"At least I got out, and that's the important thing." This is one of the lines anglers utter to console themselves when they return from the water with a skunk on their line. Or, "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work."
I tend to agree with these sentiments, but there have been fishing trips I'd have gladly traded for a mediocre day of work, or for confinement in bed with a raging migraine. Especially this one, which came closely on the heels of the trip to the Two Hearted and east branch of the Fox which reawakened the passion for fishing I'd had as a kid. It's a wonder it didn't snuff that renewal in its crib.
Almost since I got home from that trip, I'd been scheming to return to Seney and fish the main branch of the Fox. Being a college publisher's rep and having the summer off, there was little to prevent me from going. Having been raised to shun extravagance, I did have some scruples about "wasting" money and gas to travel a long way for a short stay (for the second time in a few weeks!), but visions of hungry brook trout stifled them. My embrace of the dream of happiness through consumption, as far as it goes, stems far more from fishing than from ads steeped in the promise of sex or status.
In between those trips above the bridge, I had travelled to Manistee to meet my father to fish for walleye and bass, and to work in a little solo trout fishing on the side. Both kinds of fishing went well, but oddly, I remember relatively few details of the trip. The one that counts for this story is that I left my rain jacket in my dad's trailer. I didn't want to spend most of a week in the woods without my rain gear, so on the way back to the UP I would have to detour through Manistee. I would drive up there one evening, stay overnight in the trailer, and continue north the next day.
I should have just bought another jacket.
The trip started to go bad when I was about an hour from Manistee and realized I hadn't packed my key to the trailer. I pulled over and searched my pockets, my luggage, and even my tackle box. Sure enough, no keys. I wasn't going to drive three hours home to get them--I'd just hole up in a cheap motel, call a locksmith in the morning, get my coat and get back on the road. The motel and the locksmith set me back about $60, a fact my frugal mind would use against my angler's heart at a critical point later in the trip.
My second error in the trip was also costly, though in time rather than money. I got the notion to take a scenic route to the bridge, following US 31 along the shore of Lake Michigan. I won't fill in the details; suffice to say that during the height of the tourist season, this is a very bad idea, unless you want to remove any possible risk of a speeding ticket. It took me over three hours to reach the Mackinac bridge, almost as long as it takes driving up I-75 from Detroit.
I didn't make it to Seney until nearly five, though at least my first evening there seemed worth the trip.
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