Michigan Trout Unlimited
MICHIGAN Trout
The Last Mile
8
by David Batchelor
Fall/Winter 2021
Evening was approaching as we drove through the young stands of trees and slash barrens that used to be beautiful stands of mature pines and hardwoods. One could feel the arid heat sap their body. The sand and gravel two-track gradually narrowed as we approached the small opening in the trees where we would park and begin our trek to the river. The trail was indiscernible to those who do not know the area or have not bushwhacked the wilds. So it was that my quest to fish the most remote stretches of the Mason Tract began. The journey started over 40 years ago when I was working in the Michigan Department of Natural Resources under the leadership of Howard Tanner, whose vision established the incredible Great Lakes salmon fishery. Several of us in the Biology Section fished the Betsie, Manistee, and Pere Marquette rivers for fall-run steelhead and salmon using spinners provided by Jim Bedford, who was a chemist at the state water quality laboratory. William “Bill” Turney, the deputy director of environmental protection, introduced me to the world of fly tying and fishing in 1974. He was a very accomplished fly tier and fisher in his own right, having taken 20-inch trout on a size 20 fly. The allure and challenges of tying flies and fly fishing were as frustrating as they were rewarding. I was hooked. Bill taught me the basics and gave me a vise and some materials to get started. His patience was admirable. I remember showing him my first Adams and him saying, “That’s a very nice spider.” The heavily-weighted flies I tied for steelhead and salmon were laughable and probably illegal. They left welts on my head and never hooked a fish. Years passed before learning how to cast and mend line to get an unweighted fly down to the steelhead and salmon with a natural drift or swing to entice a take. So it was that my fly fishing journey began—a trip without a path and destinations unknown. Years later, Bill, a mutual friend Jim Powers, and I would take a trip to Alaska. Their tutelage provided the opportunity to join the Upper Manistee River Association. Another fork in the road landed a young biologist doing limnological research on the Great Lakes in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water as a senior policy advisor for market-based environmental programs. You just never know where your experiences and friends will take you! I first fly fished the Mason Tract of the South Branch Au Sable River in the late 70s, and it was then I met Ann and Jack Schweigert. They had come to the “North Country” at a young age during the 1920s when Northern Michigan
was recovering from the exploitation of the mid-late 1800s lumbering era. Ann once said, “The area was just greening over after being cut off when we first saw it. The loggers were gone, and it was before paved roads and highways began to bring people in…what once had been the great north woods.” They said they had “seen the best days of the river” and pictures of large brook and brown trout they caught benchmarked the size of trout taken in the 1930s. In 1949, they established Jack’s Rod and Fly Shop in Roscommon. The season opener always began there. Each trip was mixed with a long-awaited renewal of our friendship as well as a return to the river. Stocking up on Ann’s flies, Jack’s hand-tied tapered leaders, and fly dope were as much a tradition as the opener itself. They taught me how to read the river, about the fish that live there, to “leave no tracks,” and what it is to be a fly fisherman. Jack’s poem “The Fisherman” holds as much wisdom now as then: It’s not the man that has a rod
That costs him quite a sum.
It’s not the man that’s all dressed up
Or looks like a bum.
It’s not the man that flips his bait
On any little spot.
It’s the man that has the grateful smile,
If they’re biting, or if not.
It’s not the man the mixes up
The fishing with his beer,
It’s not the man that’s loaded up
So he can’t think things clear
It’s not the man the walks right through
Your favorite fishing spot,
It’s the man that has a grateful smile,
If they’re biting, or if not.
It’s not the man with no respect
For anglers on the stream,
It’s not the man that throws in cans
