Blog & Latest Updates
Fly Fishing Articles
Insects by Common Name
> > Michigan Salmon Wars: Pere Marquette River Sept 2011
Oldredbarn has attached these 13 pictures. The message is below.
This fish was caught upstream and around the head of the island at the Green Cottage access. It took me downstream, in front of other anglers, and around the island before it was stopped. All-the-while the 70 year old+ Doug was running a head of me yelling for me to keep up...
These fish are called "skunks". They are smaller males just about tapped out with spawning. They turn black with white trim...Skunk like...They are on auto-pilot. In the last throes of dying. Their little brains filled with the reverie of the spawning dance. You could practically walk up and touch them.
The Guru's of the PM...Doug there with the pipe is a retired Luthern minister and a long time friend of Carl Richards. His wife proof-read some of the manuscript for "Fly Fishing Strategy". Carl was their family's dentist...
Doug is 70+, still plays pickup basketball...and ran me to exhaustion...He spent the day trying to break me of my trout fishing ways...Old habits are difficult to break.
I took this fish below a beautiful spawning female. He was one of 6-10 other boys vying to pass on their DNA. This fish was "fair" hooked. I then went back to the same group and floated my flies through again and unfortunately the hen took it and I fought her for some time, all up and down the river before she snapped off right at the net...I would of loved a photo of her...She was huge! The loss of the fish was my rookie mistake...I tried to help out as Doug was landing her by holding the reel for a mere second as she decided to give it one more go at freedom...She won! I later watched as she moved back over her redd but left her in peace...If you can call it that with all those males hassling her.
| Oldredbarn | September 30th, 2011, 10:43 am | |
 Posts: 2608 | Visited the PM this week and it has re-ignited this old brain so I'll warn you up front I have a lot to say here. For now I am just going to post the photos and then discuss them as we go along. We started out putting the boat in at the "Green Cottage", a place of some fame to anglers in Michigan and a spot I last visited in May of 1991. I floated with two friends, Doug Niemi, the old man of the river, and my good friend George. As you may notice in the pics of George, he is wearing a back brace and we teased him by calling him a Ninja Turtle...It's a long story, but he fell off a roof and probably shouldn't of been out wrestling with 20+lb salmon...He's still in PT. Most of you that have read my posts know I tend to chasing trout with dries, and though I like to tell stories, that there is a fair element of truth in them...Remembering, of course, I am a fisherman after all...:) But the following should be read as a fishing report and I'm the reporter... We put the boat in Wedsnesday morning early at the Green Cottage and put George in it and Doug and I walked it across the stream and down a ways from the access. There is a little island right across from the access. Doug had brought me a rod to use and I watched him as he strung it up so I could see the technique he uses etc. He knows I'm a trout guy and that "chuck-and-duck" isn't really my thing...So, he takes me upstream away from the boat and shows me how he does it a couple times and hands me the rod... Across from us is a nice dark run with salmon holding in it and I step out and make my first cast...It floats nicely through the salmon untouched and the egg fly on the terminal end is hammered by a 19" Brown holding behind them! First friggin cast! My friend George is sitting in the boat laughing his ass off and screaming, "No friggin way!? It's only appropriate that Spence's first fish be a trout!" Doug said something about "I guess that will do!" and "That's a nice looking Brown"...I'm stunned looking at my second largest fish of the season and we take no pictures...Doug released the trout and we stood there smiling and shaking our heads...What a start! Here are the photos...I need to post them before I time out here and I'll give you the play-by-play later. Spence | |
| "Even when my best efforts fail it's a satisfying challenge, and that, after all, is the essence of fly fishing." -Chauncy Lively "Envy not the man who lives beside the river, but the man the river flows through." Joseph T Heywood | ||
| GONZO | September 30th, 2011, 12:43 pm | |
Site Editor "Bear Swamp," PAPosts: 1681 | It floats nicely through the salmon untouched and the egg fly on the terminal end is hammered by a 19" Brown holding behind them....my second largest fish of the season....Ahhh, king salmon season....I can smell it just by looking at your pictures, Spence. As tempting as it is to tease you about all of the ways that you seem to have violated your avowed preferences, I'll just say "congrats, pal!" Looks like you enjoyed your transgressions. :) | |
| Jmd123 | September 30th, 2011, 1:31 pm | |
 Posts: 2611 | GREAT photos Spence (excepting the missing one with the brown trout - how could you not?)!!! Glad you got yourself a salmon in addition to the brown. Next week after my field work (lower Clinton River - should I take my 8-weight and some Glo-bugs???) I will be chasing same up here on the Au Sable (if there's any left in there) and probably the Rifle. Again, congrats! Next time you'll have to see if you can get them to hit a skated dry fly - like an Atlantic salmon-style Bomber?? Jonathon | |
| No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere... | ||
| Oldredbarn | September 30th, 2011, 5:00 pm | |
Posts: 2608 | Spence. As tempting as it is to tease you about all of the ways that you seem to have violated your avowed preferences, I'll just say "congrats, pal!" Looks like you enjoyed your transgressions. :) G. I was floating with a minister. Does that count for anything? ;) Like I said above my experience has left me with a lot on my mind. I hope to share some of this here, but we had a computer go down here, and I'm the chief cook and bottle washer and had to take care of getting it straightened out. My friend has been trying to get me up to the PM for 20 years. He knows it really isn't my cup-o-tea. He lost a very good friend last year who was his fishing partner and recently fell off a roof (he's a roofer) and is in re-hab. He called to tell me that Doug wanted to fish with us...We did not pay for the float, though we made sure we filled up his truck and I covered the flies etc that I left enbedded in fish. Glad you got yourself a salmon Jonathon..."A Salmon"...as in singular? I cannot tell you how many fish I hooked Wednesday. Landed...well that's a different story. I caught fish all damn day! From the first few moments of our float when I caught the Brown until I just couldn't handle it any more. I had an upper body work out better than my trips to the gym, and had terrible leg cramps every time I moved funny from wading and trying to keep up with Doug. :) We had to re-build my leader completely from scratch 4 times from fish charging in to schrubs & structure that I just couldn't prevent...I would of needed a wire cable and a winch wrapped around a tree to stop these shits...They went where they damn well pleased and I had to follow. The last pic there where I'm holding the fish was near the end of the day...We stopped around 4:00pm or so. My friend wasn't in shape for an all day fish and he rode along for the last half the day...If he were to tell his PT docs where he was he would have shit to pay! :) I had taken two nice fish from this one area that actually took my fly. The third from the same area turned out to be the proper end to the day...I ran the fly through these hyped up males and foul hooked the largest one near his tail...I heard Doug as he turned to my buddy sitting in the boat say, "We are going to be here awhile, Spence has him in the ass-end!" This fish went north, then south, east & west and all the time Doug is coaching from the sidelines for me to keep side pressure on this fish..."Forget trying to lift him Spence, that ain't gonna work...He's not one of your Au Sable Browns!" He finally headed downstream and blew by the boat and Doug at about a hundred miles per hour, so hot that he decided not to try and net it as it went by...I was running. Doug was running and yelling instruction...The last I saw of this fish he was more than a half a block away acting every bit like he was heading back to Lake Michigan...The fly came loose and I had a mile of running line out straight on the water. I turned to the boys who were laughing and said, "Well fellas...I think that will just about do it for today!" :) Spence A funny aside...When I mention about that we had to re-build leaders etc...I mean that the only thing left was running line when I reeled back in. Doug went in to the shrubs looking for my leader and fly and came back with 7 others that were lost in the trees...I actually used one of the found flies later in the day! The first picture above of my friend with his rod bent over, if you look across the river at the down group of trees, that's where I had my rear handed to me the first time...He crashed head long in to and under that and that was all she wrote. | |
| "Even when my best efforts fail it's a satisfying challenge, and that, after all, is the essence of fly fishing." -Chauncy Lively "Envy not the man who lives beside the river, but the man the river flows through." Joseph T Heywood | ||
| GONZO | September 30th, 2011, 5:35 pm | |
Site Editor "Bear Swamp," PAPosts: 1681 | G. I was floating with a minister. Does that count for anything?Prayers and forgiveness, Spence. ;) | |
| Jmd123 | September 30th, 2011, 5:50 pm | |
Posts: 2611 | Well, Spence, ya didn't say how many!! Jonathon | |
| No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere... | ||
| Entoman | September 30th, 2011, 11:38 pm | |
 Posts: 2604 | Spence -G. I was floating with a minister. Does that count for anything? ;) Depends... Did he give you absolution? Oh wait! Takes a priest for that. Sorry Spence, you're SOL. Better do a Novena to St. Peter or the ghosts of the Au Sable are gonna hound you next season.... Looks like you had quite a week! Are you still sore? I know, rhetorical question. It's hard to feel too sorry for a guy who can't move because he's so stiff from fighting big fish. You're gonna have to get some rehab tips from Tony.:) Kurt | |
| "It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman | ||
| Jmd123 | October 1st, 2011, 1:05 am | |
Posts: 2611 | Funny thing, Spence - you've just had a lot of fun on big fat salmon, and I've just had a lot of fun on pretty little brookies...as someone once said, "Whatever floats your boat..." Perhaps my turn on big fat salmon will come soon? All this rain and our recent cold front - time to get out and warm up the 8-weight... Jonathon P.S. "That's Pure Michigan"... P.P.S. No slinky weights for me - I can handle dumbell eyes, even if they're made out of tungsten (got some tied up!), but those slinky weights are for spinning gear... | |
| No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere... | ||
| Oldredbarn | October 3rd, 2011, 11:54 am | |
Posts: 2608 | There seems to be an under-current running through most of the replies to my post here...There is a hint that when Spence finally crosses the river Styx, in his Simms wading attire, he will find his beloved George Selwyn Marryat and George's old pal Frederic Halford standing on the further shore. They will be in a sour mood, arms firmly crossed across their chests, and will indicate that the poor dutchman is no longer welcome...He'll be banished to the darker shore to fish eternally with the other George, George Edward MacKenzie Skues, Frank Sawyer, and Jim Leisenring...:) Where to start? A little personal history follows mixed in with that of the Great Lakes State. First, the non-native species in Michigan rivers issue...That ship had sailed nearly a half-century before I was born. There is little that I can do to change this. The Pere Marquette's headwaters start in Lake County just west of Reed City which is the county seat of Osceola county which is where my father's side of the family is from and where I spent my summers and hunting seasons with my grandparents. By all rights the PM should be my "home-waters"...Instead I fell in love with the Au Sable... When I first read, as a younger man, Ernie's, "Portrait of the Pere Marquette" (a must read if you haven't) I truelly related to this story. There is a story he tells there about when he was a young man camping on the PM with his father. A local shows up with a couple small kids looking to bait fish and Ernie's dad tells this man about another place where he had heard that the fishing was better. I had imagined that this man could of been my grandfather and my dad and his brother...The dates don't completely add up, but its close. This guy later shows up to thank Ernie's father and he's carrying a stringer of fish. My grandfather was born, in 1908, on the family homestead (two brothers had served in the Civil War and connected two 40's when you could homestead here in MI). He told me a story of how they used to trout fish when he was a kid. They walked upstream in the middle of the creek in the middle of the night with kerosene lamps and spears. I am not clear of the actual dates, but for years here in Michigan snagging, though probably frowned upon by our DNR, was not prohibited. They then regulated it to particular areas before they made it completely illegal. I haven't been able to confirm this at this time, but I was told that there were no plants of salmon in the PM. The implication is that they found their way there from other Lake Michigan rivers that were. The PM is special since it has no dams and the fish move up in to the smallest of feeder streams to naturally spawn. Not unlike the story Jason told us of Burbot harvesting in Alaska there is a fair number of folks that haven't stopped snagging eventhough there are fines involved. Call it a sub-culture if you will. The night before our float, my friend and I visited an access sight below the flies only/catch-and-release section we would float the next day. It is an area known for its snaggers. We arrived at dusk and without rods etc hiked the banks looking at fish and exploring. We ran in to a family there. There was grandma, the "boys" fishing, the daughter-in-law holding their 8 month old baby...This is well after dark and the boys were in the woods trying to find a dead limb big enough to run through the gills of a few rather large fish which they hauled back up to the car hanging from it...I whispered to my friend that they were probably distant cousins of mine...:) (I have been told that by hook-or-crook I'm related to 60% of Osceola Co on my grandfathers side and the other 40% on my grandma's side). At first everyone seemed a bit stand-off-ish when they saw a couple guys hiking up without gear...Until they saw me drinking from my Molson. I had a rather pleasant conversation with grandma and the daughter-in-law and even teased the little one... I am not fond of the leader set-up we used since it tends to foul hooking and there is no doubt about this...Other than the Brown I caught right off the bat, of the fish I actually landed, two were fair hooked. I don't know how many of the others that basically I couldn't get to the net were foul hooked, but I would bet it was the majority. About 15-20 years ago one of the Johnson brothers who owned the Johnson Lodge then (now the Pere Marquette Lodge) used to visit us at the Michigan Fly Fishing Club. Afterwards he and I would talk and the majority of our conversations were about other methods of fishing the salmon run where the foul-hooking ratio could be lowered. The so-called "slinky" was popular back then. I mentioned that the last time I visited the PM was 1991. In part, my lack of visits had to do with the above, and on that 1991 trip my friend found a snagging rig hooked in a log along the flies-only section. I am curious what some of you think of what I've just written here...Sorry for it's length! I guess the old adage about "big fish attracting big problems" would be appropriate here. One nice thing about my visit, other than floating a beautiful river instead of hanging in the office, was that there were dead salmon scattered all over the bottom of the river. I couldn't help but think how much protein this created for our favorite "bugs" living in that river. Spence Have any of you ever heard of Idlewild? It is a little town right next to Baldwin (the center of PM fishing). There is a lake there and way back in the 20's it was a resort for blacks from Detroit & Chicago. Sort of like the spots in upstate NY where folks from the city could escape in the summer. Duke Ellington and Count Basie, among others played there and it had its moment of fame...Long since gone now. Here are some other names from the area...Nirvanna, Walhalla, Luther, Free Soil, Brethern, Freeman's Creek, Bliss...See a pattern? :) You think a few dutch or germans are running around these parts? ;) I forgot...A tribute to Andy Ronney since last night was his last on 60 Minutes...He once said, "Vegetarian is a very old Indian term for poor hunter." ;) | |
| "Even when my best efforts fail it's a satisfying challenge, and that, after all, is the essence of fly fishing." -Chauncy Lively "Envy not the man who lives beside the river, but the man the river flows through." Joseph T Heywood | ||
Quick Reply
You have to be logged in to post on the forum. It's this easy:
Related Discussions
| Title | Replies | Last Reply |
| Re: First Trip of the TroutBums In General Discussion by Jjlyon01 | 1 | Oct 20, 2008 by Troutnut |
| Re: automatic reels In Gear Talk by TNEAL | 2 | Jul 5, 2014 by Roguerat |
Re: West Branch Delaware     In Fishing Reports by Wbranch | 3 | Jun 5, 2017 by Wbranch |
| Re: New Entry In General Discussion by Hooked | 4 | Apr 21, 2011 by Motrout |
| Re: Taking a new flyfisher out for the first time. In Fishing Reports by Michimike | 3 | Nov 11, 2022 by Martinlf |
| A "hatching" mouse In General Discussion by Troutnut | 0 | |
| Re: old(very old) trout boat In General Discussion by Walt01 | 1 | Aug 9, 2021 by Wbranch |
| Re: brown trout coloration research paper In General Discussion by Ike | 3 | Sep 19, 2013 by Sayfu |
| Alaska In Fishing Reports by Leakyboots | 0 | |
| Re: GD Shuck In the Mayfly Species Ephemera guttulata by Martinlf | 10 | Jun 2, 2013 by Crepuscular |
Troutnut.com is copyright © 2004-2024 Jason
Neuswanger (email Jason). See my FAQ for information about use of my images.
privacy policy
privacy policy