Armchair Opener

Today is the opening day of the Michigan's trout season. And I'm not on the water.

I'd planned to be--driving up to Grayling yesterday morning, fishing through Monday--but my body had other ideas. In the middle of a 4 1/2 mile jog on Thursday morning, I felt a tightness forming in my chest. As I ran on, the tightness intensified and crept down my left arm. Shortly it felt like someone was shoving the end of a 2x4 into my chest, so I stopped to rest. Scared shitless. The pain subsided a little so I moved on, but walking this time. Kristine caught up with me and asked if everything was all right.

"Just a little tired," I said, not wanting to scare her when there really wasn't anything we could do about the problem. "Go on ahead, I'll catch up."

She did, and I kept walking. My chest still hurt, I felt nauseous and disoriented, and my left arm had gone semi-numb. A mile from home, I tried running one more time, hoping to get home as fast as possible (obviously I wasn't thinking straight), but the chest pain flared and I lapsed again into a walk. As I neared home, Kristine came running out to see why I was so far behind. This time I told her the truth, and in minutes she was trundling me off the the ER.

I'll spare you the hospital drama except to say that the doctors poked, prodded, doped, and zapped me for a day and a half but found nothing wrong. There must have been a problem--the pains in my chest lingered and I felt beaten and drained for the rest of Thursday--but, as the docs reassured me, nothing that appeared to be life threatening. Nonetheless, it would be a good idea, they told me, to "take it easy" until I could follow up with my regular doctor. Prudently translated, that means "no fishing."

Honestly, I don't feel like it at the moment. I don't feel ill at all, just a little dazed. Resting sounds good. Besides, the weather has turned nasty up north this weekend, and I suppose it's better to get out when it's nicer and the fish perhaps more cooperative.

But when I do go, and maybe whenever I go away now, Kristine will be worrying about me, half-expecting to hear I've been found stone-cold in my tent, clutching my chest, or at least that I'm clinging to life in a small town hospital. She worries about me anyway, though now I've given her a more substantive reason to do so. And I'll worry too. What if I feel a little clutch in my chest while carrying my pontoon down to the river? That could be a little muscular strain, but what if it isn't? What if that tightness returns when I'm a mile's wading from where I parked, and far from any cell phone reception?

I'm not going to worry too much about these things, but I suppose they will be parts of the mental equipment I take on most of my future trips.

At least now I've got a good excuse to return to blogging.

Run or Clean?

Last year, Kristine and I ran the 10K division the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run, and we'd planned to run it again this year. Ever since the last race, I've been determined that this year I would break 50 minutes--I took just over 52 the last time around. We've been hitting our 10K training course, pondering new shoe purchases...yet we hadn't actually registered for the race yet. No rush I figured, since the race date was June 1st. But last week, I found that the annual spring cleanup of the Pere Marquette river sponsored by BBT would take place on May 31st.

I haven't done this cleanup in a few years and have been meaning to again. But something always gets in the way and my initial reaction last week was that this year, the DxA2 run would again. But was running it again that important?

No. But that didn't automatically determine we'd attend the cleanup. There are other concerns in play.

Our budget is tight this summer and gasoline is expensive. Staying home and running the race would certainly be more economical. And it would save money I could spend on a real fishing trip some other time (when we go to the cleanup, I'll be lucky if I get to fish one evening).

On the other hand, Kristine enjoys these cleanups. They give us a chance to spend some time together in the outdoors...time we wouldn't have if I took one of my solo fishing trips. And she isn't anxious to run the race again.

So deciding meant weighing fiscal guilt against marital guilt. And...we'll be going to the cleanup.

Skunked at Stockerfest

Made the run to Proud Lake again early today. A beautiful, calm morning on the water, though the fish were warier. I suppose they were pounded hard over the weekend. Visible fish either ignored flies or swam away from them. The only action came when I drifted wets or streamers very close to the bank, beneath overhanging alder branches. Broke off one fish after about five seconds on the line, and had three or four other strikes.

Saw many dead fish lying on the bottom of the river. I wonder how many will make it to opening day?

I will lay off the place for a while. But I will need to go at least one more time once the weather warms and the fish will take dries.

Stockerfest Initiation

Every spring, the state dumps some of its hatchery broodstock of rainbow and brown trout into the Huron river in the Proud Lake State Rec Area (about 45 minutes from me) and holds a fly-only, catch and release season from April 1 until the last Saturday of the month (the regular trout opener). Locals call this event "Stockerfest."

I've thought about fishing it before, but other things often got in the way, and I usually took a steelhead trip up north around the beginning of April. Besides, I didn't think fishing in the suburbs for dumb, tank-raised trout could be all that fun. But after I fished Stockerfest for the first time yesterday, I think I could learn to like it.

Conditions for clear-water trouting were ideal yesterday, overcast with an intermittent light mist. You have to hike a mile from the parking lot to the river, though I didn't mind the trip. If someone plunked me down there and told me I was in northern Michigan, I might have believed them. White pines and spruces checkered the hardwoods on the ridges rising up from the Huron's flood plain. I passed marshes still mostly frozen, and the trail alternated between solid ground, deep muck, and packed snow. I could hear heavy traffic in the distance, when it wasn't lost in the sound of wind in the treetops.

The trail let me off at bridge over a small coffer dam in the river. Looking in the water as I crossed, I saw at least fifty large trout fanning in the tailrace. You aren't allowed to fish within 100 feet of the dam, of course--they have to keep this halfway sporting. But there were still lots of trout in sight below the signs marking end the 100 foot zone, lined up between the bubble line and the bank on the deepest side of the river. I heard that small streamers work well on the stockers, so I tied on a black and tan muddler and in about ten casts I'd hooked up with a fat rainbow, a female of, by rough estimation, 18 inches. These really are the proverbial fish in the barrel, I thought, but that opinion changed quickly. I drifted that streamer and several others through the run for close to an hour and never had another hit. I switched to a copper john nymph under an indicator and quickly took a 14" rainbow, a tatty male whose fins and tail had likely been targets of larger and toothier tankmates. So nymphs were the secret, I figured. But I didn't get another hit on a nymph, either swung or under the indicator. A couple of trout did come up and slap at the indicator, and I wondered if I should have tried dries.

I worked a good way down river, the visible trout thinning as I got farther from the dam. Though I rarely sight fish, it's hard to quit once you start--no matter how fussy the fish are, seeing them in front of you creates a belief that catching them is only a matter of time. Yesterday that was clearly a matter of a long time, but I still waded through long stretches where I couldn't see fish, in spite of some of them holding promising cover.

I cast to a pod of fish who weren't willing to play at all, but the next batch I sighted provided steady, if often vexing, entertainment. Casting small streamers again, I had four sizeable rainbows chase them to within ten feet of me before turning back. Unfortunately, each would only give chase once, even though I changed streamers several times. A little further down, I saw a large female lurking just underneath overhanging alders. I drifted the streamers and a couple different wet flies by her, and she did slide out to inspect them a few times, but fell back to her post after each. On one drift when she'd ignored my leadwing coachman entirely, I lifted the rod to prepare another cast only to feel the line stick. I looked out over the water and saw a copper flash just below the big rainbow. After so carefully stalking a visible fish, one I hadn't seen had slammed my fly. A couple of minutes later I slid a 17" brown into my net.

At the point when I released that fish, my feet had been numb for most of an hour. My stomach was growling, and I reflected that I could be home by suppertime if I left then. Those two considerations were all the the inducement I needed to forgo working the rest of the fish I could see, and so ended my first visit to Stockerfest. Wild trouting it isn't, and Proud Lake, for all its nordic charms, isn't the UP either. Yet while driving home, I didn't think about what I was missing. Rather, I was grateful for finding a new outdoor pleasure, and an engrossing one at that, near at hand. I would end my day where I began it but in a better place nonetheless.

More New Arrivals

Spring continues to fill out, piece by piece. Newly registered during my morning run:

Kildeer

Grackles

Wood Ducks

and the big one.....

Peepers!

History at Work; Two Days From Trout!

Until recently, I never paid much attention to the desk in the office I moved to last fall. With a solid, if heavily scratched wood top and attractively grained if peeling wood laminate on the front of the drawers, it was an improvement, aesthetically, over the steel and Formica job in the office I'd left, but it was still an overused, neglected piece of university furniture that would have been junked decades ago in any for-profit operation.

But a few days ago I happened to glance at the nameplate sunk into the upper drawer:



I remembered that Aldo Leopold, conservation legend and author of A Sand County Almanac, had been born in Burlington, IA, and that his family ran a furniture factory. I did a little searching and found that this was indeed the Leopold company founded by his father. (Not that I had much doubt...how many candidates could there be in Burlington?) I've read Leopold's works for years ( FTR readers quite likely will find Sand County Almanac indispensable) written about him, tacked a poster recounting his career on my office wall (and that before I knew about the desk). So my desk now offers not space for my work, but brings a new, albeit very small, measure of coherence to it.

My department is supposed to move to a new building next year, which will be equipped with new furniture, and I'm going to try to take the Leopold desk home. I don't think the university will miss it. I asked our department secretary how I could arrange to take it. She suggested pulling a van up to the building and trundling the desk out at midnight. That could happen.



If my schedule holds, I may take my first trout excursion of the year this Friday. Every April, the state stocks trout in a stretch of the Huron River upstream from me and opens a fly-only, catch and release season through the opening of the regular trout season at the end of this month. I've wanted to try it for years, despite the reports of crowds and of fish that become maddeningly selective after the first few trips through anglers' nets and hands. Not the kind of fishing I dream of over the winter ( my report of opening weekend--to be posted in just 27 days!--will explain that), but for now, it will provide excitement enough.