First Fish Camp - Part 2

After a few days on the Manistee River we decided we would hike in the Betsie River and see what we could scare up.  It is about 30 minutes from my house and is behind the Crystal Mountain ski area.  We parked along the road and hiked in about 1/2 mile and crossed over the stream.  This was the first time I had been to the Betsie in the spring.  The water was higher and the crossing was a little interesting.

I found a nice hole and started to swing flies.  The water was a little dark from the overnight rain. I kept casting and working my way downstream towards Tim.  Stan was fishing a hole above me.  We fished for several hours and didn't get anything.  Stan had a big steelhead on and had it right to his feet when he lost it.

The next day we did a float trip with my drift boat from Tippy Dam to High Bridge.

The small pictures are from another camera and get blurry when I tried to enlarge it.

Tim is casting to the banks and off the gravel bars.  We caught rainbows and browns.

Stan was changing flies, looking for the hot fly.  We all took turns manning the oars as we drifted down the river stopping at each hole or run.

Here was a small brown that fell to my white streamer.

Another fish comes to the net.  Now where are the large steelhead?

We spent 4 hour drifting the first 3/4 mile and it was 6 more miles to our take-out point.  We had to speed things up.  We drifted down stream and had our lunch on the way down. 

We had a nice turkey sandwich and cole slaw and some cookies.

The weather warmed up and we relaxed.

We didn't do well in the lower river and the wind came up.  It was blowing us back up stream so we had to use the oars for the last 2 hours!!

After we got off the river we decided to cook outside over the grill.  I had two large filets of lake trout for dinner

It was nice to eat outside for the first time in mid-April.

Shirt sleeves in mid-April doesn't happen every year.  It was a nice ending to a great day.

The next day we decided to fish Bear Creek.  We drove to a new location.  It would be the first time hiking in to this spot on the creek.  We parked and hiked over to the edge of a huge cliff above the river.  It was quite a scramble getting down to the stream.

Stan is about half way down the trail.  The stream looks great and nobody else is in sight.  Yea, we have the stream to ourselves.

I get a native rainbow and think I am going to have a great day here.

The stream is small but beautiful.  Tim crosses over to the other side and Stan and I play leap frog from hole to hole.

Tim got into the fish and caught a nice brookie and 4 rainbows.  Stan got a brown so we covered all the bases on the trout , except the steelhead had moved way up stream!

Sometimes you just have to relax and enjoy the sites and sights.

Stan has one on.  I grab the camera so I can get a shot of the fish.

A nice brownie from Bear Creek.

There was an angler here with a sense of humor.  What do you think?

I think the same angler was at this spot.  What is that shape on the tree?   Tim is just fishing a nice hole.

We fish for a couple of hours and ended up way up stream.  We decide to head back and then we realized that we have that huge cliff to hike back up!  It was steeper this time!

Next day we went back to the Manistee River to fish.  It was another nice day but we found a drift boat in our favorite spot.  They were fishing the other side so we just waded out and fished on this side of the boat.

Tim hooked a large steelhead but couldn't get it in.  As he finally got closer he realized it had a stringer attached and Tim hooked the fish and stringer!

A fitting farewell to a week of Fish Camp. Tim was headed to downstate to visit his Mother and Stan was off to Virginia. Another great Fish Camp.

The guys left around 10:00 am and Fish Camp ll was due to start at 2:00 pm.  Stay tuned for Fish Camp ll .