THREE POINT EIGHT MILES OF RIVER
I started out to write about memorable trout. Not usually big fish . They were the ones I learned
something from. Or they involved someone or something unusual. As I started to make the list I realized
that most of them were from a stretch of the White River in Newaygo county, Mi that could be canoed in
less than an hour. There were fish from other places of course ; a monster brown from the Muskegon, an
eight inch rainbow in the flies only water on the P.M. that I cast to for twenty minutes because it was the
only thing rising, a twelve inch rainbow in the box canyon of the Henry’s fork that led to a wild hundred
yard float on my back through boulder strewn water , and of course trout from other parts of the White . It
became apparent though that most of my trout fishing memories were from that short stretch of river. A
surprising number of them do not really involve trout at all.
At the downstream end is a house below Warner Street where a woman I have never met came out
well after midnight one June evening to warn the fisherman her dog had been barking at earlier that there
was a severe thunderstorm on the way . I made it back to the car and out to the main road before
visibility dropped to nothing and tree branches began to blow across the road. Without her warning I
would have caught on the stream or at best on a narrow rutted two track that is not easily passable even in
good conditions. A bit upstream from there is where I caught my first fly rod brookie at the mouth
Of Mena creek. A short wade upstream from there I caught my first good sized brown casting an adams
(though I didn’t know what it was called then ) to fish rising in the moonlight on a bend hole.
It seems That there are memories attached to every hole and riffle and of course to every submerged rock that
I’ve stumbled over to rise dripping and cursing from the icy waters over the entire three point eight miles of
River as measured by the cursor on my GPS map. There is the hole where something huge, maybe a pike
from the nearby Robbins Lake outlet, completely destroyed a EEE nymph with a
strike that left all of the material hanging off of the rear bend of the hook. There is the run I marched up
one day catching a Brown on every cast and have never seen that many fish in there since. I can’t forget
the hole where a steelhead that had no business being above the dam pulled my entire leader off at the nail
knot. I have lost so many flies to the same trees trying to reach the same lies that I have decided that my
dad may not after all be the most stubborn man ever born. There’s the cottage where I ended up drinking
and chatting by a bonfire until five A.M. once. There is a fallen tree in front of a bank hole with a huge
brown that I can’t entice from his sanctuary.
It ends at the bridge on Baldwin Ave . Not Far upstream from there is another house where a man I
don’t know came out to warn me of an oncoming storm and offered to give me a ride back to my car. I
thanked him and said I would be alright with the twenty minutes the radio was predicting. Then fish
started rising all over the place and I got caught in the storm; waiting out the end of it under the bridge,
howling and laughing like a madman at every nearby crash of thunder .
If you have been fly fishing for any length of time I would bet that you have a piece of a river like that.
One where you know a least one or two of the landowners by name and have shared a drink with them.
One where you are surprised each spring by the changes nature has made but overall nothing changes.
One where you feel as at home as in your own living room. Mine is three point eight miles of the White River.
