I left on a Saturday evening, driving north under peach-skin twilight. Full darkness overtook me somewhere south of Grayling, and I arrived at the Mackinac bridge around ten o'clock. I stopped for the night at a motel near Brevort, and as I unpacked, I got the notion to take a moonlit walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline, since I didn't feel tired at all. I returned to the motel dead tired a bit after one and slept late the next day. After a breakfast of spongy pancakes at an Epoufette diner, I continued north through Newberry into the Two Hearted country.
I'd read some promising accounts of fishing on the Two Hearted river system in northern Luce county, but what really drew me there was what I saw on the map: lots of blank space lightly strewn with the black stitches marking primitive roads. From the very outset of my adult angling career, fishing was as much about the place as the fish. I wanted to see wilder parts of the UP than I'd known while I was in school. I wanted to go where you could drive half an hour without seeing another car or passing through a clearing. (Ironically, automobile travel provides my benchmark for wilderness--even in the northern lower, places where you can hike for hours without encountering civilization aren't that rare.)
At Muskellonge Lake state park I set up camp, and I must have struck the ranger as an unlikely visitor. Probably few people who declare they've arrived for a week of fishing the boonies show up driving an Olds Cutlass (company car) and wearing rainbow plaid surfer shorts. By then a wind blowing off of Lake Superior, less than a mile away, was making it too cold to wear shorts of any kind. While I unloaded the car, the ranger solemnly warned me not to keep food in my tent. "Of course," I responded, nodding, matching his tone. "Bears." "No, raccoons," he corrected me. "They'll claw their way into your tent even while you're sleeping." He had become irritated; probably he gave that speech to a lot of troll campers. My cluelessness must have stood out like buck teeth.
I left camp around five to go fish. Prompted by a guidebook, I set out for the west branch of the Two Hearted. I never made it. According to the map, a dirt county road turned west off the blacktop road coming up from Newberry which, after a few jogs, would hug the west branch for several miles. I turned west onto what I was sure was the road; I'm still certain it was, but I believe I got turned around on the jogs. I spent at least half an hour retracing my route, trying different trails that seemed to go in the direction I wanted, but I never found the route (an actual numbered road at that) I sought. I never saw the river.
My adventures are often guided by an instinct to get far from the accesses or the river stretches that attract large numbers of fishermen. On more than a few occasions though, including the one above, this brings me to a pass where I conclude I would have been better off following the crowd.
On that night there wasn't a crowd, or anyone actually, at the developed access at High Bridge, where the paved road crossed the Two Hearted's mainstream. The river is swift there, with rapids that attract steelhead in the spring. I remember wading over slippery rocks in water up to my waist at some points, bending into a current that seemed determined to make me swim. I cast along the edges of rocks and into the deeper runs with spinners and worms, but didn't get a bite all night---at least below the water. Above, hordes of mosquitos drilled away at my bare arms and neck in spite of the repellent I applied in increasing quantities though the night. They didn't seem to mind the deepening evening cool, which drove me from the water around sunset. They followed me diligently back to my car.
I feel like I need to stop here and apologize for telling what may be the most dismal, discouraging fishing story ever offered for public consideration. Be assured that things do get better. But not before they get worse.
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