SEPTEMBER 2002 Number 39 The RIVERWATCH THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF THE ANGLERS OF THE AU SABLE INSIDE EDITORIAL Gary LaFontaine Remembered FEATURES Marriage and the AuSable Why I Love the North The Eye Vice Flies for Michigan Waters Tieing the Humpy REPORTS Anglers’ Endowment Fund River Etiquette Rules BOOK REVIEWS The Raw and the Cooked, and many more. EDITORIAL THE RIVERWATCH The RIVERWATCH is a quarterly pub- Remembering an expert lication of The Anglers of the Au Sable, BY WM. A. SODEMAN, JR., M.D., J.D. a non-profit corporation dedicated to the protection of the Au Sable River, its watershed and environs. Dues are $25 ary LaFontaine died on January even a modest current a trout must per year. For membership contact: 4th of this year of Lou begin to rise when a floating fly first Gehrig’s disease. The prema- come into view. Any delay and the fly is The Anglers of the Au Sable G ture death from disease or trauma of swept past. The trigger for the rise is 403 Black Bear Drive anyone is a tragedy. The loss of Gary probably size and shape. As the trout Grayling, MI 49738 LaFontaine in the midst of his contribu- gets closer to the fly visual acuity www.ausableanglers.org tions to trout behavior and their inter- improves and the trout uses a second set action with insects is beyond measure. of clues to identify potential food. These DIRECTORS Most who have written about Gary clues include color, drag, light pattern LaFontaine knew him and fished with and appendages. The trout just ignores President him. I knew him only through his things that are not on its good or bad Rusty Gates, Grayling, MI work. list. That is probably why it ignores the Vice President Gary LaFontaine studied trout behav- hook hanging out, at least until it gains Jay Gleason, Novi, MI ior. I guess you could say we a little hook experience and all do a bit of that each files that element in its Treasurer day on the stream but bad column. To catch a Pat Dwyer, Rochester, MI not as a scientist. fish your fly has to Secretary Gary’s tools were have all of the trout John Novak, Ypsilanti, MI radio telemetry of identifiable good the fishes position, elements and none Directors observation of of those that trout Tom Baird, Okemos, MI behavior underwa- has personally Alan Bersted, Grayling, MI ter and, where it learned are bad. Wayne Blessing, Ann Arbor, MI was too shallow to Don Boyd, Wayland, MI Gary was busy iden- dive, observation from Dick Daane, Ann Arbor, MI tifying these elements a blind. Mark Daane, Chelsea, MI and incorporating them John Dallas, Troy, MI He didn’t invent these tools, into his fly designs. This Dan Drislane, Farmington Hills, MI they have been around in some cases for resulted in flies substantially differ- Duke Grimshaw, Grosse Pointe, MI generations. Dr. James A. Henshall in ent than traditional designs. For exam- Bruce Johnson, Rochester, MI an article in the June 1907 Field & ple the Halo Emerger. The emerging Mike Krause, Ann Arbor, MI Stream talked about diving in the mayfly is meat and potatoes for trout. Bob Linsenman, Rose City , MI stream to look up at a floating fly and he Once emerged from the shuck the fly is Terry Lyons, Leslie, MI also suggested putting a mirror in the gone unless humid conditions slow the Ed McGlinn, Farmington Hills, MI bottom of a barrel of water to view the drying of the wings. Trout key on the Tess Nelkie, Tawas City, MI floating fly. Both the diving and the fly crawling out of the shuck. An artifi- Don Sawyer, Okemos, MI mirror were tools used by Gary. cial would float half under and half Dean Schmitt, Toledo, OH above the film. Wings would be visible Dorothy Schramm, Pentwater, MI Henry Wells in his 1885 book Fly-Rods and the point of penetration of the film Jim Schramm, Pentwater, MI and Fly-Tackle carefully described produces a white spot. Only the Bill Sodeman, Toledo, OH using a glass tank to get the fishes eye Klinkhammer or one of Ian Moutter’s John Wylie, Grayling, MI view of floating flies. Gary gave this paraloops comes even close. Trout fight information meaning in terms of trout over dead drifted Halo Emergers during behavior. I found his observations revo- a hatch. This is only one chapter. There ON THE COVER lutionary. I fish better for it. The Lyons is much, much more. Press just reissued two of his books, The Rusty Gates accepts the Dry Fly New Angles and Trout Flies “Beat thou the drum, 2002 Mel Ross Award from the Proven Patterns (see the book review that it speak mournfully” Northern Illinois Fly Tyers section for more information.) A taste of —from Coriolanus these illustrates what he has done. With Story on page 8. by William Shakespeare 2 FEATURES on our own time at our own pace. We lazed about in various states of undress in the mornings, ate breakfast at noon, made the stream about 3:30, snacked, Marriage fished into the darkness, came back for long, cool beers, steak, even trout. (These and the Au Sable were taken from other stretches of the river, of course. Later we found out it was illegal even to possess trout in and BY R. H. MILLER around the cabin. But I guess the game warden’s sense of smell wasn’t that acute, The Chinese novelist and scholar Chien for we fried away with abandon.) Chung-Shu took the title of his novel Fortress Besieged from an old proverb In the deep of the night we listened to common to many cultures: “Marriage is owls, whippoorwills, frogs, felt the chill like a fortress besieged; those on the night air of the North pass over our bod- outside want to get in, while those on ies, comforting, yet somehow carrying the inside want to get out.” This is a the slightest hint of death. story about fishing and about a mar- We saw birds, riage, about how to shore up the deer, gracious besieged fortress, in this case the fortress summer homes, of my own marriage. met other fish- Diane and I began our married life in ermen (few 1960 in a furnished piece of grotesquery women), friend- called an apartment, in Bryan, Ohio. ly but like all She had a job nearby, and I was finish- serious anglers in ing an M.A. at Bowling Green State a hurry to get back University, about fifty miles away. We to the game. The had a little over a year to ourselves Bean hat. She was ready for anything. effort, the concentration of the fly fisher before our first child was born. And is matched only by that of the mathe- We dropped our daughters with grand- matician on the verge of solving a prob- within three weeks of her birth we were parents in Ohio and went on up to the on our way to the Upper Peninsula of lem, or the poet ready to plunge into a Edgewater where we had a cabin line that is diction-perfect. Michigan, over six hundred miles away, reserved for the week. Very charming, a to a very different life, especially for one-bedroom-plus affair with front We settled into our love affair with each Diane. And we had little time for each room, kitchen, screened-in porch, an other and with the Au Sable, especially other, what we refer to today as “quality ample bedroom with twin beds, and a the North Branch. It was made for us, time.” Two more children, two jobs, sort of a shower. The whole cabin was manageable, without canoe traffic, var- seven moves, another degree, and thir- covered in treated clapboard siding and ied enough to be interesting and chal- teen years later, in 1973, finally we took situated about forty feet from the river, lenging. Near Jackson Campground it a vacation together, to Michigan’s Au on the Holy Water. gave Diane her first encounter with a Sable River, to fish, drink, and be alone trout of a good size. I can still see the with each other for a space. At that point the stream is broad and rise and her perfect strike, the rod do its smooth, and the trout nestle under over- You might think the fishing vacation instantaneous but graceful dip and hanging pines, called “sweepers,” slip- throb to the water, the trout hurl itself was my idea, but in fact it was hers. She ping out every so often to pick off food. wanted to learn to fly fish. We began upward—and then, alas, the line go We caught no fish there, but in the slack—this on our last day of fishing. with some lessons, and soon our practice middle of our fishing we ran into Carl brought her to a point where she was Richards, co-author of Selective Trout On that evening we came back exhaust- ready for some serious fly fishing. and the operator of a fly fishing school ed, fell into bed, and snuggled into the Women tend to be more adept at this on the other side of the bridge. Carl blankets. We were renewed. We looked game than men, as anyone with any gave us the good advice that 16’s to 22’s forward to tomorrow, to the drive back, experience will tell you. On our limited or even smaller were the order of the day the reunion with our kids.