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.

Sat in on the Miller Van Winkle TU chapter board meeting yesterday evening at City Park Grill in Petoskey. Such an enthusiastic and knowledgable group; I'm looking forward to getting to know them better and maybe fishing with them.  Incredible stars as I drove into Boyne after the meeting but I still can't rationalize getting more involved with NOMAC in view of everything else that's going on and the images beamed to my lap-top courtesy of Hubble.
Link to clear sky chart: http://cleardarksky.com/c/RvnHllMIkey.html
Link to NOMAC: http://www.nomac.net/

We still have some Steelhead in the Boyne and I managed to land another really nice fish this afternoon after earlier losing one in the same spot and then catching a sucker (minus two points!). As I was walking downstream to the car after the sucker I saw two big male Steelhead cruising upstream; I was able to follow them and as luck would have it they rested in the water I'd just fished!  The rig was still set up to give me a really great drift through the slot and so without wasting any time, in went the fly.  I was pretty confident I'd hook one and sure enough I did.  A big fight ensued and I was pleased to net the fish on 3x fluorocarbon. No camera unfortunately.  Air temperature 50F, water 41F, overcast, light rain, falling barometer.