Sports

 My toughest client is my teenage son, Coleman- his friends call him Cole.  Now, you might say taking a kid fishing doesn't count as guiding, but you couldn't be further from the truth.  Taking a teenaged kid fishing is the best practice a guide can get, especially when its your teenaged kid, as they know pretty much everything and don't need your help.

I don't know what the biological mechanism responsible for this is called, but my parents call it karma.  

The spring sucker run is going in full force, and I figured it would be a great way for Cole to have some fun catching fish while I practiced teaching a new nymphing technique I learned from John.  He picked it up quick and put a half dozen suckers in the net. There was a group of bait fishermen walking down the bank while he was releasing the last and I could tell he was being overly dramatic with his movements and sounds to make sure they knew he had just caught a fish.  Smirking, I asked, "What the hell are you doing?"  He knew he was busted and laughed.   

On the drive home he said, "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I bring a friend fishing with us sometime?"

"Sure!  Just make sure they think we're fishing the Au Sable."

"I know, all my friends at school already think thats always where we go." 

Insert proud dad emoticon face here.

The arrival of bugs means I'm on the water every day now.  I started out the other morning getting skunked chasing steelhead.  After losing a couple dozen flies to submerged timber, I reeled it in and swung over to the Au Sable to see if the brook trout were finished hibernating yet.  They were, and despite not having any significant bug activity, they were looking up.  Sometimes they'd take on a dead drift, but most fish would chase the fly down after I gave it more cow bell-- a small twitch, or a big twitch that would actually pull the fly under momentarily before the albolene made it slowly resurface.   

I took my daughter's prom pictures that evening, went grocery shopping with my wife, and then put the boat in on the mainstream for the first mousing trip of the year with Chad.  Mousing is best in late summer, and other than the date on the calendar, it felt exactly like a summer night- minus the mosquitoes.  Air temps above 50-degrees.  You could smell campfire smoke in the air- possibly from the forest fire north of St. Helen.  We drank a summer micro-brew and listened to spring peepers.  Every now and then, you'd hear what sounded like a nice fish rise.  I'd drop anchor and we'd sit and wait for the fish to go again so we could pinpoint its location, but there just weren't many bugs on the water for the fish to feed on, so that second rise never came.  

Chad did end up missing a fish blind casting a stimulator, and had one fish just below a log jam go after his mouse.  Go after is kind of an understatement, that fish just plain blew that mouse up.  Everytime a fish takes a mouse is an adrenaline rush, but the first mouse attach of the year is always the best.  We've been waiting 8-months for that fish.  Under the light of the full moon, I could see Chad's eyes explode open as he set the hook and yelled, "Holy shit!"  

"I never felt him!" He said.

"I'm gonna bring you back around for another shot." I said, while circling the boat away from the fish and back upstream.

"You ever get them to go again?" He asked.

"Usually no, but sometimes."  But not this time.  

We finished out the float and I got home about 3:30am, simultaneously wide awake and so tired I felt drunk.