Just a quick post since I've been delinquent in posting up the last few trips to the river. The wife and I decided to ditch the kids at the outlaws for the weekend and hit the river for some quality river therapy. I don't do the traditional anniversary gifts so a new pair of waders and boots is gold in my book. We knew it was the Blessing of the Bikes weekend in Baldwin but figured with the weather outlook being amazing, we'd go ahead and yank the boat northward and dunk it in and go with the flow.


Main street Sunday afternoon. They did shut downtown on M37 Saturday night which was cool. Bikes parked all over and state and city cops routing traffic around the mayhem. Looked like it was a great turnout.




testing out the waders and boots

She'd never been on the river or in the boat so figured I'd kill 2 birds with one stone. Armed with her new waders, a cooler of beer, some eats, dry flies and several rods we launched at 37 floating down to Gleason's. We didn't see another driftboat until the last hour of the trip. A few parties of canoes and kayaks were all we ran into all day, and those were few and far between. I was behind the sticks most of the day so didn't get time on the rod which was fine as my wife took to dry fly instantly. She grew up fishing but never fly fished. She was surprised how much she enjoyed the fly fishing as much as she did, trying to read the runs and get the fly where it needed to be, the finesse and technical aspects of it all (I didn't mention that we do a fare amount of 'beering' on our guy trips-what happens on the river…stays on the river). I can't say the fishing was stellar but we did have some good follows, 2 solid hits on dries (which, with a little more practice, she'll be ready for next time). We did manage to boat one massive pre-lake run brown (or so we hoped it would be one day).


BIG CATCH!


(waders had to come off...temp was pushing into the 80's)

We took our time and enjoyed the day and the float, along with a few deer and turkeys, some frogs, turtles and a woodpecker that jumped from tree to tree down a stretch with us.




lunch on the grill


enjoying the day

We did come upon something I hadn't seen before which was a 'pod' of lamprey doing their business. I pulled out the GoPro and decided to shoot some lamprey porn which is probably the worst porn I've ever witnessed. I have a buddy who worked in the UP at a lamprey research project and said the large one in the video below was a sea lamprey while the others are small native chestnut lamprey….either way they are some funky little bastards. I tried to net the sea lamprey but it kept slipping through my net. I had left my trout net back in the car so didn't have one with a tighter mesh.



All in all it was a great day on the river. Get up there and enjoy some dry fly action and streamer fishing if you get a chance to go.

Here's a video of the drive on Sunday at noon down Mainstreet. Lots of good people watching! (turn down your speakers, lots of wind)



A technical note, Gleason's ramp is now bare, no timbers and bolts to drag your boat across, which is good, but now you are dragging your boat across the dirt (or basically sandpaper) to the 6x6 timbers. Still not great, hoping they get mess figured out soon. No big trees or obstacles in case you venture up otherwise.


Did venture down to Custer to check out the defunct weir too. Nice to see it sitting and rusting.

PK