“Up North”
Grayling, Michigan, with its Au Sable River, is arguably the fly fishing capital of the Midwest. Many hunters know it as the home of hunting legend Fred Bear. This may come as a surprise considering the latest census puts the population there at about eighteen hundred people. Then again, outdoor types aren’t known for their affinity for metropolitan areas.
The fishing here isn’t always good. I have walked back to the car in the murky twilight frustrated (and skunked) after fishing diligently for hours through what seemed to be rather favorable conditions more than once. Other times, when the weather and water levels have been less than what might be called ideal, armed with nothing more than a well-I’m-here-anyway-so-I-might-as-well-go-fishing attitude, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with an evening of excellent fishing. If the adage “Hey, that’s fishing” needed any more evidential support, my experiences here would add to its validity–but I think since so many generations of fishermen have used the phrase, it's probably not in danger of becoming obsolete.
Fishermen from all over the lower forty-eight flock to this quiet little river in the northern woods in the latter half of June to try their luck during the hexagenia mayfly hatch. If you haven’t heard of hexagenia fishing (hex for short), the basic gist of the thing is that you have a very good chance of connecting with a very large wild brown trout on a dry fly. The only catch is, all your fishing will be done in the dark. You’ll be craning your neck as you listen for the sound of feeding fish in a river you can’t see as you try to catch them with a fly that you pray isn’t hopelessly tangled in your leader or dragging unnaturally across the barely visible surface of the water. Some people even spend hundreds of dollars to hire a guide for this experience, not to mention the dough they dole out to owners of local motels, gas station clerks for copious volumes of light domestic beer, waiters and waitresses for homey diner food, and fly shop owners for a couple dozen “hot” flies. These are the same type of people who say things like “I could never justify spending all that money to go on a tropical cruise.” I don’t blame them for this, because once you’ve had some success with this electric nighttime fishing endeavor, you’ll probably think of a cruise in the Caribbean as rather dull. And besides, I’ve never met someone that was completely consistent and rational in their attitudes and behaviors. I’m not sure I’d want to. If such a machine-like person does exist, I don’t think I would find them on a trout stream–and that’s fine by me. Trout certainly tend to be only mildly consistent in their behavior, so it's probably only natural that that’s all fishermen seem to be capable of too.
What really sets the Au Sable River and town of Grayling apart from other outdoor destinations, I think, doesn’t have so much to do with its fishing as it does with its geography and symbolic position in the minds of outdoor types. The vast majority of Michiganders reside in the far Southern part of the state. In fact, the six counties that comprise the greater Detroit area boast a population of more than four million people–almost half of Michigan’s total population of ten million. The human density declines precipitously as you move North of the capital of Lansing. Industrial plants and apartment complexes give way to cornfields and small agricultural towns. Keep traveling North, and eventually, you’ll find yourself “up North” in the sense that Michiganders understand. There isn’t an exact line where the bleak land of copy-paste suburban life ends and the wild deciduous and coniferous forests full of various game species and cool rivers born of groundwater springs begin. At some point in your journey, you simply recognize that you can’t remember the last time you saw a sign for a fast-food restaurant or the last cornfield you passed through. If you had to put a pin in a map, my childhood town of Clare might be your best bet for demarcating the Southern border of this “place.” Clare is often called “the gateway to the North,” and I think this is justified. You typically don’t go any farther North than this unless you are doing something characteristically Northern: fishing, hunting, hiking, camping, off-roading, boating, snowmobiling, drinking, or some combination of those items. It seems like “up North” is probably equal parts geographical and psychological. I think that it is this unique spatial and mental juxtaposition between the urban and “up North” parts of Michigan that makes Grayling and the woods and water that surround it so alluring to Midwestern outdoor types. Sure, going to a remote Alaskan fly-in lodge to fish for large chinook salmon fresh from the Pacific would probably be more of a thrill than trying to outwit the educated and often (though not always) smallish trout found in Michigan rivers. However, these rivers are infinitely more accessible than a fly-in lodge for those without excessive means or free time. The only obstacles standing between an outdoor-loving Detroit insurance salesman and his favorite pool in the “holy water” section of the Au Sable are a few bucks in gas money and three-and-a-half hours in the driver's seat.
If you call Southern Michigan, northern Ohio, or Illinois home, Grayling is just close enough that you can, on a lark, drop whatever you are doing and go fishing. You can do this without too great a risk of your boss dismissing you on charges of habitual absenteeism or your significant other dumping the contents of your dresser on the lawn with a note that says something like “get lost.” And the fishing here is just good enough that you might be able to convince your friends that you are actually trying to catch fish “up there” and not just attempting to escape whatever shitty feelings you’ve associated with your local environment. The same cannot be said for those who abdicate their responsibilities and travel to the Arctic Circle at the drop of a hat–their unbalanced psyche sticks out like a sore thumb. If you’re fortunate enough to live in relative proximity to Grayling and the rest of Northern Michigan, your existential angst is a little easier to conceal.
The fish after which the town of Grayling was named–the arctic grayling–has long been extirpated from the rivers and streams of the state. Habitat destruction, overfishing, and the introduction of non-native trout species like browns and rainbows worked together to kill every last one of these little northern marvels. This is a shame for all the obvious ecological reasons, but also because these fish are incredibly pretty creatures. If you gave a generative A.I. system the prompt “ice-age fish” it would probably spit out something resembling an arctic grayling. Its dull silver to grayish-purple body and comically-large-for-its-body iridescent dorsal fin seem to put it in the same mental box as the wooly mammoth and saber tooth tiger. They even have an almost prehistoric innocence that makes them very easy to catch with hook and line. Humans are obviously to blame for their local extinction in Michigan, but they weren’t exactly endowed with any significant level of intelligence that would’ve allowed them to put up much of a fight. Arctic grayling still thrive in northwestern Canada, Alaska, and parts of Montana, but the historic Michigan population is gone. Reintroduction efforts are underway, but previous attempts have not been successful at establishing the species.
Ever since I learned about arctic grayling when I was eleven or twelve, I’d been fascinated by them. When I saw a picture of these fish online or in magazines, they were held by a well-outfitted angler wearing an ear-to-ear smile and thousands of dollars worth of fishing attire (attire that I hoped desperately to one day own myself). This fishman would invariably be standing in the crystalline waters of some northern lake or river, with rugged snow-capped mountains in the background looking intimidating and serene at the same time. It wasn’t until some years later that I learned that while having quality fishing equipment designed for the type of quarry you are pursuing is incredibly important, most of the people who look like they belong on the cover of a magazine typically get all their angling knowledge from magazines and not from experience. There are exceptions to this rule, but all I can say is that when you see a person wearing brand-new waders and top-of-the-line “fishing clothes” in the backcountry, they look hopelessly out of place. One fellow like this that I encountered in Montana’s backcountry five days into a cutthroat pilgrimage seemed intimidated at the sight of my unkempt hair and beard, camp-food stained khakis, army surplus backpack, twenty-five dollar sunglasses, and determined expression. He almost seemed embarrassed to be holding the latest and greatest fly rod and wearing waders worth almost as much as my car. For some reason, he thought that my blue-collar appearance indicated a sort of earthy competence–and I can honestly say that made me feel good about myself in a way that not much else ever could.
In any case, arctic grayling were indelibly associated in my mind with untouched wilderness and the untold adventures to be had therein–even if this connection was partly constructed from the images of marketing propaganda lurking in my unconscious. When I found out in the spring of 2023 that I would be spending a summer in Montana, I didn’t even think to research grayling. It had been so long since I had seriously thought about these fish that the feasibility of possibly catching them wasn’t on my radar. Even though I was going to be living “in the wilderness” for a few months, I had for so long defined the wilderness and the fish that lived there as existing somewhere that I wasn’t. Not all that much different from the way that many Michiganders define “up north.” It wasn’t until a backyard barbeque a couple of weeks after my arrival in Montana that a kindred spirit mentioned a lake full of grayling less than an hour from the camp where we were currently scarfing down burgers, chips, and homemade desserts.
“Yeah, there are lots of small grayling in there. It is where we take our friends if they need to catch a grayling” said the fishing informant.
I inquired as to whether my vehicle could be reasonably expected to make it up to the lake, and when he answered in the affirmative, all those childhood daydreams bubbled to the surface. Needless to say, the next time I was free, I loaded my trunk with fishing equipment and charted a route to the lake.
My 14-year-old Chrysler sedan made it up the 1 1/3ish lane gravel road without getting stuck, but I did get some odd, mildly disapproving looks from drivers of muddied jeeps and side-by-sides. After what seemed like hours, I caught sight of aquamarine water through a stand of firs. The lake was nestled against the steep face of the last thousand feet of a mountain that stood in stalwart defiance of the wispy clouds that taunted it from a place just out of striking distance. The last of the spring snow was relegated to shady spots behind boulders and in the proactive crags and crevasses of the mountain itself.
I slid into the first pull-off area I could find, and got ready quickly, but not too fast as to forget to put in my freshly purchased can of bear spray in an easily accessible exterior portion of my fishing pack. Easterners like myself seem to have active imaginations when it comes to grizzly bears. That’s probably because we typically only see pictures of them in pieces featuring titles like “Second fatal bear mauling in Yellowstone this year” and not lazily rolling over downed timber in search of moths–something they eat much more frequently than hiker-á-la-mode. Still, it's better to be prepared–at least then the anxiety is toned down from “Will the bear start consuming me while I’m still alive?” to “Well, if he wanted me that badly he probably deserves the calories, but it's still gonna hurt a lot.” All-in-all, I was much more scared of losing the opportunity to catch a grayling than I was of potentially facing an apex predator on its home turf. I think that tells you something about fishermen, and I think it has a lot more to do with poor judgment than it does with bravery.
Just as the kind man had said, there were lots of small grayling in the lake, and I caught a good number of them in a short period of time without any serious effort. None exceed eight or ten inches, but they were perfect in every way. It was funny, something that I had anticipated for so many years went over without a hitch, and before I knew it I had left the overwhelming stillness of the secluded mountain lake and was making my way back down the gravel road. I rode in silence and listened and the pebbles kicked up by my tires danced around in my wheel wells. The experience left me with a kind of reverberating tranquility, but none of the stylish ecstasy you might find in those outdoor publication models. I’ve certainly worn ear-to-ear smiles after landing a hard-earned fish or watched a fiend net their first trout. But as I passively watched lodgepole pines that lined the thin road slip by, my eyes and heart were soft, and they hadn’t been in a long time.
