The Au Sable river, "river of sand", flows over 100 miles from north of the town of Grayling. It is very popular for canoeing and trout fishing.
Day 1: From Mio to McKinley Bridge, the water becomes wide, deep, and strong but there are still a few access points for wading. I fished downstream just below McKinley Bridge.
Woolly bugger is a little bit heavy to cast with a trout fly rod, especially if it has bead-head or cone-head.
I checked out, via Internet, that woolly buggers worked well at this section of the stream. And it worked very well. I caught two browns and more than 30 rainbows on woolly buggers.
They are all small, around 10 inches. The biggest one I caught here was 11-inch rainbow.
Day 2: Thunderstorm in the morning. After the thunderstorm, the water became a little high and murky but it was still fishable.
I fished the main stream, the fly fishing only, catch-and-release section also known as the Holy Water.
Fishing was very slow this day. I caught a very small brown and a baby-size brook trout.
- Location: Au Sable River, MI
- Date: May 27-28, 2006
- Time: 10:30-20:00 5/27, 11:00-20:00 5/28
- Weather: Sunny 5/27, Thunderstorm and sunny later 5/28
- Air Temp: 82°F(28°C) 5/27, 90°F(32°C) 5/28
- Water Temp: 64°F(18°C) 5/27
- Water Cond: Clear 5/27, Murky 5/28
- Catch: Two brown trout and many rainbow trout 5/27. Small brown and brook trout 5/28
- Tackle: Fly rod 8'6" #4 WF4F L5X, T6X, 5/27. Fly rod 8' #3, WF3F, L6X, T6X, 5/28
- Flies: #12 olive and black bead-head woolly bugger, #10 olive cone-head Woolly bugger, #12 Prince Nymph
