![\"IMG_0857\"](\"https:\/\/www.oldausable.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/IMG_0857.jpg\")
<\/a>We\u2019ve been struggling Up North to get the 2019 Michigan trout season kicked into gear. Each time the conditions get right and the weather looks like it\u2019ll let us find fish rising to our legendary Hendrickson hatch, Mother Nature puts on her steel toed boots and kicks us between the legs.<\/p>\nOur trout fishing can be as good as anywhere, but the stars and conditions have to align. We are, on the Au Sable, best when we\u2019re hatch match dry fly fishing.\u00a0 Our fishing depends on the hatches and our hatches depend on the weather and here we are in Northern Michigan.\u00a0 A place were the weather\u2019s mood is unstable at best.<\/p>\n
This Spring has been a cold, wet affair punctuated by a mere two days a week of sun and warm. And so, water temperatures and levels have fluctuated wildly.\u00a0 The graphs tracking both are But sometimes it all comes together and luck conquers all. You can only make that luck by honing your skills and by being out there as much as possible.<\/p>\n I caught a big one on an all wrong day. It was a sunny Tuesday and luck was everything.<\/p>\n I walked down a set of steps to a dock that I\u2019ve stood hundreds of time before to see if bugs were hatching. Normally I trudge right out onto the platform, but this time I inexplicably stopped on the last step before the dock.\u00a0 Bugs.\u00a0 Small fish rose sporadically in the riffle.\u00a0 A good sign.\u00a0 And then a heavy, plopping slurp came from under the catwalk perpendicularly to the current.\u00a0 A huge trout was under the dock and right against the bank.\u00a0 She was almost directly under my feet.<\/p>\n There was no cast upstream to the trout\u2014the dock was only inches from the stream\u2019s surface. The only option was to float a one-time shot from upstream.\u00a0 I\u2019d need a take and luck to land it.<\/p>\n One cast. One chance.\u00a0 If the trout doesn\u2019t eat it, you\u2019ve got to drag the fly unnaturally upstream and the fish knows the game.\u00a0 It nearly never works out.<\/p>\n The fly landed cleanly and floated freely. The fish gulped.\u00a0 My only hope was that the trout would run upstream or down.\u00a0 I supposed it would turn into the dock pilings and break me off.\u00a0 My brown trout peeled line downstream, away from me and under the catwalk.\u00a0 Pulling that fish upstream, under the dock and back to me was impossible.\u00a0 Downstream my line stretched under the walk between me and the trout.<\/p>\n I kept the line tight and ran to the catwalk as the fish arced line to the center of the river. The line was bellied some and tight in river flow.\u00a0 So I dropped my rod and let it float under the dock as I The rest is a fish picture. Crazy.\u00a0 I\u2019ll remember it forever.<\/p>\n Sometimes fish stories are real.<\/p>\n I normally don\u2019t take these sort of fish pictures. They\u2019re too hard on the trout.\u00a0 But a story that sounds like bullshit needs a picture.<\/p>\n Go make your own luck.<\/p>\n Thanks for checking in, and I\u2019ll see you on the River.<\/p>\n Andy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Old Au Sable Fly Shop Fishing Report Every Spring of every trout season there\u2019s a great fish story. This time it\u2019s mine. We\u2019ve been struggling Up North to get the 2019 Michigan trout season kicked into gear. Each time the conditions get right and the weather looks like it\u2019ll let us find fish rising … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199,148,159,164,155,84,7,160,154,166,5,68,158],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.oldausable.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>mountains and valleys.\u00a0\u00a0 Fishing predictability has been dubious at best.\u00a0 The science behind what makes bugs hatch is vastly incomplete.\u00a0 And the measurable factors that make trout rise is a moving target of water levels and worms and trout par and insect nymphs in the flow.\u00a0 Simply, no one really knows or can control the fishing.<\/p>\n<\/a>clambered over the weathered boards to the other side.\u00a0 As my rod drifted under the currents unattended, the trout started to jump.\u00a0 My fancy rod and reel floated above the bottom and I plunged an arm into the river and grabbed it and tightened the line again.\u00a0 It jumped more.<\/p>\n