An Old Fishing Buddy

Yesterday I had an opportunity to phone a childhood friend. His real name is Joe, really! Joe and I grew up two houses from each other in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Munising sat at the bottom of a huge bowl formed by glaciated limestone hills. Munising is snuggly nestled at the base of these surrounding hills that rise perhaps as high as 350 to 400 feet above the bay. Munising Bay is one of only a few naturally protected deep water bays on all of Lake Superior. Sitting directly in front of Munising offering the bay shelter is Grand Island. The bay while it looks long and narrow is actually about two and one half miles by two and one half miles. The north channel takes you out into Lake Superior and you would be bound for the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, MI. The west channel likewise takes you into the open water of Lake Superior only you would be heading towards Marquette and Duluth, MN. Quite often when Lake Superior blows up as only Lake Superior can, you will find several large cargo ships anchored in Munising Bay on the lee side of the island.

Without making this much longer than the reader might be interested in, the subject of this story is a fine little trout stream that meanders through a cut in the hills surrounding Munising and eventually empties into Munising Bay in the southeast side of the bay near our only industry in town, the paper mill.

As a young boy in the mid-1950's Joe and I fished this river a lot. We lived in the West end of Munising, and were several miles from the trout stream called the Anna River. However, we locals always referred to the stream as the Annie River. River is an over statement, it was a stream, often no wider than fifteen or twenty feet. However, the stream ran from south of the hills surrounding Munising, through a cut in the hills and on into Munising itself.

Many times, after school on a Friday afternoon Joe and I would grab our empty Campbell soup cans and head up to Chipmunk Valley to dig worms. Joe had found a valley in the hill on the West side of Munising not too far from where we lived. It had silted in over the years creating an ideal cool moist soil that held and incredible amount of worms. So, after school off we'd go, dig two soup cans of worms, pack some dirt around them, and back home to wait for Saturday morning. Each of us would ready our fishing gear on our own and meet at an agreed to time in front of my house because I lived on the way to the stream.

In late May, early June the mornings were cool if not downright cold. However, a jacket sufficed and off we went on our bicycles. Just as we came to the end of Superior St. on the right hand side of the road was a gas station. We would stop there and I would buy a pack of cigars, Rum Soaked Crooks. A cigar I would still like to find and puff on from time to time to relieve the sweet taste and odor.

Then off again, another couple of miles to our "put in site." Our "put in site" was where we would walk our bicycles off the road, lay them down in deep grass then walk another half mile or so to where we would fish. The stream meandered so much we had four or five hours of fishing before we came to where we stashed the bikes.

We did not own waders so we had to walk the path that followed the stream. There was a rail road that used the same cut in the hills to service Munising so we often had the opportunity to cross the stream using the trestle to cross the stream.

The water was cold and pure. It was clear and you could see the sandy bottom easily. Pools that held our prey were a little blurry because of the water movement and depth, but our philosophy was if you could not see the fish, they couldn't see you. Water under cut the bank in many places forming pockets that you eased up on the tested for fish.

Our method of fishing was simple. We were bait fishermen, a fly fisherman would've had a real challenge as the stream meandered through forest and trees that grew right up to and mostly overhung the stream. It was beautiful, but I am sure a fly fisherman would've been frustrated. We used old spinning rods, but never really casted, most of our fishing was by what I call the swing method. You'd let out about seven feet of line holding the rod tip up so you didn't drag the bait in the water, then get as much slack line in your hand as you could extend your arm, finally by swinging the bait slowly and letting go of the slack line you could place the bait from twelve to fourteen feet from you if you were any good. It was a good technique for the surroundings.

Our bait was an simple single blade spinner with a fairly small hook on it. A split shot about six inches above the spinner allowed the spinner to work in the deeper pools and allowed us to get our bait down into the trouts lair unless we had a riffle that was of sufficient force that it just rolled the spinner downstream. The bait worked well. Some people used a ball of worms and had success, but from what I saw most who fished the small streams of the U.P. used spinners.

The size limit for trout was seven inches which Joe and I had marked off on our poles with electricians tape. We did not carry a creel (fish basket) as it made riding a bike more difficult to have the basket slapping at your legs. If we got some fish, which we did with some regularity, we'd carry them on a stick we'd pick up along the stream bank. Then when we were ready to go home we'd wrap the fish in a plastic bag we carried and put them in a jacket pocket. You had to be economical in how you carried your gear. We did not have bikes that had carriage racks and knew nothing of baskets, totes or any other equipment used to carry gear while riding a bike.

Many a day was spent slapping at mosquitoes, this was before mosquito dope like Off or Cutter's. The grass along the river smelled sweet, the stream was rapid and pure and burbled along through the woods making a sound like none I've ever heard. If we got thirsty we bent over and drank from the stream, if we got hot we splashed water on our heads. Life was simple, we caught Rainbow and Brook Trout, we didn't feed our families, however we did manage a nice trout meal from time to time.

When Joe and I were young this is how we spent a lot of time during the late spring and summers. Digging worms in Chipmunk Valley, riding bikes for several miles, smoking Rum Soaked Crooks, and slapping mosquitoes just seem like it was part of life's rhythm. Joe and I are good friends.