July, 2010
I had made arrangements to meet my dad in Manistee, where we
would spend a couple of days fishing for smallmouth, panfish, and anything else
that might care to attack our worms in Manistee Lake and the lower Manistee
River. It was a ritual we’d observed for
going on twenty years, starting when he’d kept a trailer on a permanent site
there, though he’d given that up a decade ago.
A ritual of my own attached to this one was to get up a day early to do
some trout fishing. It seems wrong to be
up north and not.
It was just over a week into July, and I thought I had a
shot at hitting the last Hex spinnerfall of the summer, or, barring that, a
nice slate wing olive fall. There was
always the option of the Sunset Lightning Round Caddis Hatch (see below) on the
Big Manistee below Tippy dam. Aside from
settling on a spot to fish, the only complication for the outing I could see
was the weather. Weather Underground
predicted increasing clouds with showers late.
The truly dedicated fisherman will persevere with a fishing
plan without worrying too much about weather shifts. The truly neurotic one, on the other hand,
will check the weather sites two or three times an hour in the days before a
trip to track the development of approaching systems, and fluctuations in the
chance of rain, as if seeking the best
interest rate on a mortage (“Hmmm…Weather Underground says 60%, but weather.com
is offering 40…” Seriously—sometimes I
wish I could lock in a certain chance of rain before a trip.) Sifting through the weather data early in
the afternoon before I left, I tried to deduce just how late those “showers
late” might come. There was no chance
of reaching a credible answer to this, but it’s a reflex, one sharpened a bit
that day on account of limited hours to fish and a strong chance of them
washing out entirely.
Skies were clear on most of the drive up. As I approached
Cadillac, they began to take on a sulfurous, gauzy cast and I could see darker
clouds to the west. The evening remained
bright, though, and sometimes leads of blue sky opened. I had the weather radio on, naturally,
listening through the loop again and again.
There had to be subtle clues there about when the rain would get here, I
figured, but “tonight” doesn’t give much
to go on.
After checking into a motel in Wellston a little after six
o’clock, I drove out to Bear Creek where
Coates Highway crosses it and it runs wide enough for easy fly casting.
Overhead the sky was clear , but when I got within half a mile of the creek,
the pavement was drenched. Puddles dotted the roadside pulloff where I
parked. The creek looked fine, though,
running clear and a bit low. The air
was still and muggy, maybe a little
thicker than usual as the rain began evaporating, and mist rose off the cool
stream. I picked my way down the path
along the west bank scouting for insects and rising fish, inhaling pungent
cedar scent released by the rain. Drops
of water hanging from pine boughs or alder branches dampened my shirt, but it
was so still and warm that I didn’t get the least chill. It remained clear overhead, and it would
have been pleasant to fish there in the rum-gold twilight. But I had seen no bugs overhead and no
feeding rings in the water. There were
no hex nymph shucks floating in the side channels that would indicate a recent
hatch. I’d had slow midsummer evenings here before, so I decided to play
short odds and head for Tippy, where some kind of caddis hatch was bound to be
happening. Tippy can be a
fish-in-a-barrel situation, but as fish had been scarce that season (since
water time had been), I wouldn't
turn up my nose at it.
As I passed Brethren the road was dry again, but above,
clouds were returning. The sky was
solid gray by the time I reached Tippy, and with that the entire feel of the
night had changed. Whereas earlier the
evening seemed unsettled —clouds gathering and scattering to confirm or
contradict the weathermen, rain showers that slipped in and out unnoticed—it
now felt ominous. Rain, maybe a lot of it, would come, I thought as I rigged in the
parking lot. The only question was when. The stillness of the night gave me some hope
that I would be able to fish until dark.
On the river, a
sparse hatch of tan caddis was underway and every minute or so I saw a trout
rise somewhere in the eighty yard sprawl of the river. Three fishermen were
already working the water near the steps that led into the water and I watched
two of them take fish. I waded to the head of a long riffle one bend down from
the access point and tied on a tan soft hackle wet fly. On my first drift along the near seam of the
riffle I took a 13” rainbow. Over the next hour and a half or so I caught
another ten or twelve fish doing the same thing, and hooked at least as many
that slipped off—I find, tailwater fish are often light biters during the
warmest parts of the season. It was
easy, lazy fishing. Thunder rumbled occasionally
in the distance, and I told myself, enjoy this while it lasts.
The wind still hadn’t stirred, so I figured no storm was
imminent. I was starting to like the
chances of it holding off until I got a shot at the Sunset Lightning Round
Caddis Hatch. While caddis hatch almost
continuously below Tippy, now and then during July, they will hatch in a
torrent right around the time full darkness falls. The bugs are so thick that you’re breathing them in and
getting swarms of them caught under your shirt collar but the fish are biting
so freely you don’t care. Few casts
fail to hook a trout, and since it’s dark, the bigger fish in the river come
out to play. This lasts for maybe ten
minutes, but those few minutes may overshadow many full days you had on the
water in the season. While it doesn’t
happen every night, if you hit it once, you’re bound to plot a return visit.
That night, my hopes were dashed. The hatch actually diminished as the evening
went on . Fish stopped rising, and in
the last half hour before darkness I went without a strike. No
rain fell and no wind stirred but a sense of foreboding hung in the air. It was there when I stepped out of my motel
room before turning in, listening for
wind or thunder, trying to catch the scent of rain. No such clues were offered. Laying in the lumpy, troughed mattress waiting for sleep, I listened for sprinkles on my car parked a few
feet from the open window, but they never came.
The question of rain had been so fixed in my mind that day that it
lingered far after it really mattered. In
the morning everything was still dry.
A few raindrops fell as
I drove to a diner in Irons, though not enough to darken the
pavement. After breakfast I drove to the
Little Manistee, figuring the conditions would be good for streamer fishing—now I
actually wanted the rain to hurry up and get here. This
time the clouds wouldn’t keep me in suspense.
I was barely in the water when they began to spit, and in minutes the
rain began to hammer down. It did for
most of the next hour, finding each leak in my aging rain jacket. I caught only one 7” rainbow—I’d sympathize with
fish fleeing for deep cover under that bombardment.
I had to meet my dad in Manistee at 10, so I waded back to
my car around 9, the downpour having relented into a steady drizzle. The rain continued most of the way in, though
when I reached the boat launch where my father was waiting, it was sunny in the
west and dark, ragged clouds overhead were sprinting eastward. When I stepped out of the car I could see the
gravel lot had freshly dusted my tires.
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