Third Coast Fly

You know which fly fishing magazine is my favorite?  You don’t?  OK, I’ll just tell you: The Drake.  But there is a relatively new, actually physical actually non-electronic magazine out called The Flyfish Journal and it is my second favorite, far closer to The Drake in my measured esteem than to the magazine that takes home bronze.  This makes it sound not as awesome as it really is but no one has ever told me that I write concisely and clearly convey my intentions in print.  They usually say something like “where the hell does that come from” or “you’re weird.”

But I digress.

I was quite happy to read Kirk Deeter’s story “La Trutta: German Imports at the End of the World,” in the latest issue of The Flyfish Journal.  I’m sure I’ll be quite happy to read all the other stories as well, but cut me some slack, I just got the magazine yesterday.

While the focus of Deeter’s story is the sea run brown trout of southern Argentina, being a Michigan product himself he can’t help but reminisce about and even compare the exotic opposite axial-tilt fishing to the Pere Marquette.

Addressing doubters of the brown trout’s reputation as a “resilient brawler” and “the toughest salmonid” there is, Deeter asks them to “tell that to the guy fishing the hexagenia hatch with a headlamp at midnight on Michigan’s Pere Marquette.”  Discussing how he waits for sunset on the banks of the Rio Irigoyen he notes that it is, “not unlike sitting atop the Clay Banks on the Pere Marquette, waiting for early summer gray drakes to fall.  If not for the jet lag and knowledge that 20-pound anadromous trout patrolled the river, I got the almost eerie sense that I was in a very familiar place.”  Well said Deeter, but there are some 20-pound salmonids in the Pere Marquette as well.

Reading this article has me quite fired up for the hex hatch on the PM.  I’ve never fished it before and I am genuinely looking forward to tripping over roots in the dark and getting chewed alive by the mosquitoes.  I plan to eat the giant mayflies that crawl into my mouth.  I plan to park it at a promising spot, drink a beer and hope.  I plan to listen carefully for the gloops and slurps of fat browns eating bugs.  I plan to live my life the right way.

Kevin has sent me a set of photos from hex hatches past (click on them all to enlarge) and if you want to watch a cool episode of Due North Outdoors featuring Indigo Guide Service and the PM’s hex hatch, click here.