DS19 Part 2: Glow Tac Bombs

Went out shining again last night, was running ahead of schedule so I hit a big field of wild grass on some state land first to glass for a while. I was pretty optimistic for good deer movement as I saw a lot of deer on their feet on private fields I drove past on the way there, including several small bucks. Got to the field and there was a doe with a fawn on the far side. I watched them for a while before they disappeared over a rise. Then the field was empty until it was just about dark enough you wouldnt have been able to see your sight pins. Two fawns popped out of the woods about 5yds from my car.

They checked me out for 30 seconds and then ran for the center of the field. When they got about 30yds away, they disappeared into the tall grass. I could see their silhouette through the grass every now and then, they had bedded and were just kind of hanging out. After it got pitch black, I rolled the car window down and spotlighted the field, nothing. I was trying to avoid any elk so I drove to a nearby road that divides a series of hardwood ridges mixed with grassy meadows from a large cedar swamp. It's a few miles long and there are a good number of deer in the area, but not where I could see them last night. Only saw a family of raccoons on a dead, fallen over poplar. I had about 10 minutes left until legal shining hours were over so I shined a clearcut in a cedar swamp a couple miles away. Nothing. I did see a trail of glow tacks going into the woods the likes of which I've never seen before. It was like a IED went off full of glow tacks. Probably borderline littering, haha! The pic doesnt so it justice, but somebody has a trail going into the swamp with 3 to 5 tacks on every tree as far as you can see.

There are so many glow tac trails through the woods, its ridiculous. Where is your sense of adventure, people? Once a friend and I got lost coming out of a trout stream one summer night and the quantity of glow tac trails left by deer hunters actually got us more lost. Taking tonight off to get ready for a camping trip this weekend to the UP. You can feel fall in the air now, expecting to see the first leaves starting to change color every day which is right about on cue from years prior.

DS19 Part 1: The Intro

Late May practice session

My 2019 deer season officially kicked off in late April/early May when the snow finally melted and I did some spring scouting.  I started shooting my bow more regularly about the same time and getting my gear in order. With July coming to a close, I'm ready for opening day. I've scouted what I need to, I'm shooting good, my gear is ready to go and now I just need to kill the time.

Even though I have deer hunting on my mind pretty much year round, late July is really when I start to get the itch to be back in the deer woods. Aside from a few seasons here and there where I got permission to hunt some private land from work buddies or family members, I’ve always been a public land hunter. That felt like a handicap when I was younger, but now I feel pretty fortunate to live where I do, there is more public land within an hour drive than I could explore in 10 lifetimes. That abundance of public land really influenced my hunting style which until last year was basically me bouncing around from area to area with a climber trying to avoid hunting pressure and catch a deer off guard until I got one.

That strategy is kind of the same now, though its become much more effective since I picked up some instructional scouting videos from Dan Infalt.  I switched to a hang-on last year and the areas I’m hunting are chosen much more with bedding in mind and trying to get close to it, even during the rut.

There is some farm land here and there in my part of northern Michigan, but for the most part, close to home is big woods. We don’t have the best genetics or nutrition in my home county. No one has killed a B&C deer here in the last 100 years, and you can count on one hand the number of P&Y deer killed each year- and probably for multiple years in a row before you have to use the fingers on your other hand. 80” to 100” is a dandy and will probably end up as a shoulder mount. Hunting pressure doesn’t help either. Its not so much because we have a huge population of people nearby, but hunting is part of the culture, so most of the people who live here hunt. And most of the people who come from the big cities in southern Michigan or northern OH and Indiana come here to the big woods to have their deer camps.

I like the fudgies coming up to camp, and I hate it.  Its good for the local economy, its good to see groups of friends and families hunting and camping.  But in general, the way they see the big woods is so touristy.  The big woods are a place they visit, like they are going to an apple orchard or something.  They get their bag of apples, a gallon of cider, some donuts- and don't forget the hay ride! The farmer views that orchard much differently, he is part of it.  And thats how I feel about our local big woods.  Its where I live, not some tourist attraction.   No matter how much some fudgie thinks about hunting or fishing or "up north" while he is in whatever cookie cutter downstate suburb or city he lives in, he will never get it.  Yoopers probably feel the same way about me.

I got my first deer opening day of my second firearm deer season while still hunting through a cedar swamp. It stood up from its bed as I was making my way back to the truck for the mid-day lunch break. I pulled up a borrowed lever action .375 and dropped it. I thought it was a doe, but it was a 1.5 year old buck with 3/4” rounded off spikes.  Like I said, our nutrition and genetics suck.  If sand and potatoes grew big racks, we would be a big buck mecca.

That’s not to say that nice bucks don’t exist. I’ll usually have an encounter with one every other year or so while squirrel hunting. One of the biggest bucks I’ve ever seen was in my home county, the year of the Rompola buck, while we were driving into one of our favorite oak ridges. It wasn’t until about 4 years ago when I started seeing 6-point or better bucks while actually deer hunting. That was when I started leaving my home county for neighboring counties. And then last year I made my first out of state deer hunting trip and saw the five biggest bucks I’ve ever seen. It made me feel like maybe I’m not such a bad hunter after all, I just live in a place where finding nice bucks is more like ghost hunting.

I am not a trophy hunter, though.  I will almost always shoot any legal deer that walks by.  I would much rather eat venison than look at horns on the wall.  Whitetail hunting culture over the last 20 years has deteriorated into a quest for antlers.  Not that guys before weren't chasing big bucks, it just got ridiculous the last couple decades.  Guys now know more about scoring deer on the hoof and the difference between G3's and G4's than how to read a topo map, and thats really sad.  I don't know what a G3 is, and I don't care to learn, but I still like to chase mature deer.  So far that chase has been a chess game, only I'm a really good checkers player and my opponent is Bobby Fischer.

Last night was my first night of shining and I only saw a handful of deer, and bunch of elk. Its tough to shine everywhere in Michigan during the summer as you’re not allowed to do it after 11pm, and until about late July, it doesn’t get dark until well after 10pm. The lack of ag or big fields where I hunt also makes things tough, but its still fun and a nice way to learn where the deer are.

I Heart Public Lands, Volume I

I own a little trout stream west of Gaylord, perhaps you've heard of it-- its called the Jordan.

Living so far north, we typically go south to vacation or visit family-- meaning we get to see all the traffic coming north on our way south, and vise versa on our way home.  It always blows me away to see three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic from Detroit up past Bay City going the opposite way.   Take that 150 miles, multiply by 5,280 to convert it to feet, divide by your average family car length of 15-feet, times your average american family of 3-people, times three lanes, and you've got about ~475,000 people heading north for the weekend- and that's just on I-75 and doesn't factor in US23, 127 or 131-- all, day, long.  Thats a lot of people driving north to enjoy our back yards, which is a nice reminder not to take where I live for granted.  All those folks vacation where I get to live in the heart of northern Michigan because of the abundant opportunities we have up here to enjoy natural resources, (camping, fishing, canoeing, backpacking, boating, etc.) almost all of which are on public lands. 

We're talking about a $22-billion dollar annual tourism industry coming up those highways to recreate in large part on public land.  Not to mention the $26-Billion dollar annual outdoor recreation industry in this state alone. Numbers only made possible by public land opportunities.  

 You think about all of the northern Michigan businesses who are getting a huge influx of customers from downstate on weekends and holidays thanks to the recreation made possible by public land, and you have to wonder why some of our elected officials are so quick to limit or reduce those public land opportunities that these small businesses and big boxes are benefiting from? 

One of the key pieces of anti-public land legislation passed by anti-public land legislators in the last decade was the Land Cap Bill passed by the State Senate back in 2011 and signed into law by Governor Snyder in 2012.  That bill was introduced by Sen. Tom Casperson (R) of the western UP, who fortunately is term limited-- don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out-- but unfortunately, was almost constantly attacking our public lands during his terms in office.    

This is how the current republican party works (sorry GOP readers, but I'm not aware of any non-republican government officials actively working against our public lands, and attacking our public lands is actually in the official republican party platform which is why its no coincidence that this kind of thing is happening simultaneously in multiple states throughout the country and at the national level.  I know there are a lot of republicans and alot of republican leaders who don't like that its in there, but it still is, and until its not, I'm calling you out.  The Democratic party is perhaps more useless when you consider their inability to get anything accomplished and their constant preoccupation with republican built straw men, but at least they aren't trying to steal my public lands from me).  There are companies who want to exploit natural resources on our public lands for their private profit.  They have our elected officials in their pockets, and tell them that the rules protecting our public lands are costing them money or preventing them from making more money.  The repubs are actually smart about how they attack their rich donors' problem.  They don't come at our public lands with a bazooka.  They bring a pocket knife and try to kill them with the proverbial death by 1,000 cuts, and then every now and then when the time is right, they chop a limb off with a machete.  Eventually, the problem is completely crippled and useless. 

Casperson needed a way to make chicken shit taste like chicken salad, so he used the bogus property tax argument.  He stated his primary motivation for the bill was to help local municipalities get their property tax money from the State of Michigan for lands it owned in their jurisdiction.  Those poor local communities couldn't pay their bills cause the State didn't pay its bills on time.  But why didn't the State pay them-- because republicans previously held those payments up at the State legislature.  Its kind of like national republicans who cut the funding from agencies who manage western forests to the point they can't manage them effectively, then scream there are too many dead trees in these forests, we need to cut them all down.   Its kind of like someone going to a restaurant, eating 3/4 of their meal, then plucking a hair from their head and putting it in their food, and complaining about the hair in their food so they can get a free meal.   Its pure deceit.

But I digress.

Some friends having dinner along one of our other trout streams, perhaps you've heard of the Au Sable River?

There are almost no cons to a people having abundant public lands.  Public lands are one of America's best ideas.  If someone can own their own property great, but as a species, human beings have always had a need for a large home range.  Cramp a wolf or a bear into a little zoo exhibit, and they just aren't happy campers.  People are no different.  You cramp us into a small area and we start getting mentally and physically stressed out.  And yet, we're only just beginning to understand the health benefits of spending time in the great outdoors.  But the human need for open spaces is not a new idea.  Between 1821 and 1855, New York City almost quadrupled in population.

"As the city expanded northward up Manhattan Island, people were drawn to the few existing open spaces, mainly cemeteries, to get away from the noise and chaotic life in the city."

Thats right, people used to go hang out in cemeteries to escape the daily grind.  Which, as you can imagine, is kind of a buzzkill, so they built Central Park.  A couple decades later, Yellowstone became the first National Park, which sparked a worldwide movement.  Today, there are over 100 nations with over 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves. 

But the bulk of public lands aren't parks or preserves.  They're just land, held in trust for the American people, by multiple federal government agencies.   They come in the form of national forests, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, national conservation areas, national wildernesses, national wild and scenic rivers, national historic sites, national memorials, national marine monuments, national battlefields, etc.

In total, the American people own 650 million acres of land.  Thats something I don't think sinks in completely for most.  We own it.  So that whole Grand Canyon out west...yeah, its mine.  That beautiful alpine forest in state "x"?  Mine, too.  That trout stream running through Rocky Mountain National Park?  Yup, I own it.

I own a little blueberry patch northeast of Gaylord.  You might have heard of it-- its called the Pigeon River Country...

Here in Michigan, we've got a bunch of State land, too.  4.6 million acres'ish.  And while federal public lands are awesome, State land is most near and dear to my heart.  My favorite chunk of State land is one of the crown jewels of our State, the Pigeon River Country State Forest.  I also really like hunting, fishing and hiking on State lands in close proximity to the PRC, but not part of it.  So that gem called the Black River?  Thats mine, too.  In fact, during trout season, I can go catch my family dinner there whenever I want.  The Witness Tree?  It's mine to relax under whenever I want.  All those hardwood hills along Tin Shanty Rd?  Mine to hunt for morel mushrooms each and every spring until my knees stop bending or I die.

Some of those same anti-public land Michigan politicians think we have too much public land in the northern lower.  Despite donating American Flags that flew over the capital for conservation club banquets, or their campaign ads showing them wearing new, crisply ironed hunting clothes, kneeling next to hunting dogs, or paddling a canoe down a picturesque northern Michigan river with their family;  its pretty obvious that they don't actually hunt or spend much time on our public lands, because if they did, they wouldn't think there were too many acres of them up here.  While some areas are relatively untouched, most of our State lands and waters are at or above carrying capacity. 

We need more public lands and access to them.  But where do we start?



  

Bigfoot and Snowshoe Hares

I was listening to the Meateater podcast the other day where they were interviewing Laura Krantz, a journalist and host of the Wild Thing podcast, about the man, the myth, the legend…Bigfoot.  One of the things that particularly caught my attention was that Laura’s relative, Grover Krantz, one of the pioneers of the whole sasquatch thing, who believed there was a bigfoot, was actively trying to kill a bigfoot.  He felt that a researcher would be much more successful at saving the bigfoot population if they were able to sacrifice just one as evidence they do, indeed, exist.  I guess that kind of makes sense, but what if he actually found one?  What if he successfully shot and killed it in the name of science, and later found out that it was the last one on earth?   

That's what I pondered the other day while I was hiking through the heart of the Pigeon River Country State Forest (PRC) in Northern Michigan on a Christmas Day grouse hunt.  I wasn’t seeing any sign of grouse so my mind began to wander to other small game species I might be able to make a meal out of.  Squirrels and rabbits are in season, and I was trying to decide if I would take either if the opportunity presented itself.  That sent my mind down the proverbial rabbit hole—pun intended-- and I was trying to think about the last time I encountered a snowshoe hare in the PRC?  Its actually been a couple years since I’ve seen a live rabbit while hunting anywhere in northern Michigan.  I’ve seen a few cottontails here and there while driving, and I saw a snowshoe this summer on the way to one of my trout spots, but none while hunting or fishing, and I’m out there a lot.    

Where’d they all go?

I’ve never been a diehard rabbit hunter, but when I was in my early 20s—in the early 2000’s—you would commonly see cottontails while hunting other animals.  Even then, snowshoes weren’t as common, but it wasn’t uncommon to see one.  Now if you see a snowshoe, you tell someone about it.  Now, if you even see a snowshow track, you tell someone about it—and probably take a pic with your phone and post it on social media.  Just over the last week, I've hiked over 15 miles in the PRC   Much of that through river bottoms, conifers and cedar swamps,  clearcuts, etc.  Most of this was prime rabbit habitat, and I didn’t see a single rabbit track.  Not one.  I would have probably been better off looking for bigfoot. 

No one alive today remembers how sportsmen spearheaded and led the conservation movement in the late 19^th and early part of the 20^th century.  I’m sure those guys who were saying we need to start conserving our wild places and critters might have gotten a little bit of pushback from their fellow sportsmen.  It probably got a little easier to promote the idea of conservation when species like the passenger pigeon—a bird whose numbers were so high they would literally black out the sky—went extinct.   Martha, the last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinatti Zoo in 1914.  That same year, Michigan built a grayling hatchery in an effort to restore a rapidly declining grayling population but it was too little, too late.  Michigan grayling were gone by the 1930’s.   

I bet if you told a Michigan resident in 1850 that in only 80 years, grayling would be extirpated and passenger pigeons would be completely extinct, they would look at you like were crazy.  Probably the way someone would have looked at me in 1990 if I told them in 30 years, it would feel impossible to find a snowshoe hare in the Pigeon River Country. 

I was talking to my buddy, Lance, about it.  He spends just as much time in the PRC as anyone I know and has similar observations.  He shared an article with me that says MSU researchers attribute the showshoe’sdecline to climate change.  My other buddy, Steve, showed me a trail cam picture not far outside the PRC of a couple under his corn feeder, but his other half won’t let him shoot one.    My friend, Tim, rabbit hunts mostly in the U.P. and says it’s a night and day difference between there and here.  Tim thinks its because we don’t get enough snow anymore in the northern lower, and have more avian and mammalian predators. 

I’m sure Tim’s right.  But I think the elephant in the room is, why haven’t showshoe hare bag limits been reduced in the northern lower in response to their declining population?  If I could find five, I could go take 5 today, the same as I could in the 90’s.  How long are we going to all talk to each other about how we’re not seeing snowshoe hares in the northern lower anymore, before we don’t have any snowshoes in the northern lower anymore?  I'm not saying we shouldn't be allowed to hunt showshoes in the northern lower anymore, but maybe the daily bag limit should be adjusted.

So getting back to my Christmas day hunt for a partridge in a pear tree, I decided that if I did encounter a bigfoot, er, I mean, snowshoe hare, I wouldn’t kill it.  While I’m not naïve enough to think it would actually be the last one in the PRC, I’m still not willing to take that risk. 

June Recap

And just like that, its July.  June 2018 was everything a northern Michigan trout angler could ask for.  The bugs showed up and the fish ate them.  I think the thing I'll remember most about the last month was all of the friends I had an opportunity to fish with.  Jim, Al and Joyce, Chris, Gary and his brother, John, John and Lani, Tim and Jerry, Bob, Cam, Tom, Dave, Tom, Doug, Chris and Garret. 

So many good memories were made, but for now, I'll only share three: 

Jerry up front, Tim switching flies in the middle.

Whirlwind Tour

Meeting and fishing with Tim who asked if he could bring a friend along.  His friend, Jerry, turned out to be one of my favorite writers-- only I didn't know it until a few days later.  Tim turned into one of my new favorite writers, as I scored a copy of his new book, The Habits of Trout: And Other Unsolved Mysteries.  Its an excellent read, and I think Michigan-based readers or fans of Robert Traver's books, particularly, will enjoy it.  The three of us did a float through a section of the Holy Waters then jumped over to a small creek to wade for brookies, then jumped to a different creek for the evening rise.  It was a good day made great from good company. 

Tim and I fished together again a couple nights later, where he hooked up with and lost the biggest trout in northern Michigan on one of John's hex spinners.  I'm just busting Tim's balls, in case he is reading.  It wasn't a monster, but it was a pretty good fish that came unbuttoned just as we were about to land it.  The only thing I can figure happened was Tim was fishing graphite instead of his normal bamboo, and the bamboo gods got a little jealous.

Me and Cam, about to enter the jungle.  Yes, there is a river flowing through those tags...

Welcome to the Jungle


Then there was an outing with Cam, who writes the popular, Fiberglass Manifesto, blog.  Cam and I have been friends for almost 10 years now, and its always a good time when we get together to fish.  Initially, the plan was to float for hex, but with cool air temps in the forecast that night, I pitched a wildcard idea to float stretch of a small stream I've had my eyes on for some time in my 12' Radisson canoe. 

Cam was game and didn't flinch when he first laid eyes on how tight things were going to be- both in the little boat and the water we were going to be fishing.  Wade trips and google earth scouting told me it was floatable with some tight spots.  A friend kayaked it and said it would only take about 2 hours to float, so we put in at 7:30pm, planning to paddle for an hour into the belly of the beast, fish till dark (~10:30pm), then paddle out. 

We floated through heavy tag alders that completely covered the river from one side to the other.  It was too tight to paddle, so Cam basically steered us down from the front by grabbing overhanging branches, while I also steered and controlled how fast we were moving from the back with a push pole.  About an hour in, a branch jammed hard into Cam's side.  He grabbed it to pull it behind him while simultaneously leaning away and the next thing you know, we weren't in the canoe anymore.

Somehow, most of our gear stayed in the boat.  Cam first went for his dry bag, which had his DSLR, a few lenses, a drone, drone controller, and a bunch of other stuff you don't want to get wet.  But the dry bag didn't work very well as the lid wasn't zipped up.  To Cam's credit, he brushed it off and we continued on through the jungle of tag alders, mostly in the dark, not really getting to fish at all until we made it to the other end of our float at just after midnight. 

Despite all the suffering, it was a hell of a great time with a good bud, and I can't wait to float that stretch again.  We'll see if I can talk Cam into it again the next time he is back in northern Michigan...

Tom, removing the hook from a nice brown.

Catching Up with Tom

Apparently I fish with a lot of great writers, because the third trip I'll talk about was a couple with Tom Hazelton, another favorite writer and old friend of mine from Minnesota.  On the first, I joined Tom and Dave Karcznski-- another excellent writer-- for a hex float on some bigger water I've never fished before.  It was a good float, made better by the fact that we had the whole river to ourselves.

A couple days later, Tom and I hooked back up to fish one of my favorite stretches of small water for brookies.  It was one of those wades where the fish were everywhere they were supposed to be, and if you put the fly there, they ate it.  We landed several fish over the 10" mark, including one near the end that was pushing mid-teens. 

Ok, I Gotta Talk About a Night with Gary

Gary is one of the most fun guys there are to fish with.  The thing about Gary is he isn't the tallest guy on the river.  I wouldn't call him short, but because of his height, he pays extra special attention to where its safe to wade, memorizing how and where the water depth changes on the stretches of water he likes to fish. 

On one particular night where there wasn't really any bug activity, Gary put me on fish after fish after fish after fish.  I cried uncle, and he put me on a couple more, including one that went about 24".  That's pretty good dry fly fishing on any river, particularly one with nothing hatching and no fish actively rising.  I only caught those fish because Gary knew where they were all going to be- despite the fact that he hadn't fished that stretch yet this year.  Gary definitely missed his calling as a fly fishing guide.  While I was the one doing all the catching, it felt like Gary was the one really doing the fishing, and I'm pretty sure he got as much enjoyment out of the night as I did. 



Hex Camp Steak and Pierogies

And Then There Were a Few Days With Doug...

Doug is a former client of mine, who booked several guide trips with me over the last five years, and grew into more of a friend than a client.  Doug had always come up from Ohio in the fall to fish with me, and at my advice, made a trip up to see what this June thing was all about.  Only he did it on an unseasonably hot several days where the heat index was over 100-degrees.  We camped and fished and ate like kings.  The highlight for me was the pierogies Doug picked up from a market outside of Cleveland from an eastern European immigrant.  These were the best pierogies I've ever eaten.  If I'd have known about them in years prior, I probably would have traded my guide services to Doug for pierogies.

Cheers to Another Great June

Fishing Buddies

The similarity between the relationships between fishing buddies and married couples is kind of funny.  Really, the only difference is married people live together and periodically partake in acts of physical affection, which fishing buddies don't-- unless you and your fishing buddy are into that sort of thing... 

I've been an angling whore, fishing with literally hundreds of people-- some of whom even gave me money for it during my guiding days-- and only a few of those relationships grew into full-fledged, facebook-official fishing buddy status. 

Like boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, you don't know someone is going to end up as your fishing buddy when you first meet them.  There is a courtship period where you are kind of feeling the other person out, trying to determine if they are worth moving onto that next phase in the relationship with.  Do they like to fish for the same kind of fish as you?  Do they like fishing the same types of water as you? 

There is flirting in the form of sharing pictures of fish you've caught over the years, talking about places you've fished, species you've caught, flies you've created.  But you have to keep your guard up.  What if he is just using you for your fishing spots or to figure out how to tie that secret fly pattern? 

Over time, trust is earned and the friendship builds into something more.  Pretty soon you're going on short vacations together to far away fishing spots, or in the case of a long distance fishing buddy relationship, you're meeting up to fish together at various locations around the country.  You're trading family recipes, going to each other's family barbeques and maybe even participating in hobbies that have nothing to do with fishing.  And then before you know it, you're speaking openly with each other about secret spots and sharing knowledge you wouldn't share with anyone else. 

Once you reach that point, you don't fish with your other fishing friends as much anymore, and the relationship almost becomes exclusive.  That is, unless you've got another fishing buddy or two-- swinging is cool in fishing circles, just don't share info with one fishing buddy you learned from another, cause that's kind of like adultery.

Its hard to lose a fishing buddy, whether that separation is caused from death, someone moving to another area, getting bored with the other person or just drifting apart.  Most fishing buddy breakups are amicable, but I've seen several that didn't end on such good terms. 



SWM, 25, enjoys long walks into backcountry beaver ponds, fishing the evening rise, and shore lunches...

And just like when a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship ends, there is a rebound period after you lose a fishing buddy.  First you're calling people you used to fish with to see if they wanna fish.  Then you're taking chances by fishing with people you don't know all that well.  Just don't let that desperation to find another fishing buddy get the best of you and share the wrong intel or place with them, otherwise you'll have to live with those consequences the rest of your life. 

After you're through the rebound phase and just letting things happen naturally, its easy to find faults with prospective new fishing buddies.  Little things will drive you crazy, you know, stuff like:  poor rowing, not reach casting, aggressive mending, wading too fast towards a rising fish, or the nails on a chalkboard-like act of fishing at night with a light on. 

You've gotta learn not to sweat the small stuff, and like all relationships, you have to work at it if its going to succeed.  And if you're lucky enough to find a fishing buddy worth calling a fishing buddy, consider yourself lucky. 

Fishing Needs More Liars

I hit the restaurant at Gates Lodge the other day for lunch.  My friend says you don't go to a place like Gates to order a turkey sandwich.  At his recommendation, I tried a corned beef sandwich they call the, "Eastern Rise."  Its shaved corned beef and kimchi, topped with melted swiss, on rye.  The chefs at Gates cook their corned beef down themselves, and have it down to a science.  The flavors that hit when you take a bite are, just, well, something I don't have the vocabulary to describe. 

Matt took my order at the takeout window and we got to talking about fishing.  He and I always talk about fishing when we bump into each other, in fact I'd say most of our conversations have gone into detail on fishing stuff I wouldn't normally talk about publicly.  But this time he asked a question he normally doesn't-- "Where were you at?"  Now I've unfriended and blocked people on social media for asking that same question or variations of it, but Matt is a good dude, so I just gave him my canned response, "a gentleman never tells." 

"Were you on the South?"
"No."
"The Main, the North, the upper Man, up North?" 
"Nope,"  I answered to each in rapid succession.  He was getting desperate.
"C'mon, man, why won't you tell me where were you at? You were on the Main weren't you?"
"Yup."
He knew I was lying.
"Man, that's really kind of weird that you won't tell me what river you were on."
"I don't know who is standing behind me."  I said and laughed, knowing full well there was no one else in sight.
"There isn't anyone else out there." he said through the window.

I walked away feeling bad and proud at the same time, all the while wishing the conversation had taken place after he made my sandwich.

June is a great time to lie to your friends.  I talked to one person who showed up at their favorite spot to see 11 vehicles parked there.  11, on a stream 50' across!  I don't even understand how a guy could stop the car after pulling up and seeing another car or two already there, let alone, get out, gear up and go try fishing amongst the masses.  How the 11th guy did it, I have no idea.  The only thing keeping that place worth going back to after is the fact that 10.5 of the 11 don't know what they're doing. 

But sometimes, you aren't being secretive to protect good fishing, you're doing it to just have a pretty place to yourself.  Because having a beautiful place to yourself is really what its all about.  I could lose my job today, and it would be ok, because I could go sit on the side of a river and remember that life would go on.  My dog could get hit by a car, and it would be ok, because I could go reflect on the side of a river, and remember that life would go on.  My car might take a crap, and it would be ok, because I know that I would forget all about it on the side of a river, and life would go on.  I couldn't do those things in a combat fishing situation.

While waiting for the evening rise one night, I posted a photo of the fog moving over a gorgeous stretch of river I was on.  It was beautiful, despite the poor fishing that would follow.  The next morning I got a text from a friend asking if I was on the Main.  I told him I was, even though it was a bold faced lie.    

I love it when people try to guess where I was fishing and give up a good fishing spot I didn't know about in the process.  They'll ask if I was on river x, and then before I can lie to them, they will tell a story of how they really love that stretch below some bend where all those big trout pile up.  I'll just agree, replying that I love it, too, letting them think that's right where I was, even though I'd never had any interest in fishing there until that point in time.  And even though I never answered the question, they walk away thinking I had.  Its like a two for one deal, I keep my spot a secret and get a new spot to check out in the process. 

Traver wrote that you should, "never show a favorite spot to a fisherman you wouldn't trust with your wife."  I'm not sure that goes far enough.  I have four or five friends I trust enough to speak openly about my fishing spots at that level.  Though I'm not 100% sure as one lives 1500 miles away, two are much, much older than me and physically can't get to many of the places I'm usually talking to them about.  Older guys are usually more fun to fish with anyway, they have nothing to prove and all in all, just get it-- and they're not interested in your wife. 

The downside of all this secrecy is that I truly enjoy fishing with other people, and since I can't trust 99% of them, I'm forced to fish with them on water I would rather not be fishing.  You know, tourist water.  Tourist water is the water everyone who has been around already knows about.  Its in all the local fishing guides, its easy to get to, and while its generally not the best place to fish, it gets the job done. 

New fishing buddy candidates must prove they can keep those types of places a secret before I will take them to the next level of fishing spots, the spots that aren't in the guide books, but are still on the rivers everyone knows about.   If they talk about it to anyone else, or if they go back there with someone else after you introduce it to them, they fail.  I'll still fish with them, but will never again take them to a new spot or a spot without 11 vehicles in the parking area, but they're welcome to take me to theirs. 

A good example of this happening recently was when I took a guy who I've known for some time out on a little known piece of tourist water, you know, to see if our fishing buddy relationship might be worth taking to the next level.  Not a day after we fished, we were both with a large group of people when he blurted out how awesome the fishing was the evening before and named the spot.  He had potential, so in a fishing buddy kind of way, it was heartbreaking.  But that's why I took him someplace marginal for the first date- not someplace that needed to be kept a secret.

A marginal fishing spot is better than one in pressured, pristine trout water if you're the only one who fishes it.  Spots in pristine trout water you have to yourself are sacred and shouldn't be shared with even immediate family, even if that means, someday, you break a leg and die a slow death, exposed to the elements because no one knew where to look for you.  The even bigger conundrum comes in for the guy that finds your pile of bones on the bank and has to decide if he wants to report the find to authorities and risk that spot to the world, or leave your remains, and his secret spot, a secret. 

The catch-22 in all of this is that when the time comes that your secret spot is threatened by something-- oil/gas drilling, mining, a dam, etc.-- you're going to have a tough time trying to save it by yourself.  That's why there is hell and lawsuits to pay for anyone who even breathes on the Au Sable without brushing their teeth first.  It might be the epitome of tourist water, but it gets 300+ people to show up for it at a river cleanup. 

That said, I think fishing needs more liars and more guys keeping secrets.