What a joy that the weather has turned cooler and the crowds have left northern Michigan.

Nearly stepped on this little guy as I hiked Fisherman's Island this afternoon.  Northern Leopard Frog (Rana pipiens). Once the most abundant frog in Michigan but numbers have fallen in recent years and now rare in some parts of the state.

Substantial stream-bank erosion on the Boyne River following the melt:

Here is a nice example of cased caddis from last Saturday's lab analysis of the Boyne River aquatic invertebrate sampling:

Several decent sized stone fly nymphs downstream from Dam Road:

Here's a pregnant doe looking around the house on May 22.  Judging from the grunting and size of her middle section she was close to the happy day when I saw her and may even have been looking for a nice spot to give birth.

She was strangely curious of me as I quietly took her picture.

Six days later, this deer was looking up at me through the deck rails first thing in the morning.  I'd like to think it was the same deer but I'm not sure.

She had a small companion

Trout Unlimited will be assigning an intern to the Miller Van Winkle chapter shortly to study the water flow of the South Branch of the Boyne.













Here are some images of the spillways currently in place under M75 at Boyne Falls and the pond created upstream:

Slowly adding to my life list.  Yesterday in Young State Park identified 16 species including a Black and White Warbler and a Yellow-rumped Warbler.  These are not my images. Heard many unidentified species and need to work on the audible identification although I'm not a subscriber to the hear it, list it school of thought.






Photographing these guys is proving tough and I'm greatly looking forward to spending some time with bird photographer Paul Rossi up in the Eastern UP on May 27.  He says, "We will drive to certain locations and walk to explore each area.  We will start right after sunrise (which is 5:54 a.m.) by birding some open grassland and ponds: LeConte's sparrows, Upland sandpipers, Sharp-tailed grouse, Snipe, American Bittern, Sora, Bobolink, Northern Harriers, etc.  We will also go to the coastal marsh.

After that we will go to locations based on what I find in various locations this year.  There is quite a bit of logging going on up here this year and I must visit certain areas of Hiawatha National Forest and Lake Superior State Forest to see if they are still there.  Rest assured that there are many options.  I will make sure that we will visit a productive inland swamp, mature hardwoods, coniferous woods, etc.  There are many beautiful areas loaded with birds at that time.  I will see what is 

out there and make a plan, making sure that we do not drive too far between walks.  This is the best time of the year for the most variety and visibility of birds in this area."

Northern Michigan Padding Club's recent "Spring Whitewater Rendezvous" at the Bear River Whitewater Park. The river through the park has a 75 foot drop over one mile. 

A great Northern Michigan resource for the paddlers but I think I'll stick to fishing.

Chironomidae Chironomus sp.

Great clouds of midges coming off Lake C. all day today.  I know midges make up a huge portion of a trout's diet but what about the other fish in our lake?

Spent early yesterday afternoon exploring the beautiful braided channels of the Jordon headwaters. Perfect weather, perfect scenery, perfect river. One small brookie came out of this nice deep pool. Butterflies rejoicing that spring has finally reached north of the 45th parallel.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

Michigan Fly Fishing Club held it's traditional opening day celebration in the board room at Gates Lodge fueled by the usual Bloody Mary's and doughnuts.  What a fun crowd!  

Not much serious fishing was done that day although the bamboo rod mutual admiration society hit the water pretty hard. I slipped away early to play with the brookies in the solitude of the Manistee.

Here are a couple of sunset views from the Headlands in early April. The night of the owl banding.

Encountered three red fox kits while motoring around Walloon Lake this afternoon. They were walking down the side of the road and showed no fear of the car.   Two of them hung around the roadside long enough for me to grab some quick pics with the point and shoot from the driver's seat.  I wish I'd had the Canon handy.

Spent this morning with the TU guys cleaning the Maple River downstream of Woodland Road. I floated down with fly-fishing guide Phil Croff.  A self-taught boat designer, Phil builds his drift boats with characteristics that suit the rivers of the Tip - the Maple, Sturgeon, Pigeon, Bear, Black, etc..


Very little trash was found but there were many downed trees across the river as a result of the monster early-March snow storm.  Phil came well prepared with a chain saw and hatchet and he created a narrow passage down this fine stretch of trout stream whilst leaving as much deadfall as possible for improved fish cover.

Later in the afternoon I met an angler with Indiana plates about to fish the TU section. Earlier in the day he had caught a nice Rainbow on a Hendrickson dry.  Interesting since Phil and I saw very few rises during our three hour float. Even more interesting was the astonishing coincidence that that this man's wife's maiden name was Miller and his name was Van Winkle.  He said, no connection whatsoever with the originators of the host TU chapter.  Almost unbelievable but he seemed to be an honest man.  And he was fly fisherman so he was probably being truthful.

Back to the Straits from 3:00 - 4:00pm for more hawk watching.  Steve reported it had been a very big day for eagles.  Sure enough, we saw several immature Golden Eagles and at one point saw a group of four Bald Eagles mixing it up as they prepared for the crossing.
Plenty of other hawks came through plus several Turkey Vultures and one American Kestrel that sat in the trees near by. (Not my Kestrel image.)

Great article in this month's Guitar Player magazine about Peter Green, one of my all time favorite Brit-Blues guitarists.
http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/148104

The print edition article is full of insights into Peter Green's note selection and more.  This inspired me to begin transcribing some of Greeny's early work on Someday After a While (You'll be Sorry) off A Hard Road by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.  Really great stuff.  Of course, playing it convincingly is another matter and I'm still struggling to approach the guitar tone on the recording with the Epiphone Les Paul, Fender Blues Junior and various pedals.  Yes, these licks had been played earlier by many of the blues greats in America but why did the same exact notes not have the coolness factor subsequently generated by Green and Clapton?

Spent some time with Boyne City's bamboo rod builder Alex Wulff today.  We reviewed some old cane rods of mine, the only one of real interest being the 11 foot Sealy Octopus split cane rod that I used for course fishing back in the UK when I was a youngster.  That would make it about 50 years old!  It just needs the stripping guide re-soldering and it's good to go.  Alex suggested using it for Spey casting and recommended that I seek out the Spey teacher John Breslin who could be participating at the FFF Great Lakes Council School and Fair June 15-17 which I will attend:
http://www.fffglc.org/

We discussed potentially re-furbishing the split bamboo rod that Donna picked up at a garage sale.  Boyd King (Beulah, Michigan 1903 to 1978) seems to have been the owner, not the rod builder. Boyd was obviously proud enough of the rod to put his name on it so it was probably a decent rod when it was new.  Much work would be needed starting with re-wrapping the cork handle.  Not worth the effort per Alex.

Next week I'm going to observe Alex working on tip sections to go with the three five weight butt sections already completed. Alex typically uses the (Jim) Payne 101 taper which he believes is as fast as you will get in bamboo.  Alex offered to lend me some of his books to learn the fundamentals but these well-thumbed volumes were obviously highly valued by Alex and in frequent use so I declined. Asked which one book he would  recommend for beginners Alex suggested Handcrafting Bamboo Fly Rods by Wayne Cattanach.  Another recommendation was to attend the bamboo rod conclave but it seems this is not happening this year.  Grayling public library has a good collection of books addressing all aspects of fly fishing and would be an interesting place to spend a cold, stormy day sometime.

Hiked a new section of the North Country Trail in the afternoon through the upper Jordon valley.  Did not see another soul for three hours. The Trillium is coming into bloom.  My image but I needn't have bothered with 4,750,000 images of Trillium on Google Images. Seems like people are interested in Trillium until you realize there are 94,800,000 images (non-offensive mind you) of boobs. Does this mean that people are twenty times more interested in Trillium than (non-offensive) boobs.  What if we included "offensive" boobs I wonder.

Managed a (just-about!) dry stream crossing at the old lumbering-era bridge ruin adjacent to the Fish Hatchery to save myself about an hour on the return leg.