June ‘09 Fishing
June 10th, 2009I just returned from spending a solo week in Michigan to do some fly fishing and figured I’d post a trip journal. Pictures are also up.
Day 1: Sailing
I landed in Detroit late Friday night, then spent Saturday afternoon sailing with my Dad on the boat. It was a nice warm day (by Michigan standards) and the wind was strong, which added up to a really nice time. Back at home we had grilled pork loin with the family. At midnight, the brothers and I made a White Castle run. Mmm . . . sliders.
Day 2: Travel
Packed up, Dave and I visited my Grandparents and Aunt for a few hours and had a traditional pasta dinner with my Grandma’s red sauce. My grandparents are 87 and 92, and so dinner on Sunday is at 3:30pm, but regardless of the hour I always try to sneak in a pasta dinner on any visit home. The pasta sauce I make in Folsom is intended to emulate this recipe, and though I’m quite pleased with results it’s never exactly the same as the real thing. We left around 5 and proceeded “up north” to the Hook and Horn in Baldwin, pulling in about 8:30 just as Aunt Ellene was leaving. The party for the rest of the week was now set: My other grandparents, Dave and I, and our host Uncle Chris. Unlike last year, the H&H has satellite TV, so we watched the Red Wings Game 2
Day 3: The Muskegon River
Dave sleeps on the college schedule, and my west coast orientation had a similar effect, so we were up about 9:30. Grandma, in storybook style, had eggs, sausage and pancakes ready. There are a lot of different fishing options in and around Baldwin, and we settled on the Muskegon river as are first destination because Uncle Chris expected some good hatches and would be able to fish dry flies.
It’s about a 45 minute drive down to the river, and the filies were indeed rising as expected. Dave, Uncle Chris and I stayed in the boat while Grandpa fished from shore. My casting was mediocre but got progressively better throughout the afternoon. The fish were rising to the hatching caddis, and you had to cast to just the right spot and in rhythm with the fish. Both Dave and I each snagged rainbows in the 7-8” range (this by the way, was my very first trout). Uncle Chris mostly provided helpful coaching tips, but would occasionally take up the rod and immediately hook a fish. I have a long way to go and a lot to learn.
We returned back to the lodge and had Cabbage Wraps, for dinner, and Dave and I fished at dusk in the Pere Marquette, right in the front yard, catching nothing.
Day 4: More Muskegon
Basically a carbon copy of yesterday . . . same schedule, same breakfast, same river, same hatches. My casting and technique was noticeably better, and I was rewarded with two fish this time. It rained on us for just a minute or two and these proved to be the only rain of the whole trip.
Day 5: The Pere Marquette.
The Hook and Horn is a really unique place, the front and back of the lot touch the meandering river at different points which sets up a great wading stretch that takes a few hours to fish and is packed with holes and riffles. At breakfast (again pancakes, eggs and sasuage) we decided to stay put and take advantage. Unlike the Muskegon, there were no hatches, so Dave and I set off and fished wet flies (i.e. under the surface of the water) instead. This was a much different style of fishing . . .you’re in the river in waders by yourself instead of in a the boat with others, and the river is much smaller so you get away from the basic textbook casting and have to improvise with sideways and roll casts. I get my line tangled and caught up in the trees a lot and lose a lot of flies to this as well as underwater snags..
On the Muskegon with the flies on the surface drag is your enemy – any unnatural movement of the line pulling on your fly tips the fish off that something is wrong and they won’t strike. With the wet flies on the PM, the same drag emulates a minnow or insect nymph swimming against the current and the fish are attracted. I get two trout: a brown and a rainbow. The rainbow is the smallest fish I’ve ever caught, at a comically small 3 inches long, it’s really more of a minnow,.
We throw all these fish back – this stretch of the PM is flies only and catch and release by regulation. But this isn’t true on the Muskegon, and even then we didn’t keep any. Every night on the phone, Cynthia would be puzzled by this since on the surface all this fishing seems to be a significant waste of time, energy and money. But the fishing for me is not about the harvest, although in the right place and time I don’t have a problem with taking fish. The hours spent on the river are for me really something like a Zen exercise. I’m not thinking about anything except my cast and the river. Getting a fish is a pleasant surprise that interrupts the flow.
Day 6: More of the PM
Today is much like the previous (more pancakes and sausage for breakfast but we’re out of eggs), but I fish a lot more effectively. I catch two fish in the morning, and get six in the afternoon most of them in riffles but some in holes. One of them is 13 inches, the biggest of the trip for me. My eight fish for the day tops everyone, even Uncle Chris, though he spent much less time on the water overall (he got 6 in 40 minutes in the morning). My improved technique helps but a big part is finding a nymph pattern the fish really like and not quickly losing it to a snag. Eventually though, inevitability catches up and it’s gone to either a huge steelhead or a really odd hang up and things slow down.
I finish the normal loop around the river but decide I’m not quite ready to call it done, so I head upstream instead and run into Grandpa. He’s got one fish for the afternoon, and asks me how I’ve down. I tell him I’ve been pretty lucky and as I cast say “I’ve usually been catching them on the swing, right about here” and at that moment I hook the final fish . . . and this on a nymph, like the third one I’d ever tied all by myself at the fishing club tying jam a few months ago. This proved a fitting end.
I’d absorbed a mountain of information from Uncle Chris, Grandpa and Dave over the past 4 days and will able to carry this forward as a real fisherman going forward. I started this having never really known what I was doing on a river but now feel like I at least know enough fundamentals to be somewhat effective. There’s still a long way to go . . . my casting can get a lot more efficient and I can get better at picking fly patterns. Loyal readers will recall that my first H&H trip last year involved sinking the drift boat. All in all, this trip fulfilled the goal I started with last year – learning to fish a river, and defintively proved that I wasn’t cursed as I at first feared.
Day 7: Back to GP
We woke up Friday morning and cleaned the H&H top to bottom, then said our goodbyes and headed back home at about 9:30. We were back in Grosse Pointe by early afternoon. That evening, I went to Louis little league game and treated Dave and Louis (everyone else was gone) to a Jet’s Hawaiian pizza and some buffalo wings. ‘Twas delicious (as befits my favorite pizza.
Day 8: Party
Saturday morning I visited my Aunt and Grandparents again for a pesto lunch (every meal over there these days seems to involve pasta), and then headed over to Tony’s for his Michigan based wedding reception. Cynthia and I had joined Tony and Rachael for their wedding on the Carnival Glory back in March, it was just lucky coincidence that I was in town to celebrate all over again. Tony had the grass planted, with a catered bar, BBQ, bounce house and cotton candy machine, and I got to chat with all his friends and family I met on the cruise. Marissa was there as well, massively pregnant (in fact, Sloan was born a little more than 24 hours later). I said my goodbyes around 8pm and was back in GP in time to catch the last two period of the Red Wings game and get all my stuff repacked.
Day 9: The return
Sean and I woke at 6am (3am Pacific time) and he drove me to the airport. By noon, my feet were back on California soil.
