2019 Trout Opener
Natch with a surprise Rainbow on the Little South
The trout opener is “new years day” to most fishermen in Michigan. From here on you can add short hops to a local stream or try to organize some adventure with your buddies. Feral and Natch are always game for a long weekend we can call trout camp and this last weekend we met up at Big Leverentz for that purpose. We could have waited another week to help our morel mushroom search but still managed enough for a small skillet. We topped that off with some brown trout from the Little South Branch of the P.M.
A small skillet of Morels
Feral concentrated on Big Leverentz for pike but fishing was tough. After a couple laps around the lake Feral went to a bait shop and bought some new lures hoping to find something that might work. On the last day he had a strike on a jointed gold Rapala that was about eight inches in length – a huge lure with lots of flash. I bet he dropped a ten spot on that lure. Unfortunately the pike missed the hooks. Normally Big Leverentz gives up some big pike in the spring. I suspect the cold front blowing in from the east was the problem.
Big Leverentz
We had a good campfire all three nights and some interesting jam sessions with Feral on mandolin, Natch on bongos and me on guitar. I played some new stuff (for us): Tennessee Whiskey (Chris Stapleton), The Boys of Summer (Don Henley), and Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac). Feral played some Tom Waits songs and Buenos Tardes Amigo by Ween. We started out pretty tight and in tune and I can’t say where we ended up other than happy to be sitting around a warm campfire joking about ridiculous stuff.
So this is it, the new years for old trout fishermen.
Fichigan 