Wherein I teach ...

Two weekends ago I broke my long standing prohibition on teaching any one fly fishing. Being a fly fisher of modest skill and less success, and a caster who's talents lie on the border between bad and execrable I feel I am not really qualified to teach any one about this.

On the other, the brother in law of 30 years wanted to go to fly fish for trout on the family property on the Escanaba. He has demonstrated some proficiency with other loathsome arts a spinning rod and since he already occupied a position as a university professor and Dean of the College of Art and Sciences at Dominican University, I felt his basic life skill set was already as useless as one could possibly conceive so what difference did it make if he learned to fly fish poorly? you know, when you are at the bottom you can only go up right?

To his credit he did say he would use one of the broom handles that masquerade as resident fly poles as he didn't want to risk breaking one of my "good" rods. I gave him a quick casting lesson and after 5 minutes on the lawn at the cabin, I said why not try my Scott G2 8 foot 4 inch 4 weight ? after one bad false cast - he did agree to use that rod instead of the telephone pole he had been waving around in the air.

The man carefully positioned above the tailout of the big pool on the family water. This spot always holds a trout or two, except for those times when it doesn't. He's dropping a dry fly fished down and across in traditional U.P. style.



This time the tail out contained a trout. First trout on a fly rod and a dry fly.






He fortunately went on to get about another five trout to rise to the fly hooking several including one nice one, but failed to land any of them thank dog.

Any U.P.er can tell you ...

In today's Wall Street Journal a story about Hemingway and his yarn about the "big Two-hearted River"...

"The narrative begins with Nick Adams, Hemingway's protagonist and alter-ego, having just gotten off the train in Seney, a town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He hikes into the wilderness and fishes for trout. The problem is that the Two-Hearted River lies about 20 miles north of Seney and flows into Lake Superior. On foot, it's virtually impossible to get there with Nick's apparent speed. The Fox River -- a perfectly good stream for brook trout -- runs right through the town, on its way to Lake Michigan.



Hemingway visited Seney with a couple of friends in 1919. Wouldn't he have just fished the Fox?"

This was settled long ago, in the 1960's in fact by a real fishing writer, one of the greats, and one of the U.P.'s own sons. Read the chapter about this topic in Robert Traver's ( née John Voelker) book "Trout Magic". Some other good stuff in there as well.