Third Coast Fly

Austin passed along a podcast that Jerry Darkes did on Anchored with April Vokey (you’ll have to scroll down past a few newer casts). Jerry was talking about his book Fly Fishing the Inland Oceans. April and Jerry discuss opportunities throughout the Great Lakes giving a nice mention to Beaver Island near the end of the podcast.

I was on the road last week to give a talk to the Northern Kentucky Fly Fishers (NKFF). They asked me to give a presentation on fly fishing opportunities in Michigan. This was a great project to make me think about the almost limitless waters Michigan has to offer. To give some focus to the presentation I decided to make it my Michigan Top Ten.

The NKFF is a great club and group of guys and I appreciate them inviting me down. At their meeting they were discussing an award they had recently received as a result of some of the charity work they do.

For what it’s worth here is my Michigan Top Ten list: 10-near shore (stuff like salmon and trout in Great Lakes harbors), 9-guided trip in an AuSable boat, 8-hex, 7-salmon, 6-egging for trout, 5-mousing, 4-big smallmouth, 3-big streamers for trout, 2-Great Lakes carp and 1-steelhead.

Below are a few of my favorite slides from the presentation.

If you happened to notice the long gap between posts it was because we’ve been on an extended family vacation. It was nonstop the whole time and it feels like we went everywhere, saw everything, ate stuff that we didn’t even know what it was (liking most of it) and still weren’t ready to come home. We’re calling it the best vacation ever.

Let’s make this a contest to appoligize for going weeks without a post, to have a little fun and because I’m not organized with anything better to write about. You’ll just have to be the first to guess correctly where we visited.

A lot of people knew where we were headed and that would certainly be an unfair advantage. So if you already heard where we were going your on the honor system to bow out. The prize will be a full day guided float with me and you can enter your guess in the comments for the contest post on our Facebook page.

Some of our favorite vacation items included: eating lots of spicy cuddle fish, seeing a baby panda, a swim in the China Sea, whale watching in the Pacific, mango shaved ice, seeing bamboo vipers, a corral snake and cobra (we traveled with a snake expert), crazy city scooter driving while wearing a pink Hello Kitty helmet, combination beer drinking with indoor shrimp fishing followed by shrimp eating, seeing stunningly beautiful cultural and natural sites and experiencing the most courteous people we’ve ever met.