Season Closer Trip

For the last few years I've dreamed about making a run north to fish the last weekend of trout season, and maybe squeeze a little bird hunting in on the side. Things always got in the way. This year, I planned ahead and scheduled class work so I wouldn't need to come home to piles of work. I gave Kristine enough advance notice to get clearance from house chores. I didn't quite get packed as thoroughly as I wanted to the night before, but by noon last Friday I was zipping north to scout out hunting spots for Saturday and get in some fishing at twilight. A little after four, I was stepping in the South Branch.

On the stairs down to the river, I noticed this:




During the weekend of the Au Sable cleanup (and a few others, I believe), volunteers from Anglers of the Au Sable and the Sierra Club plant young cedars along the banks and build cages around them to prevent deer from eating them during the winter. The deer population in this area (even after some years of aggressive herd reduction measures by the state DNR) has grown to the point that deer will wipe out any young cedars that happen to spring up. Tall cedars leaning over the water are a classic piece of Au Sable scenery, and once the fall in the river, their dense wood provides decades of trout cover. Now, passing anglers, or hikers, can lend a hand in the trees' recovery.

I'm going to spare you a blow-by-blow of the fishing. Suffice to say it was quite slow. Over the weekend I caught a 12" brown, along with some brook trout a couple inches smaller and others smaller still. On Sunday, the official closing day of the season, I got blanked entirely. Things could have been worse, though. When I stopped at the Au Sable Angler in Mio on Sunday, the counter guy mentioned the fishing had been very slow of late; their guided trips averaged one or two fish per day. At least I wasn't paying a couple hundred dollars for a skunking.

Fortunately, the river offered some compensations for the shortage of trout.



Hunting wasn't productive either. Saturday morning I put up one woodcock which found its way into the forest canopy almost immediately. It would have been a difficult shot for anyone, and it certainly was too much for me. I hunted several other places then and Sunday with no other flushes. I have a lot to learn about grouse habitat.

Unsurprisingly, Sunday night found me rather discouraged. I'd spent the afternoon prospecting some new water north of Mio with no luck. I'd planned to stop at the Rifle river on the way home, but as I drove south on M33, I seriously considered forgoing that and getting home in time for supper. When I stopped at the Hillcrest Lounge for some refreshment, that idea sounded almost unbeatable.

But it's a long time until April. So it was on to the Rifle. Besides, I knew there had to be at least one trout in this state that would take a fly I cast.

There probably was, but it wasn't in the Rifle.

I gave it my best shot, fishing wets, terrestrials, and streamers. But after an hour, I decided the time had come for the seasons's last cast. And this is where I made it.



Now I don't know that I won't lay a fly on the water before April. Given favorable conditions, I may spend an afternoon fishing some waters open year round during a hunting trip later this month. But trout fishing occurs in circular time. The end of the official season imparts an awareness that the cycle of events--hatches, opportunities that come with certain temperatures and water conditions, etc.--has played itself out. Nothing but the months of bitter cold, bare trees, and sodden thaw can animate it again. Fishing beyond September merely prolongs the last stages of decline. Not that it's a bad thing, but for me it always feels overshadowed by an impending greater loss. It is among the most acute experiences of bittersweetness I have had.

Fortunately, that gives way to an anticipation that will swell over the months to come, and be rewarded by the first Hendricksons of spring lifting from the water and trout sliding from the logs and undercuts to devour them.

Soon, please.