UP Trout Rivers

I sampled several trout streams in my travels through the Upper Michigan Peninsula. Overall, I didn't do nearly as well as I did last visit, when I fished the Fox and the Driggs and the Big Two-Hearted. This time, I fished the Sturgeon, the Black (the little one on the Lake Michigan side), the East Branch of the Escanaba, and the Carp. Of those streams, I'm adding the East Branch of the Escanaba to my list of streams to explore further down the road.

You can see the East Branch easily right in the town of Gwinn, where it runs through a lovely park. I accessed it about 6 miles upstream at a wooden bridge. Above the bridge it is slow and featureless, but below there is a long series of lovely runs and riffles. The brookies I caught were not big trout, with the exception of one I hooked but failed to land that looked to be in the 13 or 14 inch range. This stream is a pleasure to fish. It is wadable, and open enough for casting. There were plenty of caddis around when I was on the stream, and a #16 caddis adult worked well. Small streamers also excited the trout - so I fished a streamer downstream and dries back up.

During the week, I saw quite a variety of mayflies - including some big dark flies - maybe March Browns (?) and some very big bright yellow flies - are these the UP version of the green drake, or some kind of yellow drake? I don't know. I didn't see huge hatches of these, but enough of both that it wasn't a fluke. There were also some flies that looked like Hendricksons, but a little smaller than ours, and some #16 black body flies, and some olives. As well, I saw a variety of stoneflies during my stay.