The Muskrat Rumble

Unlike some of my trout fishing companions who worship its venerable waters, I have never felt deep passion or ardor for the Au Sable River. It is hard to nurture such emotion for a coquette who rarely reciprocates. But fascination . . . bordering on obsession . . . now that's getting closer.

I have taken a few decent trout from its riffles and glides over the past four decades, but nowhere near my fair share considering all the chicanery I have employed to outwit the finicky inhabitants of this "river of sands." My grandchildren will someday puzzle over the infinite variations of Hendricksons, sulphurs, brown drakes, mahoganies, Hex, and white flies that crowd my fly boxes, little suspecting that most were painstakingly tied to "at long last" fool Au Sable trout. Then, if the afterlife goes anything like present life, the entire collection will be sold at a garage sale for twenty-five cents a boxful. Ah well, these exquisite creations seem to work no better than the pedestrian versions I slapped over trout forty years ago when my dad used to take me up to camp by Parmalee Bridge.

Oh, I know the bruisers are there. I am blessed in that the trout gods at least once a season allow me to be standing next to someone who takes a twenty-plus-inch brown. I get to snap photographs and mouth platitudes, and this, I am told, is good.

I continue to tie more and better (?) patterns, plot new strategies, and return to the hallowed waters, wiser each year—-in the realization that no matter what is attempted, it probably won't increase my success. Accepting this, things don't eat at me as in days of yore. But last season I departed from this mantra on just one little bitty occasion, and it cost me dearly.

My lifelong friend and fishing compadre Bob Linsenman and I have for years occupied a prime stretch of the Au Sable muck. When the Hex are on we do the common drill, arriving in the late afternoon and remaining on into the wee hours. It isn't far above the town of Mio and is a great spot. It has the biggest mosquitoes, the stickiest muck, plenty of overhanging, fly-grabbing trees, a plethora of sunken branches arranged to trip the most cautious of waders—-all that neat free stuff the deities have generously heaped on anglers. The place also holds large browns. Has for years and years. I have seen them get caught on occasion, and they will sometimes feed like Hampshire hogs six feet from me while they ignore my offerings.

As earlier stated, I have grown wise and learned to accept rejection, but for the past couple of seasons two or three old soakers have tested me. They start slurping in broad daylight, go for an hour or two, take a break, then come back for seconds and thirds which can occupy half the night. You can count on them being there, right at the foot of a high, steep clay bank, but you can't reach them effectively. Your backcast is severely restricted, it is too deep to wade out very far, and they hold where conflicting currents won't let the necessary long cast float drag free. There is no convenient access from the other side (private holdings) so for the last several forays I have simply tried to make better presentations, roll casting and line mending like a demented rope trick artist, with little success.

One evening it came to me. So simple. "Bob," I exclaimed, "I'm going to bring a float tube down here tomorrow, paddle across, sit there by that dead pine that's partly in the water, and when those *&#@$'s feed, I'll be fifteen feet below them. Will that be a slam-dunk or what?"

"Sounds like a plan," he said. I should have noted at this early juncture that he did not say "great" or "good" or even "mediocre" plan, but then crossing wide, deep, heavy-currented rivers (other than by bridge) has never ranked high on his pleasure scale.

The very next afternoon found me tubing my merry way across on a carefully plotted downstream-quartering angle, fetching up on the far shore just below the pine snag. The clay bank slanted directly into deep water for 100 feet or so here, and walking was precarious, I discovered, especially since it was wet.

That's ok, I thought, as I slipped and slid the short distance up to my chosen post. Otherwise this would be too easy.

"Are you going to be all right?" Bob called over, seeing me skid out for the second time.

"Oh yeah," I answered, finally reaching the old pine. "This is perfect. I can sit on this log with my feet in the water, and the upturned roots give me cover. I can even cast without standing. Look." I laid out about 25 feet with a right curve, and the big parachute Hex landed softly in the anticipated feeding slot. It floated back drag free, perky, and eminently edible, the line well out of the lane.

"Check that out, Bobby. This should be illegal. Some serious ass- kicking is going to take place over here tonight."

"See that it isn't yours," cautioned Mr. Negativity.

Another angler waded down by Bob over on "the sissy side," so they got to talking as we waited for action. Since sound carries so well over water, I could chime in with bits of trout drivel relating mostly to the numbers of spinners starting to float by. Turns out the new guy was a reporter from a Ft. Wayne newspaper. He had learned of "our spot" from one of those recently published "kiss-and-tell" guidebooks written by a couple of Michigan anglers. (Cretins.)

Then, well before dark, came the first "Blurp" of a big feeder,right where I wanted him to be.

"Oh Stevie," my keen-eared, ever-alert companion sang out as if I might have gone brain-dead.

"I know, I know. His finny butt is mine." I waited patiently, got his rhythm, and finally made the presentation. The fly drifted into his window and disappeared in that beautiful bubble-ring take of a big brown. I set-—and touched nothing. Missed him . . . or he missed it, I thought. No matter. They'll really get serious when it gets darker.

A couple of good fish did rise during the next hour, once each, as if to remind me that they were there, but my crafty plan would avail me naught. They never rose again, and there would be no more action on the clay bank side this night—-trout action, that is. I did not lack for diversion.

The mystery critter appeared about an hour before dark. There came a sound a few feet away, almost like a rising trout disturbance, but it was coupled with a "chittery" vocalization of some sort. Startled, I jumped and looked closely, but saw nothing. A short while later, the sounds were repeated, again very near my feet, and again I could see nothing despite craning and peering intensely.

"Hey. Did you guys hear that? There's a raccoon or muskrat or something over here." They were busy working fish over on their (the easy) side, having already hooked, photographed, and released one 19-incher. Little concern was evidenced over my observations about peculiar life forms on the far side (apologies to Gary Larson).

As it grew darker the creature became more adamant about sharing my spot. I would just get refocused on trout matters, and again would come that commotion of water and the chittery call—-only now it had some rasp to it, more like a ratchety snarl. It would never be exactly in the same spot, but was always close, virtually at my feet amongst the ranches and debris of the in-water portion of the pine.

Initially I was just curious, wanting simply to identify the visitor. But curiosity gave way to irritation as the appearances continued at short intervals, making me jump in spite of my resolve. "What the hell is that?" I called over to the easy-siders. "You guys can hear that, can't you? What makes that kind of noise? That can't be a muskrat, can it?"

They offered some inane responses and didn't appear to really care. I was to find out later, however, that in the intervals when they weren't casting to feeders, my perplexity was of considerable interest and the source of some low humor to them.

When it turned truly dark, things started to get to me. Fog settled over the river, and still the creature tortured me. More than irritated now, I broke off a stout branch and sat with flashlight in one hand, club in the other, feeling like a character from a Poe tale: "It grew louder--louder--louder! . . . Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!--no, no! They heard . . . they knew! . . . And now-—again!—-hark! louder! louder! . . . Villains! . . . dissemble no more! . . . "

At length I slithered a few feet up the clay bank and sat, still hoping to hear a rising fish, but mainly intent on being a bit more removed from rabid muskrats or vengeful otters.

"It was great!" Bob will tell people to this day. "We'd watch him over there, staring, just intense as a kingfisher looking for a minnow. Suddenly his head would snap one way or another and he'd say, 'There! Did you hear that? What the *&#@+ is that?' Then he'd go back to staring. Pretty soon he'd do it all again, with new words. And after dark when we couldn't see him, we could still hear him. 'There! You guys definitely heard that, didn't you? Goddamn it, what is that?' And there would be this little stab of flashlight as he tried to catch whatever it was creeping up on him. It was like Chevy Chase doing an appearance on Wild Kingdom, only the language was saltier."

Along about midnight we concluded that waiting for further trout activity was futile. While happy to be leaving the mystery menagerie, I wasn't as excited about recrossing the now pitch-black forbidding expanse of river. Reaching my float tube, I discovered the driftwood slat I had picked up for a paddle must have floated away—-or had it been taken by . . . (Nah). There was no suitable substitute near at hand to replace it, but if nothing else, I am resourceful.

I recalled countless hours of my youth spent frolicking around the lake across an inner tube, and said, "Shoot, I know how to do this." I broke down my rod, secured it to the back of my vest, held my dim flashlight in one hand, and lay across the float tube on my stomach. A couple of minutes of flutter-kicking would put me ashore just forty or fifty yards below Bob, I figured.

And so I pushed off into the heavy flow. The first hint that this was going to be more involved than I anticipated was when I had gone a couple of feet and realized I couldn't see a blessed thing. The fog had socked in solid down close to the water, and I couldn't raise my head high enough to see above it. The flashlight was virtually useless.

No big deal, I thought. Just keep kicking until you can put a leg down and touch bottom. It's basically childproof. So on I churned.

"Where's he going?" the reporter asked Bob as they waited for me on the far bank.

"Downstream."

"What for?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

They told me of this (conversation) about an hour and a half later (when wet, scratched, clay-smeared, and exhausted, I finally rejoined them), adding that it was a somewhat surreal scene. They could hear me enter the water, could hear my flutter-kicking for a short time, and then my noises slowly died away. Once in awhile they could see a feeble wink from my flashlight, ever farther downstream, and then . . . nothing.

"Are you going down to find him?" asked the concerned stranger.

"I have no idea where he'll end up," answered Bob. "Mio, maybe. Besides, there is no path. But don't worry. If nothing else, he is resourceful."

While they were thus commiserating over my possible fate, I was still doggedly thrashing across the broad Au Sable-—I thought. Actually, all my flutter-kicking was doing, apparently, was holding me nicely in midstream so the fastest currents could bear me hell-for-leather toward Camp Ten Bridge. I did not fully realize this at the time, all enveloped as I was in my foggy cocoon. Blissful ignorance was my best and only ally.

Of course I realized after an inordinate amount of time had gone by for such a short passage, and after several probes with a leg found no bottom, that all was not going according to plan; an immediate upgrade in strategy was called for. I held the small flashlight in my mouth, lay out even flatter on the tube, and used both arms breaststroke style to supplement my kicking. This brought into play the old "good news-—bad news" scenario; while making better progress, I was now taking on water at a good rate over the top front of my waders.

Finally, after what seemed an hour but was more likely ten minutes, I felt gravel under my groping feet. When I stood, emerging Grendel-like from some ancient, murky fen, I could tell exactly where I was by the mercury light of a cabin right in front of me. It was the lone cabin I knew to be below, way, way, far below, my starting point. Euphoria at being across safely was immediately dashed at the prospect of having to drag back upstream. No bank path here . . . just the mucky, snaggy shallows of the main branch of the Au Sable. And guess when my flashlight died.

Will I ever return? Of course. There is a bright side to it all. The varmint never actually bit me. I lost no gear during that Missouri boat ride. Best of all, the river really owes me now. She owes me big-time. And you know what paybacks can be. RWOL

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