Troutfest 2007-Au Sable

[Flyfisher]

We had the annual event that involves a dozen or so good friends over the weekend. Daytime fishing was poor with the exception being smaller fish on spinners such as Mepps. Here's a brief recap of my activity:

Thursday PM: Fished the South Branch below Chase (Mason Tract) and hit an 18" brown around 10:30pm on a foam body hex spinner. Bugs on the water but not enough fish rising to call it a "great" night. Truthfully, after the 18" fish, my night was complete;)

Friday: Floated Wakely to McMasters, tossing Mepps. Quite a few smaller fish in our group but nothing memorable. Stayed by the fire that night and consumed liquid carbohydrate supplements.

Saturday AM: Floated Connor's Flat to McMasters, nymphing likely looking water with a 14" WHITEFISH to show for my efforts. Whitefish are good on the grill:D The rest of our group caught some small trout.

Saturday PM: Walked in at Connor's and proceeded to meet the biggest a-hole of the weekend after walking a 1/2 mile upstream. Busy public access and this butt-muncher wants 150yds of river to himself. He was a clueless idiot so I gave him a piece of my mind and walked down below the launch. I am all for "river courtesy" but to stand 100yds down from me and "yell" that he planned on working the entire stretch up to where I was standing verged on unreasonable. He was admitably a "newbie" so I just figured I would let him and his "Orvis-ness" stay where it was. The fish started around 10:00pm with no "big" bugs showing until after 11:15pm, except a few hex spinners and iso's. Landed a fat 18" brown and a smaller 13" fish as well. Some of the group never saw a fish rise that night:dizzy: By 11:30pm it was "hex soup" but no risers AT ALL.:confused: My guess is the fish were pretty full from the night before, based on the number of shucks we saw on Saturday AM.

Bottomline...if you like big bugs, NOW is the time! Good luck!:)

[WILDCATWICK]

Experiences like that almost seem inevitable this time of year. Especially if your going to Hex areas like Conners Flats.

We floated Smith to Conners Friday and the Hex spinners & Duns were more than I've almost ever saw. The fish we caught were all regurgitating them. The fishing slowed down around 1am but there were still alot of bugs on the water. I think many of the trout felt like we do on Thanksgiving, except they didn't get nausaited from watching the Lions.

The nice thing is there are alot of great rivers in the areas with tons of access that you can goto to avoid the majority.

[Flyfisher]

The fish we caught were all regurgitating them.

I figured they gorged pretty good on Friday night and weren't quite as hungry on Saturday night. Unreal amount of duns hatching.

The nice thing is there are alot of great rivers in the areas with tons of access that you can goto to avoid the majority.
I agree that there are plenty of places to go up there. We had a larger group and wanted to try and stay close to each other and have easy access for some of the less experienced. I just found it both laughable and irritating that this "kid" admitted to me, as I passed him the first time, that he was new to flyfishing and yet he wasn't content to have just a "couple hundred" feet of a wide sprawling section of the river. And I am usually the first one to call out someone for fishing too close to me, but the two of us could have casted our entire flylines and still not hit each other. Anyway, I ended up hitting a very nice fish at a different spot so it all worked out in the end;)