A Tale of Two Trout Trips

Sometimes the fishing you squeeze into trips taken for other reasons beats the trips you take just to fish.

A flooded Pere Marquette

Trout trip in lower Michigan 

During the weekend of April 10-11, 2015, four friends/co-workers and I traveled to the Huron-Manistee National Forest in Michigan to fish the famous Pere Marquette River during the spring trout season. These are legendary waters considered by fly-fishermen to be perhaps the best in the Midwest--legendary steelhead waters that rival Western trout waters. On the drive to the Baldwin River Lodge in Baldwin, Michigan, as we passed many other rivers, including the Rogue, it became instantly clear that recent torrential rains had caused all rivers to overflow their banks by feet, to the point that all the surrounding woodland was flooded. It was nearly Biblical.

But when you commit to a trip, you follow through by giving it the best effort anyway. On Saturday late-morning, we hit the stretch of water that runs by the campground at Gleason's Landing. This was the best spot to accommodate the three fly-fishermen on the trip and the two spin-casters, including myself. Upriver from the boat launch it is flies only.

We had to wade through flooded timber just to get to where the riverbank ought to have been. A din of frog calls filled the air in these flooded parts. I threw Mepps spinners, a Rat-L-Trap and spoons into the high-and-fast river and only found snags.

Two fly-fishermen I encountered were chest deep in the river, near a large tree-fall, slinging drop-shot rigs to the opposite bank. No one I talked to that day caught anything.  After a few hours at Gleason’s Landing, we tried further upstream at some clay banks. The two spin-casters, me included, tied on flies to be in regulation. There was less available space to fish there, and more fisherman vainly trying their best, lining the bank. I gave it a minimal effort, as none of us really expected to hook up with anything.

We all had fun anyway and took away hopes for returning a different time when Mother Nature wasn’t so devastating.

For the two nights we stayed in town, we dined at a classic backwoods dive called Barski and at the Government Lake Lodge restaurant, a classic in-town Northwoods dive.

A Falls River brook trout

UP brook trout

The burial of my Uncle Mike--who tragically died last November--brought me to L’Anse, Upper Peninsula, Michigan, May 22-24, 2015. I was unable to attend his funeral the previous fall, so attending the burial was especially important to me. The gathering of family and friends on a rare summer-like day on the southern shore of Lake Superior was bittersweet. After the ceremony at L’Anse cemetery, some of us drove out Skanee Road to Finn’s bar to socialize, eat and collectively share in the loss.

Eventually, my family, some aunts and uncles (siblings of Mike), drove into the hills and back to Grandpa Al’s deer camp, which really was Mike’s charge the last 20 years or so. I saw how he renovated the old cabin, adding a room and an indoor sauna. I hadn’t been to that cabin probably since the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was a good visit, even with the swarms of mosquitos and rash of ticks.

That evening, back in L’Anse, I went to the power dam on the Falls River to try for some brook trout. I passed Mike’s empty house on the river to get there and almost parked in the driveway. I wanted to try the trout holes in the river just yards from his back porch. Visions of visiting him at his house and swimming in the river there filled my head. Instead, I parked a ways upriver at the dam and cast Mepps spinners into the froth. Nothing, until I walked downriver and tried a small hole. Bam--a lil’ brook trout hit and I reeled it in. It was just like old times…

Content with one catch-and-release, I went back to the hotel. The next day, before Jill and I and the kids drove to spend the night in Houghton, we walked along the river much further downstream, north of the train bridge and close to where it dumps into Keweenaw Bay. I cast into holes, but had no luck. I saw two fly-fishermen wading upriver and wish I had brought my waders. I also wish I had more time on that river.

Fishing the Falls River power dam in L'Anse