Manistee/Au Sable 6/10-11

I can be flighty when I'm fishing--if I'm unsatisfied with the place I'm fishing, I don't have a problem picking up and driving, 20 or 30 miles, even, to someplace where I'm sure the action will better. This isn't unreasonable, and in my experience it's not uncommon among fishermen, either. Sometimes the change of setting does bring a change of fortunes, though you always risk the compounded embarrassment of a multi-site skunking. Regardless of how the move pays off, though, it leaves you with the question what you missed by not staying put. Rivers aren't static--insects emerge and fishes' feeding instincts turn on in response to some slight modulation of light or water temperature. And at this time of the season, bugs and fish tend to be much more active in the evening, almost making a river (from the angler's perspective) an entirely different stream at night than it was early in the day. Yet this week, full awareness of that couldn't persuade me to hold my ground and allow changes to come through time instead of chasing them over distance.

What all that is about:

I drove up to Grayling on Wednesday, planning to camp and fish on the Manistee river for a change--normally I drive east of town to the branches of the Au Sable. The river was in much better shape than I'd expected given Monday's downpour. I went to a spot below M-72 where I occasionally fish the hex hatch, and saw a variety of insects in the air--large and small stoneflies (I really need to learn the stonefly species better), sulfurs, caddis, and a handful of brown drakes and mahoganies. There was unfortunately little surface feeding, even during a 5 minute mahogany emergence when flies drifted for yards before lifting from the water. There were scattered, splashy rises, though I never saw what was getting eaten. The most abundant insect was a small, dark colored stonefly, and green egg sacs were visible on most of these I saw on the wing. I tied on a green-butted black caddis imitation and took a couple of browns (@ 10") and missed a few other strikes.

Not the worst afternoon, but not great. By 4:30 the insects were thinning out--not an encouraging sign. And by that point, visions of a certain spot on the Au Sable where I'd had great evenings after bailing from poor afternoons on the Manistee were coming to mind. I couldn't resist.

When I waded into the Au Sable, the air was filled with sulphurs. A few were dribbling along the surface, though they didn't trigger much feeding, perhaps on account of the high water (the AS looked much further above normal than the Man.) But risers did show here and there, mostly along riffle seams or near brush along the bank. Casting to the feeders and fishing blind to likely spots I picked up maybe half a dozen fair trout and a mess of dinks. The best was this rainbow, @ 12".



A bit after 7 the sulphurs faded and I picked up a couple of brookies twitching a caddis in pockets of slack water between fallen logs along the banks. That's never brought me rapid fire action, but it's a fun way to pass the time between hatches.

At about 9:15 sulphur spinners began drifting by and some risers showed in pools and quieter runs. Again, not as many as I'd usually expect, but certainly enough to get the blood pumping. I ended up taking four brook trout, 9-12", losing a couple of others.

Very unusual not to catch browns during a spinner fall. I've noticed before that I catch more brook trout than browns when fishing hatches on high water. But a fisherman I talked to in the parking lot that night said he caught only browns. Go figure.

Thursday was more or less the same, except that the afternoon on the Manistee was positively dismal, with few flies around and only tiny trout coming to my fly. The early evening sulphur hatch on the Au Sable was even heavier than Wednesday's, though my take was about the same, aside from a couple of brown trout joining the mix. At sunset, a small number of emerging brown drakes joined the flow of sulphur spinners, and I did take one brook trout on a drake, but no others followed its lead. I caught a couple more brooks after switching to the sulphur spinners and caught, yet could not get as much as a short strike afterward. I cast three different versions of the spinner to one very active pod of trout for nearly 20 minutes. Could they have been feeding on something else altogether?

Questions like that keep you coming back. But that still leaves the question of what would have happened on the Manistee. I'm certain that the action must have picked up a least somewhat in the evening. But that very logical conclusion has to compete with memories of the Au Sable saving the day on trips past. All the memories of your life combined weigh less than a midge, but their colors and contours give them a substance that the possibilities of the here and now cannot have, save with considerable intervention by the imagination. Possibilities whisper promises. Memory exerts the pull of gravity.