If you remember the feeling you had waking up Christmas mornings when you were a kid you know how I felt waking on the second floor of the 100 plus year old Simons cabin sitting on a bluff overlooking a bend of the North Branch of the Au Sable.
With a cup of coffee – which, despite its generic brand, tastes wonderful and is followed by a second and third cup – my thoughts swirl from catching fish to the huge bee swarming around in the screened-in-porch overlooking the river where I’m enjoying the morning.
You’d think it would be quiet, and it is, sort of … but chirping birds, buzzing mosquitoes, the sound of the river and too, cars with people going to work on North Down River Road, though several miles away, comes in spurts, then stops and it’s back to the birds, the river and ….mosquitoes.
The weather has come full circle; from wet and cold to dry and hot. The nights are in the 60’s and it’s in the mid 80’s during the day. But despite the warm-up, hatches have been sporadic and sparse but Hendricksons are still around and with a hint of a spinner fall, a hope for normalcy should see Brown Drakes in the cue.
A piece of advice from someone who spent last week on the North Branch was that wet flies were the ticket. We’ll see.
Td