Early Rainbows in the U.P….

I hadn’t touched a fly rod for way too long but when my friend Bill called me to tell about a couple new beaver ponds blocking a small tributary that has Rainbow trout…I grabbed my 8’6″ 5 wt Orvis, a box of nymphs, and jumped in the truck! The Upper Peninsula has several blue ribbon trout streams that I have spent many a day fishing…but since I started Guiding… Walleye, Bass, and the Esox clan have demanded most of my time. We stopped at the gate of the property Bill had access to and hiked a short way down a convenient ATV trail to find two freshly dammed ponds. The larger (down stream) pond still mostly ice covered…the smaller (about 2 acres) was open with a running flow. I started at the upper end… after a few clumsy false casts I dropped a #10 BH Hares ear Nymph ahead of me. Suddenly my green fly line darted forward and “fish on!” What a battling fish…somersaults and hard runs…I finally beached this very fat 18″ Bow!

Now Bill is not a fly fisherman but I brought a Limit Creek Smoothie spin rod with me and a few small Mepps Spinners for him. He cast further out and had it smacked instantly and the fight was on… A tad smaller but just as scrappy! We did not plan on keeping fish so I flattened the barbs on the Mepps as well as my flies. We were enjoying the unusually nice weather but I knew sometime today that was going to dramatically change.

Those two seemed to spook what other trout may have been in the area. We crept along to the other side and let things calm down. Bill explained that the folks that owned the property neither hunted nor fished!! They lived in Chicago and came up infrequently during the summer. The property was beautifully cleared and reminded me of a park. I had to pinch myself…what a place!
I had lost my Hares ear on an overhanging branch, so I switched to a #10 Black Wooley Bugger…a few casts later “bang” a dark thick bodied male became my second customer…

It was Bill’s turn again, and though it took a while a smaller beautifully colored Rainbow obliged…
To his knowledge no others have bothered these trout…One 17″er I caught regurgitated what looked like a Salamander (definite reptilian tail). It is most likely these early season Rainbow trout have limited natural food available. We caught about a dozen trout from 10 to 18 inches.
While it is amazing to me that situations like this exist…they do. The outflow of this stream eventually reaches northern Green Bay and during high water springs Steelhead and even Salmon come very far up similar tributaries. I plan on getting back ASAP to see if indeed that was the case in the larger pond downstream!
The dark storm clouds scudded closer on a strong cold wind. I thanked Bill for a rare afternoon with some beautiful secluded Rainbows. Snow flakes mixed in with the freezing rain…Yup! This is definitely Global Warming (Crazy weather) at its best…from 70 degrees to snowflakes in a matter of hours… Oh well..it still WAY better than working!