about trout fishing and other topics for more than thirty years. His stories have appeared in Fly Rod & Reel, Fly Fisherman, Esquire, Country Journal, and in other publications. He is an award-winning advertising creative director, and the founding publisher and editor for the Au Sable News and Notes — the forerunner of The Riverwatch (published by Anglers of the Au Sable). He is currently serving as the marketing director at Kirtland Community College.

“Dinner with Pete” appeared in Jim’s book, The Incompleat Angler: A Fly Fishing Odyssey (1986).

Capt. Tony Petrella

If you want to teach your wife or girlfriend how to shoot, simply put her into a pair of borrowed waders that force her to waddle around like a penguin. Then make her lurch around for six hours in a frigid steelhead stream in early March, sublimely confident the whole time that all of this is a wonderfully exhilarating experience that every woman should be absolutely thrilled to share with her man.

On the drive home that evening, you will have visions of a warm fire and cuddly mate. She, on the other hand, will have revenge in her eyes and murder in her heart. Lock the gun cabinet before you pour a drink, then swallow the key. Better yet, throw it far back into those raging flames that mirror your mate’s soul. There’s danger afoot, Watson!

And, guys—you can believe me because I was there. Been that stupid. Done that insane deed. Talk about being blissfully unaware of the female psyche! Brother. And Kate already knew how to shoot!

In retrospect, I think the only thing that saved me was that by the time we got home from that foamy torrent called the Little Manistee River, Kate was utterly exhausted. She did, however, vow to never again set foot in a steelhead river.

Twenty-nine fishing seasons have glided past our waders since that frosty day with good friends Dan Cogan and Dave Arnold. And, although she has kept that vow against steelhead as devoutly as a monk eschews speaking, Kate has logged hundreds of days astream and has caught thousands of trout.

All of which is astonishing, considering that although she was raised only a few blocks away from Lake Erie, her previous fishing experience was limited to dangling a worm off a pier while sitting next to Dad. The perch ended up on the dinner table; the sheephead were dug into the garden. Trips to Metropolitan Park meant netting minnows in the creek and never straying out of sight.

In fact, there wasn’t much straying at all from the safe haven in the suburbs. Theirs was a picture-book house of brick-and-boards, a house with friendly neighbors, and trees, and a big backyard. But even in those bucolic days of Ike and a skinny rich kid from Boston who would be President, Mom didn’t want her chicks wandering far from the nest. She worried about Kathy and The Twins even as a momma duck fusses about her brood, counting and herding and counting again.

To this day, Kate loves telling about her most memorable outdoor excursion. “Once when we (Kate and her sibs Steve and Vicki) were all pretty young, we convinced Mom that we should have a tent out in the back yard. Dad threw a blanket over a clothesline and pinned down the edges somehow. The three of us thought it was great fun, but Mom must have worried about wolves snatching up her babies. It was barely dusk when she started scraping a spoon across the porch screen to scare us. She wanted us back in the house. End of camping trip.”

I can only give thanks that Jennie never knew what her eldest child has endured at various times over these past 30 years. The list of outdoor atrocities committed against my wife begins with blackflies sucking away her very lifeblood and gets worse from there.

Perhaps it’s that stubborn Slovene streak in her that absolutely forbids whining or complaining. I remember a night years ago when we were being assaulted by mosquitoes in a swarm the size of a Kansas grasshopper plague. Finally, I couldn’t stand any more torture. “I’m getting out of here,” I yelled. “This is murder!”

From upstream, I heard a grateful sigh. “Thank God,” Kate said quietly. “Let’s go! I can’t stand it either, but I didn’t want to be the one to quit first!”

Kate’s first “boots” had three-inch heels and came from Jacobson’s. Her lipstick matched her nail polish, which matched her outfit. Now, she calls herself a “River Rat” and shops for function. Vintage wine has given way to a never-ending search for the ultimate in high-power bug dope. And Jim Beam whiskey. The only “line” she cares about is the one on her fly reel. And she cleans it far more religiously than I do mine.

Kate Reels One In

She hides herself in the streamside vegetation as if she’s stalking an elk. And no winged or floating trout food is safe from capture in her little fishnet so that I’ll have more patterns to tie when we get home. Sometimes when I sneak up on her she’s cussing herself like a Drill Sergeant for making a sloppy cast.

About the only thing she won’t do is go out on the flats boat with me for snook or redfish, let alone tarpon. “Nope,” she says firmly. “Those big rods are too much for my bad shoulder. I’m not gonna screw it up and then miss trout season.” End of discussion.

Inevitably, people ask who catches the most fish. I truthfully answer that we take turns. Kate changes fly patterns like a runway model sheds her clothes, which sometimes gives her the edge. But I cast into trickier spots to fish that don’t often see a fly. So, it evens out. When they ask who catches the biggest fish, I also truthfully answer that Kate caught a Michigan brook trout that weighed in excess of five pounds.

She caught that deeply-colored monster in a “secret” little creek our old friend Al Rockwood took us to, a special place with casting spots cut out of the trees and weeds at each “beat,” much like an English chalkstream. The fish was lying in a deep pool formed by a wing diverter, and I had passed a dry fly over it just minutes before Kate let one of Al’s “Sweezle” streamers swing through.

I was proudly releasing my third 21-inch brown trout when I heard her whooping. Leaving my rod propped against a pine tree, I ran back upstream to find out what the commotion was all about.

Kate was kneeling on a little footbridge, her rod bent like an elbow macaroni. Al threw me the net and said he’d take pictures. All four of us performed our assigned tasks perfectly, and today that fish hangs next to the liquor cabinet. But only in an original painting by Kalamazoo artist David Ruimveld.

I still can feel Kate trembling as we held that big fish, and her urgency to release it back into the dark water lest it die from being exposed too long. When asked later why she didn’t keep such a trophy, she looked puzzled for a moment, then quietly replied, “because I didn’t want to be the one to kill it.”

We have yet another photo of Kate, proudly holding her very first trout. She’s wearing a vest that looks like an apron, and a big, floppy, blue hat. She’s also wearing a million-dollar smile. I don’t believe that five-inch brookie was smiling, but I’m positive it was greatly relieved to be ever-so-gently released back into the Au Sable River and the bosom of its family.

“I never knew they were so beautiful,” Kate said. She wiped perspiration from her brow in the heat of that unseasonably warm May afternoon so long ago and practically whispered the words every man longs to hear. “I understand, now, why you love it so much. You’ll never get an argument from me any time you want to come fishing!”

Capt. Tony Petrella formerly covered the National Football League and National Hockey League for the Palm Beach Post and the Atlanta Constitution. He now splits his time as a hunting and fishing guide in Michigan and Southwest Florida. His web address is www.tightloopsflyfishing.com.

Named after Thymallus arcticus, the arctic grayling, the town sits astride the main branch of the Au Sable River. The river was once loaded with this lovely and too-easy-to-catch fish. They are long gone, thanks mainly to the logging boom of the late 1800’s, which stripped the banks of Michigan’s rivers, warming and fouling them. But overfishing didn’t help either. The grayling were caught literally by the barrelful and shipped off to commercial markets.

Flowers in the River

Now the river is full of trout: browns, brookies, and some rainbows. And Grayling is Michigan’s trout capital.

Never mind that Kalkaska, twenty-five miles to the west, hosts the annual Michigan Trout Festival. Although it has a statue of a giant brook trout – I would guess fifteen feet tall – in the center of town, it doesn’t have the equivalent of an Au Sable River in the center of town, or anywhere nearby for that matter. So, sorry Kalkaska, you’re a nice town and all, and I think it’s hilarious and wonderful that you put on the trout festival – and I love the towering brookie – but you’re not the epicenter of trout fishing in Michigan. Close, but not nearly close enough.

No, if you want to stand in the middle of Michigan’s true trout fishing capital, stand at the corner of M-72 and Main Street in downtown Grayling. You’re there. (And as long as you’re standing there, you might as well walk up the street to Spike’s for a cold one or three. The river flows right behind the bar.)

If you leave Grayling and head east on M-72, you’ll run parallel to the main branch of the Au Sable, just to the north. And in a matter of minutes you’ll begin passing access roads to the river, each of them holding special memories for generations of fly fishermen: Burton’s Landing, Louie’s Landing, Keystone, Thendara, Stephan Bridge, Wakely Bridge. It’s a stretch of the river rich in the history of trout angling.

Not long after you pass Wakeley Bridge Road, perhaps ten miles out of town, the highway drops slightly. Suddenly you find yourself, as though a curtain opened, on the lip of a broad, shallow valley, lush green hills rising in the distance. A few miles more, down in the valley, turn right on Canoe Harbor Road, a dirt road running off to the south. A mile or so down the road you’ll come around a bend and discover a large sign in the woods to the left. I wish I would have written the words on that sign:

SPORTSMAN, SLOW YOUR PACE…AHEAD LIES THE FABLED LAND OF THE SOUTH BRANCH. HERE GENERATIONS OF FISHERMEN HAVE CAST A FLY ON ONE OF THE GREAT TROUT STREAMS OF AMERICA. HUNTERS, TOO, HAVE ROAMED THESE HILLS IN THE SOLITUDE SO BOUNTIFULLY OFFERED. THE LAND IS RICH IN TRADITION AND STANDS READY TO RENEW YOUR SOUL. TREAD LIGHTLY AS YOU PASS AND LEAVE NO MARK. GO FORTH IN THE SPIRIT OF GEORGE W. MASON WHOSE GENEROUS GIFT HAS MADE THIS FOREVER POSSIBLE.

Deep In the wild area, high on a wooded bluff above the South Branch of the Au Sable, is a small chapel. It sits there in the forest, overlooking the river, on the east bank about midway between Chase Bridge and Smith Bridge. The river sparkles along for roughly twelve river miles between the two bridges. About five river miles below Smith Bridge it empties into the main branch of the Au Sable.

The little chapel is an unimposing thing, rough-hewn, open in the front. But there is something extraordinary about this structure, something unique, and that is this: In all those twelve miles of river, it is very nearly the only man-made structure on either bank. Upstream there is one large dock, a rest area for canoeists. Beyond that, near Chase Bridge, there is a cabin on the east bank. Downstream, at Smith Bridge, there are a few houses and cabins on the upstream side of the bridge. But essentially, here’s the better part of a trout stream – a great trout stream – that’s just four hours north of one of the biggest cities in the nation, and its banks are still wild. How can this be?

This modern-day trout stream miracle – and it is exactly that – is with us because of George Mason, the saint mentioned on the sign. Mason was an early Detroit industrialist and a passionate trout fisherman. The river of his passion was South Branch.

Trout in Hand

In the early 1900s a chap by the name of Downey, along with several others, had a hunting and fishing club on the west bank of the river (just downstream from the present-day chapel). Downey ended up owning most of the forty-acre tracts that fronted the river for miles in each direction. He died in 1921 and the property passed through several hands, but Mason, who was often at the Downey camp, eventually acquired the land. He gave it to the state – and to trout fishermen forever – upon his death. As a condition of his bequest, he directed that the land never be developed. He also requested that the state maintain the little chapel he had built up on that bluff over the river.

Those twelve miles of woods and water are named in his honor, The Mason Tract.

If you follow the dirt road south, past the sign, you’ll play tag with the river for many miles. Ten minutes or so past the sign and you’ll come to a wire fence, a turn-in, and a big meadow sweeping down to the river. About halfway down the path to the river, in the meadow to the left, you’ll find what remains of the foundation of Mr. Downey’s old hunting and fishing club. Stone steps still lead to the river. A cement-and-rock seawall, though crumbing, still runs along the bank.

There’s a little piece of shallow, fast water next to the meadow that is worth a few casts just before dusk on hot summer evenings. An occasional biggie will move into that oxygen-rich water to feed. I was standing just at the top edge of the riffle one hot August evening, changing flies, when I heard a deer walk into the quite water upstream. Then I heard a tremendous splash. I turned and looked. The deer had collapsed in the center of the river. Only its head and neck showed, like a furry periscope. The deer lay there for a few moments, then rolled over on one side and began kicking its legs. Then it rolled over on the other side and did the same thing. It was certainly a commotion, water spraying everywhere. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing there – a deer having some sort of attack? But the deer finally hopped to its feet, shook itself, and ambled upstream, drinking and pulling weeds from the river. It wasn’t hard to figure out – the deer did what I wished I could have done. It cooled off and got away from the bugs.

Dogtown, Downey’s, the Chapel, Baldwin’s, Lower High Banks, High Banks, the Castle, the Hangar, Daisy Bend, Forest Rest. I’ve conducted business with the residents of all these historic pools and places.

One evening at Baldwin’s, standing on the broad gravel bar where the creek comes into the river, I took two brook trout under the sweeper on the far side. The first fish measured exactly fifteen inches, the second 14-1/4, very big for Michigan stream brookies. Both fish took a Brown Drake. When the first fish lay at my feet in just inches of clear water, and I saw that it was a brook trout and not a brown, I had a sudden and overpowering urge to kill that fish and mount it. It was incredibly beautiful, as brookies are, the white slashes on the fins gleaming in the evening light, the spots glistening. It was the only time I’ve ever had that urge and it lasted but a moment.

However, I do kill some trout from time to time, especially brook trout. I love to eat them, but I stick mainly to the pan-size variety. Those two large brookies I caught that eve3ning were monarchs in the fiefdom of brook trout. And even though I had a momentary vision of that fifteen-incher hanging on the wall, I let them both swim away.

• • •

Any pilgrimage through the Mason Tract is not complete without a stop at the Castle, or what little is left of it. So one rainy afternoon I walked down to the old foundations with a friend from out of state. My friend Steve is not a fisherman, but he’s a camper, hiker, birder, and all-around outdoor enthusiast, so a romp through the woods was just fine by him. He enjoyed the DNR’s modest signboard, which shows old photos of the Castle and tells some of its story. And then we paced off the still-visible foundation, marveling that something so large could rise on the South Branch.

The Castle was built in 1930 by an early trout crazy named Durant. It was a monstrous fifty-room structure, standing there in a huge clearing by the river. Durant imported workers from Europe to help build this castle in the middle of nowhere. The workers lived in temporary cabins right on the property. Supplies were hauled in from Roscommon. Durant even carved an airstrip out of the woods so he could fly up from Detroit on weekends.

Strangely, the castle burned to the ground shortly after it was completed. No one knows exactly how it caught fire and all sorts of legends abound. But I once talked to a wonderful old fellow in Roscommon. Rollie, whose father worked on the project, told me he had been told that turpentine-soaked rags in a closet caught fire by spontaneous combustion. It was never rebuilt.

The foundations of the castle and hangar Durant built at the end of the landing strip are still there. Because it is such a popular stopping place for canoeists, the DNR build a large dock in the river there. The idea is to keep the idiots from destroying the bank and to keep the trash more or less centralized.

But there I was with my friend Steve, who was enjoying the tour, despite an on-again, off-again drizzle. We walked down to the canoe dock to check out the river and, lo and behold, a trout was rising directly across the stream. We watched and it continued to feed. It appeared to be a decent fish. So I skipped up to the path to my truck and returned a few minutes later with my fly rod.

“He’s still eating,” said Steve.

I stripped out some line and popped a cast toward the opposite bank. Short.

“How do you know what bug it’s eating?” asked Steve, getting into the swing of things.

I explained that I had a couple of good guesses, but didn’t really know for sure. I also explained about generic flies like the #14 parachute Adams fixed to the end of my tippet.

Standing on the edge of the platform, I shot another cast across the river – narrow there – and the fly landed above the trout, floated down, and was promptly inhaled. Just like that.

There was a big splash as the surprised trout bolted for the overhanging brush on the far side. I knew right away it was a good fish. We managed to keep it out of brush, but things got a big dicey when the trout made a frantic run downstream. Thankfully it didn’t go far, because I was stuck on the dock and couldn’t chase it.

The trout tired and we worked it back upstream. Steve was pretty excited and went for the fish.

“Gently,” I said.

River Moss

He was flat on his belly and a moment later came up with a still-wriggling handful of brown trout that turned out to be an honest sixteen inches. A lovely South Branch brown.

Steve gushed over it while I removed the fly. Then I lay on my belly and held the fish in the current and shortly it scampered away.

“Wow, that was exciting!” Steve exclaimed. “There’s nothing to it! It’s so easy!”

I must have a dozen “favorite” places on this storied river. My son Jeff and I call one of our favorite spots simply “The Pool.” It has no hallowed name, but it’s a special place to us.

The river makes an S turn in a deep pine woods. At the bottom of the S there’s a picture-perfect pool, one of those pools that looks trouty the moment you see it. The current pushes in against the bank and runs under a large cedar sweeper. The sweeper is just high enough over the water that you can actually get a fly in there. Just below the sweeper there’s a marvelous back-eddy. A trout could lie there with his yap open and simply let the bugs pour down the hatch. And sometimes one does. When the little Olives come off, the pool lights up. I’ve counted as many as two dozen trout feeding in there and, during one magic afternoon, caught about that many without moving more than ten yards.

• • •

The South Branch can cough up some big brown trout. The largest brown I’ve caught on the South Branch didn’t come from the Tract. I caught it below Smith Bridge, well out of the Tract, upstream from a friend’s cabin. It was 22-1/2 inches of brown trout, taken on a Brown Drake, just at dusk.

But my second-largest trout did come from the Tract, and I’ll tell you exactly where.

Just south of the Castle you’ll find the old foundation of the Hangar, where Durant would park his plane during visits to the little construction project. Park there and follow the trail down the hill to the river. When you get to the river, you’ll be right at or near a small island. Wade upstream about fifty yards, two or three bends, and where the river necks down, you’ll see a logjam and a fairly deep pool on the west bank. On the east bank there’s a handy tree trunk lying in the river, about love-seat size, where two fishermen can sit. That’s the spot. You can’t miss it, as they say.

I was there one June evening with a client. I was guiding then and this was a wading trip. The client was sort of a fussy old dude who didn’t take direction very well but was okay once you got to know him.

That prettiest of mayflies, the Sulphur Dun, had been hatching every evening for about a week. They were really coming off on the mainstream, but I wanted to find some less crowded water. So there we were, in the hangar stretch of the South Branch.

The two of us were sitting on the lot waiting for something to happen. I had floated through this pool many times, and several clients had taken some decent fish, but nothing spectacular.

I wasn’t sure what would happen, but there are several different kinds of water there. If nothing happened in our pool, we would quickly move to a couple of other spots downstream.

The client was drinking a beer and smoking cigarettes and asking every five minutes if I thought this was a good spot. It is a silly question, really, to ask a guide. It’s amazing how many people ask that question. Guides don’t build a loyal following by taking their clients to crummy spots.

Lady Luck was on our side that evening. I had guessed well, and as dusk began to settle, little yellow Sulphurs made their appearance. Fish began to work immediately. I had the client wait for a few minutes but a couple of good fish were rising and he was antsy. So we quietly worked out way into position and he began to fish.

It wasn’t an easy place to throw a fly and he began having problems. He’d done all right earlier in the day, but some people seem to come unglued when they fish to specific trout and darkness is settling.

He lost two flies, one on the jam in the pool and the other in the brush behind us. I could have recovered the fly to our rear, but I didn’t want to move.

There were now five or six fish working. My man finally got his act together and nailed a ten-incher in the tail-end of the pool. He was very pleased and surprised me by saying that he’d like to call it a day. I pointed across the way where a few fish were already rising again. He shrugged his shoulders and told me to give them a try if I wanted to.

What the hell. Although I never fish when I’m working, I always carry a rod. It’s a spare really. And I do feel a little odd walking around in a trout stream without one.

One riser was sipping at the exact edge of a log. That fish made a big bubble every time he fed. Of the trout working there, that was the one that looked most interesting to me.

I made several dozen casts, but there was some goofy little current thing going on, and I had a hell of a time getting the fly to the edge of the log. Yet naturals were obviously floating in there.

Streamside Cigar

I moved slowly upstream and my client moved over to our handy log and sat down. The pool shut down in a heartbeat, but I waited.

“You sure you don’t want to try this?” I asked the client.

“Seriously, I’m done. I’m going to smoke a cigarette and watch you.”

Sulphurs swarmed over the river and trout were feeding everywhere. They started again in our pool, including that interesting fellow tight against the log.

I worked out line and let a cast fall, checking it at the last second to give me some slack. The little Sulphur floated right in there, bumped the log, and – sip – disappeared.

The trout was very big and came boiling out from beneath that log and bolted downstream. I was right behind it and my client, Howard, was right behind me.

“This is a good fish! Do you want to play it?” I shouted.

“Hell no! You caught it, you play it!”

The fish made run after run, all downstream. The reel sang, that greatest of fishing music.

Initially there wasn’t much I could do except hang on. The current runs pretty well there, especially in the straight stretch below the island.

That trout seemed to know his way around. The fish hightailed it for every piece of cover there was, first the logjam across from the island. I managed to put a stop to that. Then the trout headed straight for a submerged tangle of cedar logs just down from the island. By some miracle we got through there. Now there was a dash for that big old jam at the left at the bend. That’s very still water there and I stayed well back, hoping the fish might stay there.

All this time my client was right behind me. Right then he decided to tell me that he’d left his rod back upstream. I had guided him five or six times and I’d never seen him as excited as he was now.

It was just dusk, a beautiful time on any trout stream, but particularly so on your favorite. A couple of whippoorwills started up somewhere; there were cedar waxwings dipping and soaring overhead.

The trout elected to stay in the quite water near the big logjam. Eventually it became a question of who was going to wear out whom. This time, I won. I pumped the spent fish to the edge of the current where, sensing the faster water, it tried one last dash. But it was feeble effort and I got my hand under its belly.

Howard put his flashlight on it even though it wasn’t quite dark yet. It was a big, hook-jawed brown that measured just a shade over twenty inches. Howard had a point-and-shoot in his vest and insisted on a photo session. I held the trout in the water, out of the main current. A minute or two later it swam way.

“I must say, that was pretty damned exciting,” said my client. “Well done.” He extended his hand and I shook it. He was a pretty good dude after all.

I temporarily left him at the foot of the trail while I waded back up for his rod.

• • •

That was my biggest fish from the Tract. But a tiny fish, a couple of inches long, was just as special, if not more so.

For a couple of years I worked as a volunteer with the DNR’s Au Sable system electro-shocking crew. Each year the Fisheries Division electro-shocked certain stretches of the various branches of the system. They surveyed the same areas from year to year, obviously for comparison purposes. The crew was glad to have a guide along as a volunteer. They found it interesting – I think – to get my view of the resource and the overall impression of my clients. (One thing I learned after working on the crew is that the Au Sable has plenty of good fish. But if you hang around in fly shops and eavesdrop, you’ll know that fly fishermen have very active imaginations when it comes to the size of trout caught.)

By helping out, I felt I was giving a little something back to the ting that helped me earned a living. Since I was guiding, it didn’t hurt of course to actually see where…but anyway.

We were shocking the river just above Chase Bridge. The three technicians on the electrodes were turning up a great number of fish and the action was fast and furious. Behind the three technicians with the probes were two guys with nets. They’d capture the stunned trout and pass them to the two guys wearing harnesses with a sort of mesh creel and a measuring board. Those two guys would measure the trout and toss them into a tub in the wooden barge that held the generator. The barge was guided by yet another technician. I was the tally man. The biologists with the measuring boards, would shout a constant and rapid stream of “brown 10”, “brook 6,” “brook 5,” “brown 13,” “brown 8,” “brook 4,” and so on. Knowing that I guided, I think they made me the tally man because at that position there’s almost no opportunity to watch what’s going on. It’s all you can do to keep up. The crew, of course, thought it was hilarious to shout “brown 29!” I fell for that just once.

But one afternoon, one of the crew, crusty old John Norcross, yelled “Hold it!” Everybody stopped. He turned and looked at me. I thought I was going to catch it again. Earlier in the day, when I was the barge man, I had inadvertently let the boat bump him when he was running one of the probes. He had chewed my ass in no uncertain terms. Later one of the techs told me, “You’re not one of the crew until John chews you out for something. Welcome aboard.”

But the veteran biologist wiggled his finger and said, “Come look at this.” I waded over, as did the others, and there, in the fine mesh of his harness, was gorgeous little fish, not three inches long, its back all the colors of a rainbow. “Do you know what this is?” he asked. I said no.

“It’s a darter,” he said. “We call it a rainbow darter.”

We all looked. I couldn’t believe the brilliance of its colors.

He held it up in the palm of his hand for me to see. “They’re here in the river, but you’ll never see one unless you do this kind of work,” he said. And then he was very gently let the gaudy little fish go. “Let’s get back to work,” he said.

I like to go to the South Branch in the evening. Up on the main stream and the North Branch cabin lights are coming on, telephones ring, televisions echo up and down the river. But on the South ranch, on Mr. Mason’s’ stretch, the only sound is the river gurgling past my waders. It is the song of the South Branch.

Jim Enger has been writing about trout fishing and other topics for more than thirty years. His stories have appeared in Fly Rod & Reel, Fly Fisherman, Esquire, Country Journal, and in other publications. He is an award-winning advertising creative director, and the founding publisher and editor for the Au Sable News and Notes — the forerunner of The Riverwatch (published by Anglers of the Au Sable). He is currently serving as the marketing director at Kirtland Community College.

“Song of the South Branch” appeared in Jim’s book, The Incompleat Angler: A Fly Fishing Odyssey (1986).

All photographs in this essay by Matt Burden.

Joseph Meyer at the Vice

After teaching fly casting for several years now, I have found that my line of demarcation is about twenty years old. Younger than that and the metaphors that I use to teach fly casting are worthless. It must be a sign of my aging process but I am mystified that those young students who come to me for fly casting instruction just don’t have the worldliness to grasp onto the tools that I have always used to illustrate the dynamics of the cast.

When I teach the false cast, I want students to get into a rhythm and to become aware that when casting a shorter length of line, they need to have a quicker casting cycle than they do with a longer length of line. A simple concept but it sometimes needs illustration to be grasped.

“Be like a metronome,” I advise my students and at this admonishment I am often met with an owl-like stare. The eyes widen, and then blink repeatedly but no awareness sets in. “You know, the thing that sits on top of the piano and keeps time.”

Nothing.

“But you told me you took music lessons!” Blink, blink. Nothing.

When a beginner asks me about casting lessons, I tell them that it is easy to learn the basic cast. Kids pick up on it easier than adults, especially those that have had some musical training, so I always inquire about any music lessons that a prospective student may have taken, yet the wood pyramid with the brass pendulum that graced the piano that every student plunked away at is a foreign concept to younger casting students.

“Well, if you don’t know what a metronome is how did you keep time?”

They reply that the device used during their lessons was di-gi-tal. Everything that comes out of a teenager’s mouth is said with that odd accent. Everything is di-gi-tal.

It’s the new millennium.

So, we press on. I need to illustrate that they need to come to a more definitive stop on their forward cast and I ask that they pretend that they are swinging a hammer. The scenario is this: they need to drive a nail into a wall to hang a picture. The Big, Old, Brunette at home always wants pictures hung at eye level so I borrow her advice and tell them that they need to drive the nail into the wall at eye level. Further, they need to swing a hammer big enough to drive the nail in with one stroke. This illustrates that they need to break their wrist at the very last second to apply power at the end of the stroke and come to a complete stop. If they don’t break their wrist ever so slightly, they will be pushing the nail into the wall instead of driving it in. I remind them that when they are swinging a hammer, they do not hold it with a death grip but just tightly enough to keep control.  It’s the same way with a fly rod.

This analogy works for me and has worked with every student I have ever had that was older than twenty.

I was slack-jawed speechless when a casting student told me that neither she nor her brother had ever held a hammer. “Never?” No, was her reply, they always had workmen to do that kind of thing.

Now, I am blessed to own a fly shop in a Chicago suburb that is surrounded by economy. This brings new fly fishers into the shop and is an economic boon to me. The downside is that the younger students that I teach come from homes where things are done for them; they have people to do that.

She told me not to yell at her, it’s not like her family had a ranch and she had to string barbed wire fences all day. She and her brother lived in Moneyville, for gosh sakes. This was coming from a teenager who drove up to her casting lesson behind the wheel of a new Range Rover with a brush bar on the front.

Now it’s my turn to offer up the Owl Look.

“Never swung a hammer before have you Punkin?” Pity.

Another common casting error that beginners (as well as an old fishing partner) make is to reach back for more power. When executing the back cast, they tend to reach back  as if they were making a softball throw which tends to dump their line on the ground and lengthening their casting arc and loosing power instead of gaining power. It typically happens when casting for distance or casting into the wind.

The correct technique is to come to a more complete stop on the back cast, let the line unfurl behind you and then apply more power to a complete stop on the forward cast. Left Kreh describes this as an acceleration to a stop.

The description works in theory but needs illustration, and my next casting student was a young buck of about nineteen. I took his fly rod away from him, laid it on the ground and told him that the fly rod on the ground is now the painted line on the saloon floor and he would need to step up to the line to throw a dart. I told him that instead of a fly rod in his hand, he now has a “pretend” dart and I asked him to get ready to throw the dart at an imaginary dartboard. This illustration shows that when he is ready to throw the dart, his hand is up by his ear in the position that he should be in if he had made a back cast. Once I asked him to throw the dart, I could show him that the forward stop is at about eye-level.

The next teaching step was to move the imaginary dartboard a bit farther across the saloon so that when he makes his next dart throw, he wouldn’t reach back for more power, he needs to come to a harder stop to get the dart to fly farther.

The first time I used this analogy, I damn near broke my casting arm patting myself on the back in self-congratulation; I was a genius at getting this point across.

From the nineteen year-old I got that Owl Look again, blink, blink.

Not only had he never thrown darts before but he was truly confused about the concept of a saloon. Here came the accent again. “Whoa, a saloon, is that, um,…. like a bar?”

“No, dude, a saloon is not, um, like a bar. It is precisely a bar! It’s a comforting place where aging, harried fly fishers go to apply liquid salve to bruised egos after trout have made fools of them. As part of our therapy, sometimes we throw darts. You should try it, I think it helps your casting stroke.”

Sometimes I think I am getting too old for this.

Joseph Meyer is the owner of the One More Cast Fly Shop in Countryside, Illinois. Previously, he was an instructor for Orvis where he discovered his love of teaching the art of Fly Fishing. He commercially ties over 600 dozen flies per year and is a Certified Casting Instructor with the Federation of Fly Fishers. He has been published in the Chicago Tribune, American Angler, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Far & Away, and Hatches magazine. “Am I Too Old to Teach Flycasting?” originally appeared in Yale Angler’s Journal.