I stayed here on the first fly fishing trip I ever took. The mythologies of some Native American groups tell of a "place of emergence" where the ancestors of their people crawled from some lower world into the present one. I think of Shupac Lake as my "place of emergence" as a fly fisher.
Shupac is a cool, clear lake popular with fishermen and with people who just pitch their tent next to it and hang around the campfire for a few days. It's one of the few lakes in lower Michigan with a breeding population of loons. Those birds staged some unnerving concerts in the wee hours of the morning this time.
Here's a shot taken on a cloudy Sunday morning.
Once I had my tent up, I munched a few handfuls of trail mix for lunch then headed down the road to the North Branch. Aside from the East Branch (which is really just a small creek), the North is probably the least celebrated part of the Au Sable system. I'll never know why.
I fished in the Twin Bridges area, and began by flicking a Mickey Finn streamer into deep pockets and close to brushy banks. A deep run below a riffle brought me my first trout of the season, a small but scrappy brook trout.
Nowhere to go but up, I guess. Unfortunately that was the only fish I got a decent photo of. It's going to take a while to learn the art of holding a fish in one hand while taking its photo with the other.
The Mickey caught a bigger brookie shortly thereafter and drew a few other strikes besides. There had been black caddis on the wing when I got to the river, but no fish feeding on them. Around 2:30 I noticed a few small fish rising and switched to a caddis in hopes the bigger ones would follow. That didn't happen, but around 3:30, Hendrickson duns started drifting by in ones or twos, and a few slightly better fish began to take them. The hatch was never very heavy, and it would fade out from time to time, as Hennies will. Not surprisingly, I never saw any regular feeders, but casting a dun over where a fish had risen brought me a several strikes and a couple of fish to hand. By 4 the Hennies were gone for good, but when I quite scanning the river's surface for them, I noticed a good flight of little Mahoganies underway. This is where the things got more interesting.
Though there were few bugs on the water, I caught another half dozen decent brookies drifting a mahogany dun over likely looking runs, and lost a few others. The action stopped around 5, though I flogged away for another hour. It had been a good day though, at least in my eyes. All the "better" fish I caught were somewhere around 10 inches, give or take an inch and a half. Nothing to brag about, but big enough to put a bend in the rod, and, on that river, smart enough not to jump at anything in their view that appears roughly edible. I'd be happy catching fish that size all day long.
Saturday and Sunday brought less in the fish department, though were interesting in other ways. Saturday morning, I hauled myself out into the 28˚ dawn to throw streamers at the log jams on the middle North Branch. This resulted in two browns the size of the largest brookies I'd caught Friday, and two other brief hookups. It isn't the best streamer water around, though I'm sure I'd have caught more if I hadn't had to clean ice from my rod every five casts. Saturday afternoon, I broke out the Meadowhawk and floated from Twin Bridges to Dam Four. I had always been curious about that water because it's a long stretch of river with no public access. I've waded nearly two miles up from Dam 4, and was curious to see more. What did I see? A lot of water pretty much like you'd see around Dam 4. No surprise, but at least I won't wonder about it anymore. Saw a very few fish rising to black caddis, and took three 8-10 inchers on a dry pattern, besides some dinks.
Sunday I slept in, then drove to the South Branch for a long float in the Meadowhawk. This was something of a misadventure. First, I gravely underestmated the time necessary for the trip. I ended up rowing hard and not fishing too much, though I did take a 13" brown on a black Wooly Bugger. i probably could have hung a few more trout on the streamer, but gathering swarms of Hendricksons overhead swayed me to tie on a dry pattern and drift along looking for rises. Unfortunately, I saw none, unless I missed them while keeping watch for log jams I would have to carry the boat over. When I reached the mainstream Au Sable, I entered a long, slack stretch of river where I had to row hard to make any progress at all. Adding to the problem was a strong headwind, which was actually kicking up whitecaps on the river. I rowed nearly an hour through this before making it to a swift section of the river, which still took me about 40 minutes to navigate. And when I did get to the landing...my car was not there. Apparently my spotter had neglected to drive it around. I'm glad he doesn't require payment in advance. I'm even more glad that when I beached my boat, a fisherman had just pulled to look over the water, and he consented to drive me to where I'd put in. A thousand, thousand blessings on his head.
So Sunday gave me a little more drama than I like to see in a fishing trip, but I was unaware of a greater drama unfolding around me, despite its literally showering me with clues. I smelled smoke almost continuously while floating the lower half South Branch. Was every cabin owner in the woods using their fireplace, i wondered? After about 4, I saw flakes of what looked like ashes sifting down on me like snow. Not pouring down, but falling steadily, and there was certainly no doubt as to what it was. It was curious, but concerned with getting off the water before dark, I didn't bother to put two and two together. The gentleman who picked me up at the landing told me about there was a forest fire nearby, and as we drove out to the river bottom, I could see an enormous smoke plume billowing up to the southeast. The police had several roads heading in that direction closed off--including one I had planned to use as a shortcut back to the interstate. I drove back to Grayling, passing through heavy smoke most of the way. It was hanging over the road and in the trees like a dense fog, and at points I was gagging a bit as I drove. It was eerie, and though also fascinating, as are most grave dangers unlikely to endanger you personally. As I drove, I couldn't think of much except getting clear of the smoke, forgetting even the usually strictly enforced speed limit on M-72. Later on, I remembered stories of animals that ignore predators, humans, and all sorts of ordinarily threatening things while fleeing from fire. I could relate. Hurtling along in a metal box at 70 MPH, enroute to another ivory tower workday, I was just another scared mammal in the woods.
This isn't the sort of "communion with nature" usually associated with a fishing getaway, though it could be a truer one than any we color with romantic tones, or pursue with hard-won spare time and pricey equiptment.
Tags: Fly Fishing; Trout; Fire
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