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River Report - September 28, 2017

The Old Au Sable Fly Shop Fishing Report
I spent a week in Wyoming chasing Sage Grouse.   It’d been too long since I’d visited the West.  The Wyoming grasslands were spectacular with wide vistas and rolling hills and flat topped buttes dripping with green draws and drainages.  Seemingly everywhere Au Sable River Picwe looked Pronghorn Antelope crawled through the sagebrush.

It was easy to be enchanted. Huffing up a hard scrabble slope and cresting the precipice of a butte into a nearly limitless view has a way of making you feel very big and, instantly, extremely small.  The grandeur of Nature, especially when you’re immersed in it, forces perspective.

The trip home was long but somehow faster. As we crossed states, I thought more of the green woodlots and the grouse season that was already rolling.  About my house in the woods and about the gentle, jeweled streams and my friends and family that were excited to hear about my travels.

As we rounded the Southern horn of Lake Michigan my adrenaline pumped a little as I slipped back on The Mitten. Home is the best place to come back to—especially when you live in Northern Jack Grouse Pic 2Michigan.  I pulled into the driveway at three in the morning, started the coffee and waited for my wife to wake up for work and stayed awake until I could spend part of the seven o’clock hour with my boy before he went off to school.

As the weather turns to more Fall-like temperatures, I’ll get up early, sizzle an egg and pour steaming coffee into an old thermos and drive a few minutes down the road into some of the best upland bird coverts in the country. And I’ll move quickly to shuffle my fly boxes to include wet flies and streamers.

The fishing should get pretty darn good with the cool down. During the heat wave and new moon phase, nighttime mousing had been good.  A big September fish in the blackness is a little bit of light in the darkness.

Moving forward, we’ll catch fish on dryflies in the heat of the day and even more on small streamers dressed in olive, black and white. Brook and brown trout will play the game even through the traditional trout season close the last day of September.  We’re in for some great.  There’s just not enough Octobers.

Have fun out there,

Andy