With the rapture of earthquakes and doom only hours away, Jeff Bacon and I had the extreme pleasure of guiding two gret bunches of guys. Jeff guided Mark and Chris Courtney- both medical doctors from Chicago and Arizona. Mark has never fly fished and Chris is an avid trout chaser on the Rocky Mountains.
( Dark tan caddis now hatching on Muskegon-#14-16-image by the "Le bug Doktor-Johnny "bugsy" Miller)
I had my yearly visit from that good 'ole Polack- Grandpa Alex Michalowski from Saginaw, his grand son Johnny from Big Rapids and his son-in law David from Washington, D.C.The day started out hot and humid. Jeff and his guys hit some nice male steelhead and a "chromer then chrome" fresh female steelie in the morning. I taught my guys the finer art of fishing caddis dries on the surface and we caught a nice 18 inch brown after many dozen presentations to this very snooty selective wise guy!
Later , I tried to get Johnny -age 14- his first steelhead, but he lost three or four after some fierce jumps by the fish.
After we had our lunch of Beef Shish-kabobs with basil pesto Potatoes, we saw this "ginormous" grayish olive 7 foot pointed head log swimming right next to the boat."OMG----IT'S A HUGE STURGEON!- I screamed and all three guys were amazed at its sight. It vanished before I could get my camera out.......way too cool!
Finally around 4:45 pm after a long day, Johnny put a nice chrome male steelhead in the boat to his elation! Johnny kept saying," an hour and 15 minutes till its over!"- the 14 yer old lad was fascinated by the whole doomsday thing! Just then , Jeff and the Courtneys came by us and said" You are not going to believe the brown we got stripping Chinook Parr streamers- it was an absolute beast of a river brown at 29 inches-8-9 pounds!!!!( the pictures and video below tell the story!!)
SO..................6:00 p.m came and went, I was still on earth ( I was a little concerned but my faith teaches me differently) and I sat down and poured a single-malt scotch and lite up a cigar( being the good Jesuit raised Catholic I am), said a prayer and toasted to a "GREAT ALOCALYPTICAL DAY!"
RIVER CONDITIONS- Muskegon water level perfect-wow!...... where did that new very deep peat color stain come from?- I think the floods really put another big dent into the river's zebra mussels thus the discoloration, which means lots of plankton/ nutrient load and excellent for rising trout to camouflage themselves. One thing zebra mussels-( or as the late Carl Richard's put it" those damn clams!) don't like is fast flows and cold water- we had both this winter and spring for the "double whammy punch! Water at 2,570 cfs- 56 F
( The birthday boy- master Cole Jensen-or otherwise known as "The steelhead slaying Cole-amani"- this dude can really fish!!!Todd-you should be proud of this superstar!)
P.S.........God bless that preacher Camping from California!........poor guy ( SHIT NO!, I take that back-"rich guy" that radio Evangelist has made multi-millions off his fool hearty followers!) has a lot of time on his hands to make such crack-pot prophecies. I pity all the idiots who left their jobs , drained their bank accounts and destroyed their families over this nut-job's predictions."Be very careful what you wish for" as the saying goes.
For it is written, "Behold, for I come like a thief in the night!"- nobody knows the time other than the "real big guy" upstairs-period!
Peter Gabriel and Genesis wrote a great tune back on their "Foxtrot" album in the 70's entitled"Supper's Ready'- if you've never listened to it- its time you downloaded it from I-tunes- Pretty cool stuff!