from the river in small terraces of pine and alder. Crotches between streamside boulders collect bunches of driftwood, along with spiderwebs and pine straw and pieces of broken picnic cooler lids and wads of fishing line. The underwater rocks are so slick with gray-green algae that you have to grope along each one with your foot as you wade. Felt-soled boots are a must;
wading staffs, too. The smooth granite of the big boulders, cool in the morning, warm on a sunny afternoon, does not give you much to grab on to when the current starts to pull. In the fast sections, the sound of the main channels is so loud it overpowers the smaller noises of streamlets at the edge. Underneath the rushing is a deep, muffled grinding of the rocks in the bed. The sound is like a train passing under the street. I donât wade out in mid-current unless I really need to. At a place miles from any town I saw a boulder a ways out in the river with a strange marking. Slipping, sliding, turning sidewise against the current, nearly falling, I waded to it. The mark was a borehole, a hole drilled for blasting at a quarry or a construction site. There is an old quarry near the river someplace far upstream. I climbed onto the boulder, noticed a likely place I couldnât have reached before, braced my knee in the borehole, cast. My dry fly, an Ausable Wulff, had less than a second to sit on some slack water before the current would snatch it. A rainbow trout shot to the surface, took the fly, dived.
In 1950, the angling writer Ray Bergman, in his book Trout , described the West Branch of the Ausable:
A river rife with fishing legends, the home of numerous trout; a stream wildly fascinating, capable of giving you both a grand time and a miserable one; a stream possessing a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde temperament and a character strong enough to spread its fame from one corner of our country to the other. The Ausable commands your respect. It tests your skill and ingenuity. It is not a stream that will appeal to the timid, the weak, or the old. You like it best before you reach the age of forty. After that you wish you had youthful energy so
that you could enjoy it as you did before the years of striving for existence had sapped your strength and made you a bit fearful of slippery rocks and powerful currents.
He does not mention the blackflies. When I stepped from my car late one morning in June, the sunny forest of conifers and hardwoods directed them at me like a ray. I got back in the car immediately and drove to Au Sable Forks and bought some Cutter insect repellent in a solid tube. At the elementary school there, it was recess; kids stood around on the playground twitching and swatting. I rolled the repellent over all exposed skin, stinging that morningâs razor cuts. On the river, when I began to sweatâchest waders can be suffocatingâdrops flavored with repellent got into my mouth and made my lips tingle. The flies orbited me at several quantum levels, chewed my forearms through my shirtsleeve vents, made inroads under my collar, took long excursions between T-shirt and skin. I continued upstream, swatting and casting, slithering over rocks, splashing, stomping down brush. I didnât see a single fish. Nothing touched my dry fly, I got no strikes on my nymph. It began to rain lightly, then to pour. I decided to go back to the car. I left the river and climbed a steep cliff and got lost. I found an old logging road, followed it to a gravel road. By a hard-to-explain theory, I reasoned that if I just kept turning left at every intersection I would end up at the car. The theory turned out to be correct; however, the counterclockwise loop I described in the process covered perhaps five miles. I went up and down hills, on paved roads and unpaved. Rain fell so hard it made a loud noise on my hat. Even the money in my wallet got wet.
This particular trip, I was going nuts because I had not
caught a fish in a while. In fact, I had fished
wading staffs, too. The smooth granite of the big boulders, cool in the morning, warm on a sunny afternoon, does not give you much to grab on to when the current starts to pull. In the fast sections, the sound of the main channels is so loud it overpowers the smaller noises of streamlets at the edge. Underneath the rushing is a deep, muffled grinding of the rocks in the bed. The sound is like a train passing under the street. I donât wade out in mid-current unless I really need to. At a place miles from any town I saw a boulder a ways out in the river with a strange marking. Slipping, sliding, turning sidewise against the current, nearly falling, I waded to it. The mark was a borehole, a hole drilled for blasting at a quarry or a construction site. There is an old quarry near the river someplace far upstream. I climbed onto the boulder, noticed a likely place I couldnât have reached before, braced my knee in the borehole, cast. My dry fly, an Ausable Wulff, had less than a second to sit on some slack water before the current would snatch it. A rainbow trout shot to the surface, took the fly, dived.
In 1950, the angling writer Ray Bergman, in his book Trout , described the West Branch of the Ausable:
A river rife with fishing legends, the home of numerous trout; a stream wildly fascinating, capable of giving you both a grand time and a miserable one; a stream possessing a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde temperament and a character strong enough to spread its fame from one corner of our country to the other. The Ausable commands your respect. It tests your skill and ingenuity. It is not a stream that will appeal to the timid, the weak, or the old. You like it best before you reach the age of forty. After that you wish you had youthful energy so
that you could enjoy it as you did before the years of striving for existence had sapped your strength and made you a bit fearful of slippery rocks and powerful currents.
He does not mention the blackflies. When I stepped from my car late one morning in June, the sunny forest of conifers and hardwoods directed them at me like a ray. I got back in the car immediately and drove to Au Sable Forks and bought some Cutter insect repellent in a solid tube. At the elementary school there, it was recess; kids stood around on the playground twitching and swatting. I rolled the repellent over all exposed skin, stinging that morningâs razor cuts. On the river, when I began to sweatâchest waders can be suffocatingâdrops flavored with repellent got into my mouth and made my lips tingle. The flies orbited me at several quantum levels, chewed my forearms through my shirtsleeve vents, made inroads under my collar, took long excursions between T-shirt and skin. I continued upstream, swatting and casting, slithering over rocks, splashing, stomping down brush. I didnât see a single fish. Nothing touched my dry fly, I got no strikes on my nymph. It began to rain lightly, then to pour. I decided to go back to the car. I left the river and climbed a steep cliff and got lost. I found an old logging road, followed it to a gravel road. By a hard-to-explain theory, I reasoned that if I just kept turning left at every intersection I would end up at the car. The theory turned out to be correct; however, the counterclockwise loop I described in the process covered perhaps five miles. I went up and down hills, on paved roads and unpaved. Rain fell so hard it made a loud noise on my hat. Even the money in my wallet got wet.
This particular trip, I was going nuts because I had not
caught a fish in a while. In fact, I had fished
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