On December 19, 2009 Rusty Gates passed away. He owned and operated Gates AuSable Lodge near Grayling, Michigan. I liked Rusty. So did a lot of other people. He liked bird dogs. He loved to fly fish. He drove an old truck. I didn’t know him personally. He helped me select flies in his shop just like he helped thousands of others. But, I loved his writing. I loved his stream reports. They were about fishing, but they were also about caretaking. Rusty was one of the founders of the Anglers of the AuSable organization. Their newsletter is called “The Riverkeeper”. The Riverkeeper symbol is a Kingfisher. Today I’m adopting “The Heron” as the unofficial symbol for my observations. Why not? Rusty may be gone but his spirit lives within us.
I took some friends down the Huron River in my drift boat yesterday. In my opinion, the fishing is a whole lot sweeter when you take a day off work to do it. Also, kids are in school and there are less people on the river. There’s a lot of preparation that goes into a drift boat trip. I started scouting the river a few weeks ago. I read maps; I talked to outfitters and friends. There’s also a lot boat preparation. I won’t go into all the details for that. The to do list was long. By the time the day comes for the actual trip there’s a huge sense of relief.
The weather was cool and cloudy at 8:00 am when my friends showed up at my house. Fishermen always want to get on the water early even when the fishing report says fishing is better later in the day. But, since we had never been on this stretch of river it was a wise decision to get an early start.
We put the boat in around 10 am in the city of Flatrock. The fishing report said the Smallmouth Bass feed on larger baitfish in this section since it runs unobstructed all the way to Lake Erie. We all purchased a few big flies from Colton Bay Outfitters for the trip. The water was silty and the high water marks indicated a big fluctuation in water levels. But there were still a lot of Cardinal Flower lining the banks. It took the sun a few hours to come out. When it did come out the fishing turned on. We fished all the likely holding areas and many of them produced not one fish but three or four. At one point the fishing was so good we had one Smallmouth Bass jump into the boat….SERIOUSLY! That’s a true fishing story that I’ll never forget.
My goal for the day was to get my drift boat out. I was happy to see my friends catching fish. I put the anchor down to make a few casts to catch a few myself. But, mostly I rowed and observed the surroundings. I saw a lot of Great Blue Heron, Hawks, White Egrets, Kingfishers, Blue jays, one Green Heron and one Bald Eagle. It was wooded mostly along this stretch of river. My friend spotted a Redbud among the Silver Maples and Sycamores. Erosion is everywhere. Bank stability efforts were everywhere. If you ever wonder what happens to demolished concrete blocks, bricks and old sewer pipe look to a river’s edge that runs through an industrialized area and that’s where you’ll find it. I started to daydream about Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”. We were not going up the Congo. We were going down the Huron. But there was a sense that we were heading through the darkness as we traveled into the heart of industry. I wondered if I should report to you Kurtz’s last words, “The horror, the horror” or should I only mention the good fishing? I decided to give you both. I am not selling guided fly fishing trips. I am not selling an outdoor magazine. I’m not selling anything. I’m just a Heron and these are my observations. Among the many Smallmouth Bass caught yesterday were just as many lawn chairs, old tires, beer cans and miscellaneous plastic junk in the river. I don’t believe people don’t care about the river. I think they do. But I learned a long time ago that caring doesn’t fix things. Action does. I guess the next time I fish the lower Huron I’ll need to bring a garbage bag. I think that’s what Rusty would do.
We finished the day at the Oakwoods Metropark with some grilled salmon, cheese, potato salad and cold drinks in an old Oak savanna. The metro parks are the souls antidote to the poison of industry in my opinion. We need more of them. I remarked how great it would be to live on the border of a metropark. We made a toast to a great day of fishing, watched the sun go down and headed home.
The Heron 