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River Report - September 23, 2015

The Old Au Sable Fly Shop Fishing Report.
Welcome to the official beginning of Fall! Hands down my favorite time of the year.

There is so much to be positive about. The weather is perfect. And I mean perfect. We’re seeing a trend of sunny, dry, mid-seventy degree days punctuated by cool, fifty degree nights.   You can pull on your Old Au Sable hoody in the morning while you’re drinking coffee on the deck or while sitting around the campfire at dusk. During the day you can strip down shorts and tee shirts.   And, at night, you get to pull a thick quilt up to your neck. It’s just ideal. One more reason we’re lucky to live in Northern Michigan.

Signs of Fall are all around us. While we’re not seeing the color change just yet, there are salmon in the coastal streams and rivers and the brook trout are starting to show their deep red and orange spawning suits. If you go salmon fishing and hook into one of those freight trains, give me a shout and tell me all about it because I won’t be there this year. It’s a fun game to play, but it’s hard to leave the quiet streams of Crawford and Kalkaska counties. Sticking to our rivers right now means turning you back on the crowds that salmon bring and it means angling for fish measured in inches rather than pounds, but it also means pulling up to empty parking spots and having, at least in thought, entire rivers to yourself. Perhaps nothing means Fall more than standing shin deep in a lonely river.

That might be a bit of a stretch . . . to me Fall is a package deal consisting of fishing, bird hunting, bow hunting for whitetails, fine weather and rainbowed ridges of color change.

We’ve got a spectacular exclamation point at the beginning of it all this year. On September 27th we’re set to see the annual harvest moon—the first full moon of Fall. It’s even better this year. We have a perfecta of fantastic that evening. Not only is it the harvest moon, it is a Supermoon—the time when the moon is closest the Earth and enormous. To make it better, the moon will rise just after seven and while reflecting the sun, should be a red moon—a Blood Moon. That would be amazing enough, but at 9 p.m. a total lunar eclipse will begin. This is an event that won’t be seen again until the year 2033.

I don’t know about you but I’ll be out there.

Enjoy a fine week and stop by if you get a chance,

Andy