O Tempore Au Sable

I first saw the Ausable in New York State when Sam Eskin and I were coming back from Maine in his thirty-four-foot house trailer and pulled off the road one evening right beside the stream. I set up a rod, and in less than sixty seconds after stepping into the water, I had a seventeen-inch brown trout in my net. Ten minutes later a fourteen-incher gulped the Leadwing Coachman, and we ate them for our dinner. I've yet to creel another Ausable brown as big as the first, but it's a pleasantly varied river, and my only complaint is that you have to explain, to Westerners or to Midwesterners, that you're talking about the New York Ausable, and not the Au Sable in Michigan.

My one experience with the latter was soul-shattering, and I cite it to account for my somewhat subjective attitude toward canoeists, canoes, and canoeing.

Two years ago I was in central Michigan and had a chance to catch a day's fishing on the Au Sable. I'd been given a hand-drawn map showing how to drive to a stretch of the river where, according to my informant, I would certainly have several miles of water to myself.

Miraculously, the map was accurate, and early one morning I found my way to a beautiful piece of water. Even more miraculously, while getting into my waders I saw the swirl of a really big trout under the opposite bank. Right then and there, of course, I should have smelled a rat. Things were working out too nicely: I hadn't got lost; I hadn't had a flat tire; I hadn't left my lines and reels behind; and now the fish were feeding - I could see three other trout working above the big one. The stream at that point came out of the woods in a wide bend; the fish was feeding on the outside edge of the bend under the cut bank; I was on the inside bank, and saw that it would be simple to present a floating fly to the lunker, without problems of drag or shadow.

When I'd tied a Light Cahill to the leader I waded out carefully into the stream and waited for the big trout to show again. In a minute he did, rising with a swirl that sent out waves two inches high, and I judged he'd go four pounds, maybe five. With a few false casts I was ready to drop the fly above the fish's position when somebody snarled, "One side, buster!" This startled me so that I yanked the fly back over my shoulder into a cedar tree, and looked up to see a canoe bearing down on me. There were two men in it, paddling like madmen. It was all I could do to jump aside as the canoe shot by, missing me by inches and sending out a wave that poured over the tops of my waders.

Naturally this put the big fish off his feeding for a while, but it didn't matter too much because I was busy trying to extricate my leader and fly from the cedar. When the trout resumed feeding, I put on a new leader and fly and waded back into the pool. This time I made my cast, and the fly was about to float right over the big fish when another canoe came whipping around the bend. At the warning whoop of the two canoeists, I again slammed the leader and fly into the tree behind me, just in time to avoid having it run over by the canoe. I went ashore and sat down to recover my wits, and when I thought about it the situation was apparent. Obviously, the first two men were high-ranking or seeded public enemies, and the second two were FBI agents. Or perhaps the first men were star high-school halfbacks and the second men were Michigan State scholarship committeemen. At any rate, now that the cop-and-robber stuff was over I could concentrate on the fish, which had started to feed again.

Once more I tied on new terminal tackle and waded in below the fish. He was rising so persistently and recklessly that he was as good as in my net; I started false casting; then not one, but three canoes came hurtling around the bend, hell-bent for election and Lake Huron, with all six canoeists screaming at me to get the bloody hell out of the way. I checked my tree-bound backcast in the nick of time, but in reversing direction the fly caught on the gunwale of one canoe as it zipped past, and sixty feet of line tore off the reel before I had the wit to clamp down on the line and break off. While I was reeling in, two more canoes barreled past, and while I was taking down my rod and getting out of my waders a half dozen more came by - all propelled by men who paddled as though they were racing for a thousand-dollar prize.

Which, as a matter of fact, they were, I discovered later. The race is an annual affair, from Grayling to the town of Au Sable on Lake Huron, a distance of more than one hundred miles, with canoeists coming from far and wide to compete for the rich prizes. In fact, among enthusiasts the race is a famous one, and when I mentioned to the secretary of a New York canoeing club that I'd seen the Grayling-Au Sable Race from close up, he said, "Gosh, some people have all the luck!"

"They sure do," I said, pushing him in front of a passing Fifth Avenue bus. It's a pity those things have such good brakes.

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