Beyond the Bridge, Pt. 2

Last Wednesday, I ventured a bit higher on the middle branch of the Ontonogan. I followed a deeply rutted two track up from where I had entered the river the night before expecting to find some pulloffs and trails to the river at some point. After some distance I found only a single spot along the road where I could (barely) park my car. The river was visible about fifteen feet away through a dense thicket of spruce and alder. I pushed through the brush to find a smooth, relatively open section of river. This was promising. I worked downstream with a wooly bugger and turned 3 fish that looked nice, actually hooking one for about 5 seconds. A few dinks came to hand along the way.

After about an hour down from where I entered, the quiet water began to gather speed, rushing around large rocks I thought should have sheltered some trout--maybe it sheltered them too well. Soon the current became too heavy to wade easily, though I kept moving down in hopes of getting back to smoother water. No luck. I finally turned around when the river appeared to be entering a rock-walled gorge. Not a deep one, but one that potentially offered no escape should the water become too deep, or the current too strong. The gorge began just beyond where the trees close in this photo.



Maybe I'm a bit too cautious. But that's not a bad fault to have when fishing alone in remote country.

On the way back up, I took three good brook trout on a small adams.

That evening, I drove upstream to Burned Dam near Watersmeet. The river there is a bit wider, and it looked fishy when I canoed the area several years ago. It still does look fishy, though it didn't fulfill its promise on my visit. Where I got in, I met a couple of other fishermen, who were looking for a few trout after a week of "pathetic" walleye fishing on Lake Gogebic. They went downstream, and I up. I managed two mediocre rainbows on a Cabin Coachman. Here's one.



Toward dusk, mayfly spinners began to fill the sky. I saw sulfurs, brown drakes, and I think some isonychias. One brown drake dun floated by me as well. Of course, not a single one of these spinners hit the water. Mayflies, I've noticed over the years, assert a corollary to the law of gravity: what goes up, as far as they are concerned, will come down when it's good and ready.

On the way home, I made a detour to view the Paulding Light. More on that in an entry to come.

Thursday, I entered the middle branch above the rest area off of highway 28 at Agate Falls, pausing to snap a few pictures of the waterfall itself.



This area (once you get upstream from the rest area and the falls) was also smoothly flowing with plenty of cover and gentle, nicely spaced riffles. I fished a number of different attractors, wet flies, and nymphs and caught two brook and one brown trout of about nine inches. Sulfur duns were drifting by periodically, but there was no surface feeding, and my sulfur patterns drew no interest. On the way out, I noticed that thimbleberries were coming into bloom.



I wish I could go back in four or five weeks to pick and eat a bunch.

Thursday night I returned to the same spot to see if I could catch an evening rise. I did, though I might have missed it if I'd let my mind wander. Sulfur spinners gathered just after 10:00, and by 10:15 I heard some decent feeders, though there were no bugs visible on the water. I hooked and lost two nice fish, then landed a 9" brook. After I released him, I heard no more feeding. It wasn't even 10:25.

It had been a tough couple of days of fishing. On Friday, my last day, things would start even worse, but wind up rather agreeably.

Tags: Fly Fishing; Fishing