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River Report & Grand Opening Info - July 23, 2015

The Old Au Sable Fly Shop Fishing Report
Man the Summer moves quickly. Trout season opened three months ago . . . seems like last week to me. And now here we are at the end of July, hosting the 68th annual Au Sable Canoe Marathon.

Though much of our 2015 trout fishing is in the history books, we have quite a lot of good angling ahead of us. The continued cool and wet Summer has the rivers and streams of Northern Michigan in great shape. Too often late Summer water levels fall too far and water temperatures warm to greatly to promote trout fishing. This year we we’ve enjoyed some solid July daytime fishing and it looks like we just may keep that trend in tact for the month of August.

The conditions have made the midnight mouse fishing a little bit fussy so far this year. We’re finding a few but determination and long hours have been necessary. Good stream flows allow the trout to spread out and occupy more of the stream bed and that makes it a bit more tricky for night fishermen to find the temperamental browns trout. To compound the after dark angler’s problem, we have a lot of young trout in the system this year and the apex predators have lots of meals from which to choose.

That’s good news for daylight anglers. We have good small dry fly fishing right now with Tricos and Olives and there are tons of young trout feeding on them. There are lots of willing fish available especially in the mornings and evenings. A savvy fly fisherman could start out at dawn with streamers or big attractor style dry flies and search for elusive and nocturnal brown trout still out on the prowl in the small morning light.  Anywhere there are juvenile fish pre-occupied with feeding, there just may be predators about.

The cool water temperatures and seasonally reduced fishing pressure have also helped to keep some better fish peeking out from their lairs in the daylight. We’ve landed a few dandies on large attractor and wet skunks.

August 1st, we’re hosting our Grand Opening Celebration at the Old Au Sable. We’ll have great food and prizes as well as great sales on great merchandise. You’ll find huge discounts on select SAGE fly rods as well some select Simms gear and terrific deals on starter rod and reel combos.

There will be a book signing by fly fishing author Anne Miller as well as a fly tying demonstration by local legend Jerry Regan.

And we will have some fun casting contests for everyone to give a try.

As a special gift for all of you, we are going to offer free fly casting lessons for beginning as well as intermediate anglers. If you know someone that has been curious about our odd little sport now is the time for them to give it try. I guarantee you’ll find good folks and good times here.

We’ll see you on the River,

Andy