First, a message to Scubatim from shorthaul…“Na,na,na,na,na! We’re at Gates Lodge and you’re NOT! Na,na,na,na,na!”
We arrived at Gates Lodge around 10:30 p.m. Thursday night, dumped the gear in the room and had sammiches made with Doughgod’s Italian herb No-Knead bread and Sopraseto Italian sausages. Urp! Wash that down with an adult beverage, catch the follow-up to the VP debates by the talking heads who like to hear themselves talk, and sat down at the vise to get comforable tying some “Guide Flies.” Shut down the idiot box at 1:30 following a nightcap, and serenaded each other throughout the night with tunes from a deviated septum and other assorted notes (you fill in the noises here:_____________________ ).
0700 and Doughgod has the room filled with the fragrance of fresh coffee following a short walk down to the dock. Now we’re just waiting for the rest of the lodge to wake up and for someone to show up in the kitchen. Glad I remembered to bring my own coffee maker. Temperature at 0730 is 30F with clear skies nad no wind. Got the makins of a great day on the Au Sable.
More to come (with pictures) as the weekend progresses.
Doughgod, you are truly an evil man. I’m sitting here in Cincinnati in an office building looking out over our beautiful selection of crack houses - oops, our beautiful city while you’re fishing.
Joe is gonna feel a bit silly when he wakes up in the morning to the sight of the NBOF finishing off the last of his bread and coffee. Let me warn you, Jack and I have seen each other at the break of noon, and it ain’t a pretty sight…
I wouldn’t AT ALL, be either envious OR jealous, Jeff, of Dough God “fishing, while you’re working”. After all, in order to truly enjoy such a river as he’s on, a person must know “HOW” to fish, at least the basics, in order to truly appreciate such waters.
When someone spends 95% of their time in an apron, dusting their hands with flour and posting pictures of such “trophies” as “breads and muffins”, on a fly fishing forum site, there’s very little chance the fish have too much to worry about.
“Yeast” makes a terrible floatant I’m sure and with eggs, flour, and other baking ingredients being transferred from hands to fly line and flies I’m sure that “natural presentation” will be out of the question.
Now, SHORTHAUL, yes HE should worry about a lot things, considering. But the fish? No.
Well, it was a beautiful day on the Au Sable. We started the day with a killing frost and 30 F air temp. Everything was coated with a film of ice…
Of course, there’s even beauty in the bitter cold, as seen from Rusty’s dock;
We got out about 10:30 and headed to Canoe Harbor on the South Branch. The sun was out more than the clouds which made it quite comfortable with an extra layer under the vest.
It’s been cold enough up here to start showing the fall colors in a few places.
I never landed a fish today despite my efforts and Mike’s coaching, but I di have the biggest fish of the day on for awhile before performing a long distance release. Here’s one of the several nice little brookies landed by shorthaul with his latest 5wt. bamboo rod just completed on Thursday morning;
The day was not without a few laughs, like this “shortcut” Mike took trying to get out of the river and back on the path;
Tomorrow we’ll be heading up on the North branch to try our luck up there, and do a treck along the Main Branch later in the afternoon.
This sure as heck beats working. More to follow tomorrow.
First off Mike kiss my butt I digress. Great report Joe, really enjoyed the pictures and contrary to what you might think I am glad you guys are having a great time. Keep us posted.
Here’s Saturday’s report. We fished the North Branch from noon until about 4, then went to Guide’s Rest to finish the day before heading to Spike’s to redeem Mike’s 2 for 1 Spike Burger coupon. The highlight of the day was was coming across this new fly fisher catching his first trout on a fly rod. I’m sure you’ll all agree this is a life-changing event. Here’s his brown trout along with his proud Dad;
As we were walking back to the car to head to Guide’s Rest, the BWO’s started coming off and the trout put on a feeding frenzy. Here’s my biggest catch of the day caught on a size 22 BWO I tied. Mike did equally as well;
Yeah, it was a really special day for the Doughgod. LMAO I did get a couple of nice late day pictures upstream and downstream from Guide’s Rest;
Not sure if we’ll fish on Sunday before we leave for home, but we’re leaving that open until the time comes. Hope you’ve enjoyed our trip vicariously.
Wow, we had a bonus evening. We met two fellas at Spike’s who were also staying at Gates, and invited us to join them at the fire pit. Dave is a pyromaniac and his goal for the evening was to get the fire ring glowing red all the way around its circumference. Well, after about a cord of firewood, he was wildly successful. The fire also drew some other guests from the lodge and we ended up sitting around and enjoying the fire until 12:30 a.m. Great fun!
Yes, we did manage to drink all of Mike’s Dortmunder beers. Time to crash now, so we’ll check in in the morning.
