The Castle

Any pilgrimage through the Mason Tract is not complete without a stop at the Castle, or what is left of it. So one rainy afternoon I walked down to the old foundations with a friend from out of state. My friend Steve is not a fisherman, but he's a camper, hiker, birder, and all-around outdoor enthusiast, so a romp through the woods was just fine by him. He enjoyed the DNR's modest signboard, which shows old photos of the Castle and tells some of its story. And then we paced off the still-visible foundation, marveling that something so large could rise on the South Branch.

The Castle was built in 1930 by an early trout-crazy named Durant. It was a monstrous fifty-room structure, standing there in a huge clearing by the river. Durant imported workers from Europe to help build this castle in the middle of nowhere. The workers lived in temporary cabins right on the property. Supplies were hauled in from Roscommon.

Durant even carved an airstrip out of the woods so he could fly up from Detroit on weekends.

Strangely, the castle burned to the ground shortly after it was completed. No one knows exactly how it caught fire and all sorts of legends abound. But I once talked to a wonderful old fellow in Roscommon. Rollie, whose father worked on the project, told me he had been told that turpentine-soaked rags in a closet caught fire by spontaneous combustion. It was never rebuilt.

The foundations of the castle and hangar Durant built at the end of the landing strip are still there. Because it is such a popular stopping place for canoeists, the DNR built a large dock in the river there. The idea is to keep the idiots from destroying the bank and to keep the trash more or less centralized.

But there I was with my friend Steve, who was enjoying the tour, despite an on-again, off-again drizzle. We walked down to the canoe dock to check out the river and, lo and behold, a trout was rising directly across the stream. We watched and it continued to feed. It appeared to be a decent fish. So I skipped up the path to my truck and returned in a few minutes with my fly rod.

"He's still eating," said Steve.

I stripped out some line and popped a cast toward the opposite bank. Short.

"How do you know what bug it's eating?" asked Steve, getting into the swing of things.

I explained that I had a couple of good guesses, but didn't really know for sure. I also explained about generic flies like the #14 parachute Adams fixed to the end of my tippet.

Standing on the edge of the platform, I shot another cast across the river--narrow there--and the fly landed above the trout, floated down, and was promptly inhaled. Just like that.

There was a big splash as the surprised trout bolted for the overhanging brush on the far side. I knew right away it was a good fish. We managed to keep it out of brush, but things got a bit dicey when the trout made a frantic run downstream. Thankfully, it didn't go far, because I was stuck on the dock and couldn't chase it.

The trout tired and we worked it back upstream. Steve was pretty excited and went for the fish.

"Gently," I said.

He was flat on his belly and a moment later came up with a still-wriggling handful of brown trout that turned out to be an honest sixteen inches. A lovely South Branch brown.

Steve gushed over it while I removed the fly. Then I lay on my belly and held the fish in the current, and shortly it scampered away.

"Wow, that was exciting!" Steve exclaimed. "There's nothing to it! It's so easy!"

"Nothing to it at all," I assured him.

I must have a dozen "favorite" places on this storied river. My son Jeff and I call one of our favorite spots simply "The Pool." It has no hallowed name, but it's a special place to us.

The river makes an S turn in a deep pine woods. At the bottom of the S there's a picture-perfect pool, one of those pools that looks trouty the moment you see it. The current pushes in against the bank and runs under a large cedar sweeper. The sweeper is just high enough over the water that you can actually get a fly in there. Just below the sweeper there's a marvelous back-eddy. A trout could lie there with his yap open and simply let the bugs pour down the hatch. And sometimes he does. When the little olives come off, that pool lights up. I've counted as many as two dozen trout feeding in there and, during one magic afternoon, caught about that many without moving more than ten yards. RWOL

This is excerpted from the chapter "Song of the South Branch" from Jim Enger's new book The Incompleat Angler. (See the review by Dan Drislane in this issue.) It is used with permission. © 1996 Jim Enger.

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