Peter M. Devlin

Fish Michigan

It finally happened last night.  The day after pop icon Michael Jackson and legendary hottie Farrah Fawcett passed away, I caught my biggest ever brown trout on a dry fly.  We had worked out some kinks, we had picked any and every available brain.  We had a plan, got to the river early, and were drinking the first cold beers of the trip (a cooler helps) when night began its slow fall.  And there on the far bank, under the cover of darkness, mighty trout began to show.  One rose off a low pine in the soft side of an eddy, another two started working the outside seam of a debris current.

These were large trout, twenty-inchers.  The rises were not delicate, they were precise displacements of large volumes of water, like the open end of a bucket meeting the surface.  We swung slowly over towards the first line of fish, Nick cautioning; “Be patient man, be patient, we have all freaking night.”  We did have all night, but we didn’t need it.  Just as darkness settled completely in, crossed its legs and prepared to stay awhile, I got my shot.  Around the stroke of midnight hex spinners were on the water and the fish were feeding in their rhythms.*

The night before, Nick, the eccentric college pal that everyone seems to still have around late in life, and I, first whet our tongues on the hatch. Neither of us really knew what we were looking for, I think we figured we would just know.  We didn’t really know, we had just passed one too many good runs amidst indecision and were both rapt with anticipation.  Will we see bugs, will we see fish, it will be dark soon, was that a Hex, this could be good, it is nearly dark.  And sitting there in a sportpal canoe that old-timers…a shortage on these hallowed waters of which there is not, seem to appreciate, anchored in the swift mighty waters of the lower AuSable, the sun went well behind the trees and a whole world closed in on us.  There was a current that transcended the river, a current in the air and through the trees, like there was a wind up, yet the night was still and pensive.

“I think something crazy is about to happen,” I said to Nick.  He gave a laugh, more of a giggle, that let me know without seeing his face that his eyes were wide, and that he felt it to.  “I think they are in the trees or something, do you hear that?”

An organic, metallic slur was building in the air around us.  It wound up to a hum and filled our ears and noses and sightless eyes.  Then air met water and the sounds of good trout feeding around us projected across the river and into the night.  We figured there must be some bugs on the water, and maybe the sound and energy had been connected.  I ventured a look with my headlamp.  The light pierced out over the water and within seconds the biggest mayfly I’ve ever seen flew into my mouth and two more down my neck.  I scrambled for the switch.  Nick let out a caucouffany of yee-haws.  “Dude, did you look up?”  I hadn’t, I was too busy avoiding the bugs.  “Turn your light on for a second and shine it up,” he goaded.  What happened next is a moment branded to memory.  In a split second’s freeze-frame of light shining up from the boat, an ocean of Hexagenia Lambata was shown to us.  They swirled and dipped above us, and there were so many on the water that in places they were wing-to-wing sixty feet to the far bank.

I switched the light off and tried to think about fishing.  We were finally there, finally a part of the madness, a hatch so complete, so thick, so aggressive, that you felt a tinge of fear mixed with your elation and adrenaline.

*I took a shot at the first fish off the gunnel.  I made a couple of hurried casts, but the angle wasn’t right and the line was bellying downstream too fast.  Nick took a poke with no success.  Then the boat swung slightly on the anchor’s fetch and made the cast a literal drop in the fish’s pocket.  A made a pitiful little overhand cast and it happened, a good fish exploded on my fly and I missed him.  I was crushed.  Nick tried to encourage, and sure enough a fish resumed feeding near that last lye, but a little downstream.  I watched him for a minute, and flipped the size-2 foam spent-wing spinner towards him at what I judged to be the right time.  I had that weightless two-Mississippi natural drift and the trout came up.  He had eaten, and I had been ready.  I was too shocked to mess it up and instinct enveloped the moment.

A minute into it I noticed the big-dipper shinning bright and low over the treetops and the gentle rush of the river as I fought a trophy wild brown trout that I could not see on an invisible rod, through a reel that begged questions of the night.  To connect with such a fish in the dark seems a great triumph.  You feel like you’ve done something, beaten the odds.  Drink deep of this moment I recall thinking as I held the fish against the Au Sable’s steady lapping pace.

I was reminded of the first night after I arrived in Michigan, surrounded by an economic depression of gross proportions.  I had been in a kitchen in Detroit, somehow on the doorstep to world-class fishing, and it started with the water.  Drink deep. First we wound down to the lake to soak our feet in its newly warmed waters and drink in the sun.  Then Nick held up a glass of “the best water in the world”.  Look at this stuff, he urged.  A love of the place you call home is contagious.  I didn’t quite get it at first.  Weren’t we in the land of car factories, race riots, grit and grime?  And then I realized that he was just as aware as me that we were going up north to fish the Au Sable in the morning.  It hit me hard, its always worth it to go fishing, it’s the only thing to do in fact.  Drink deep, get the rods in order and cast towards tomorrow.