Fichigan

Small Stream Trout fishing in Michigan

Archive for the category “Trout Camp”

15 Apr 2012
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Camp Stove Buyers Guide

Over the years I have had a couple camp stoves dating back to the old Coleman model whereby you pour gas into a tank and pump it up until your fingers hurt and then try to wash the gas smell off.  As an analog adventure that’s as real as it gets. For years at trout camp I would pretend to sleep in so Feral would have to get up first and light the dad-blamed thing.  Feral’s an analog guy and I mean that in every good sense of the word. If a gadget has any sort of historical relevance, ambiance, or coolness factor – it holds appeal for him like a moth to flame.

For a good example of this – see the post “Feral’s Instruments.” The post talks about his revolving line-up of stringed musical instruments but the lead photo shows a coffee pot atop a backpack camp stove, one of Feral’s revolving line-up of camp stoves. I don’t know who manufactures the stove in the photo but maybe he’ll weigh in with a comment.

For some reason, as campers, we took a decade long detour to restaurants rather than crank up a camp stove. Small town breakfast dives deserves it’s own post, but the point I want to make is we are going back to our “roots” whereby we are at least talking about cooking meals at camp (other than our tradition “Cajun trout and bake beans” final supper at the end of trout season).  That’s right, cooking breakfast in the morning instead of running into town like a bunch of tenderfeet.

Funny quick sideline – On a family camping trip with my late grandmother, Gladys Lucas, and my parents back in the nineties, my generation jumped into our cars one morning to head for a restaurant.  Grandma was up early and saw what we were doing. As we drove buy she shook her finger at us and yelled “You tenderfeet”.  So that’s where that came from.

Back to camp stove technology. Around ten years ago I found a propane stove that actually made sense in that it was simple, practical and cheap. The magic triad.  I am sorry to report that I cross threaded the propane canister on a trip last fall trip and watched it do a slow meltdown when the leaking propane ignited.  That said, I blame myself for not being more careful attaching the canister and still stand by the product. The design makes sense in that the canister doubles as a leg of the stove providing a solid base to hold even a large skillet. Clever stuff – maybe I have a little analog still in me.

I found the stove on Amazon and delivered price ran about twenty-five bucks and that includes shipping. I’m all set for spring trout camp. Here are the details including seller:

Brinkmann 842-0010-0 1-burner Propane Camp Stove
Sold by BSEK Tech Consultants Inc (GizmosForLife)
Condition: new $14.98   Item Subtotal: $14.98 Shipping & Handling: $10.35 Shipment Total: $25.33

My only qualification is: make sure you thread on the propane canister correctly. You will be amazed by the utility of this product. 

Posted in Survival, Trout Camp and tagged , , ,
07 Feb 2012
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Feral’s Instruments

I’d like to have a nickel for every musical instrument Feral has brought to trout camp because I could buy a candy bar. If it has strings attached he has owned one, and that includes banjos, mandolins, violins, ukuleles, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, dobros, steel guitars, classical gut string guitars, and some hybrids like a tiger maple slide guitar. Not to mention harmonicas, a piccolo, a flute, a recorder, and then there was the time he brought up a grand piano on a flat bed trailer. Ok – no piano yet at trout camp, but he has owned one or two.

Feral’s owned some vintage instruments including a Fender Duosonic circa 1960s, an unidentified parlor guitar that had the loudest, clear tone I have ever witnessed, and a steel Dobro with a hot lady etched on the back (wow). All of his instruments came with a story and it was always more fun hearing the story than hearing him play. (Just kidding but Feral is a story teller which is a rare breed nowadays. He keeps trout camp a very interesting place to be.) He is also a daring instrumentalist which is more than I can say for myself.

So how did I get started on Feral’s instruments? In the picture above there’s an electric guitar I don’t recognize. I remember taking the photo one morning when we tried to make coffee but we lost the percolator cap on our coffee pot. The beer bottle did the trick – so there’s my camping tip for the day.

At first I thought the guitar was a loaner I had from Jeff DeJager back in the 70’s, a Stratocaster copy with a neck though body that his wife bought him and he didn’t play but loaned to me for some unknown reason. But it doesn’t look like a strat body so I am at a loss. It may be one from Feral’s archive or maybe someone else brought a guitar to camp. Anyway, when I get a nickel for every instrument Feral brought to trout camp I will give the person who identifies the guitar a candy bar.

Posted in Trout Camp and tagged ,
18 Jan 2012
1 Comment

Camping in the Snow

Michigan’s trout season opens on the last Saturday in April and there’s no guarantee of good weather. It’s about a fifty-fifty shot in Michigan. We’ve had balmy weather with morel mushrooms popping, thick snow that brought visibility down to fifteen feet, and every grade of weather between the two. The weather can start out nice and deteriorate quickly, or start bad and end up wonderful. In all of the years of camping on opening day I am proud to say that Feral and I only packed it up once.

We didn’t want to leave. We woke to find snow, built a fire to warm up and went down to the river and fished. Casting was very interesting – watching the lure disappear in snow before it hit the water. As I recall the snow didn’t let up a bit. Then the real show began.

Feral and I were fishing together and had moved just upstream from camp to a wide gradual bend. We were standing on the inside corner when a canoe came by. There was a young boy about age ten in front and middle-age man in the back and they were paddling like mad rounding the outside bend. At the exit of the bend some logs angled outward and sure enough they glanced off the logs and overturned. The water was maybe a degree or two above freezing and they both took a complete swim.

We waded back downstream to help but the man managed to get his canoe up-righted quickly. We told them our camp was right up the hill and that we had a fire – they were welcome to dry out and warm up. The man would have none of that – he said they’d be fine and wanted to keep going.  I have no idea how far they were going, maybe Feral can add a comment on this, but if they were heading to the next canoe landing they had a couple freezing hours ahead of them.

We felt so bad for the boy. He may have been in shock.  It just seemed surreal not to take our offered help and at least warm up at the fire. We would have been happy to drive them to their vehicle and I’m sure we offered. As far as I was concerned the dad got what was coming to him, the boy was a victim of his dad’s ego or stupidity.

I don’t recall if that incident turned us off for the weekend but it may have. Feral and I packed it up and headed home with a vow to meet back there in one week. We really didn’t mind the snow and it’s not the first time we’d tented in it. It’s just that it wasn’t what we expected. We were thinking Spring.

Posted in Trout Camp and tagged , ,
05 Oct 2011
21 Comments

1961 Apache Chief Tent Camper

Camping near Grass Lake marsh

I found the tent camper pictured above in the want ads for $200.00.  I won’t say when, but I will say I have owned it longer than the original owners, so that would make me older than the camper. They took great care of it and their main advice was never put it away wet. I took that advice and after all these years the canvass is still 100%.

It’s a great piece of engineering. It has an aluminum box on wheels with doors on the side for storage, a mattress on top of the box, and a full size tent with attached collapsible tent poles that fold over the mattress for storage. The mattress keeps me off the ground in cold weather, it absolutely doesn’t leak, there is room for two more guys on the floor plus an aisle down the middle so it’s roomy enough for three if need be. The storage compartments handle all my camping gear including sleeping bags, a screen tent, tarps, cookware, tackle and tool boxes, etc. In bad weather, which can happen at either end of Michigan’s trout season, it stays warm inside with just a propane lantern.

There is a coolness factor to owning and using something this old. People ask about it at campgrounds and want to look inside. Apache had a great idea. I guess the popularity of dinette campers convinced them to abandon the idea. That’s really too bad since it is such a practical design.

Around ten years ago Feral bought a similar used camper of a different brand. Feral painted some Ghost Brown Trout on the box, inspired by a humorous rewrite of the classic cowboy song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

(see youtube for the video “ghost brown trout.” Feral does some mean electric mandolin, Luther on vocals.)

Update: This camper is a 1960 JC Higgens, manufactured by the same company (Vesely Mfg.) for Sears. It is very similar or identical to the  1960/61 Apache Scout.

1961 Apache Scout - click on image to enlarge

1961 Apache Chief

If you see these tent campers together at a campground or remote spot somewhere in northern Michigan, stop in and say hello. We’re friendly. If you like to eat trout we may have some extra in the cooler you can take home for your dinner.

Posted in Trout Camp, Trout Gear and tagged , , , , , ,
30 Sep 2011
2 Comments

Pickerel Lake

Natch and Feral check out Pickerel Lake

The Pigeon River State Game Area in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan is home to some great trout streams and also some nice lakes including Pickerel Lake which has a campground and boat launch (unpaved for row boats and canoes). There’s a sandy swimming area but it’s not a beach proper where the sand extends beyond the lake. Most people lay out blankets on a grassy area near the boat launch and swim there.

The lake has a variety of fish species including rainbow trout, bass, perch and bluegill. A couple of us trout fishermen stopped at the boat launch one night and talked with a guy who pulled up in his row boat. He showed us his catch and he had a respectable number of decent bluegills and a few trout.

The next evening, as a social endeavor, we decided to try fishing the lake from the shore which allowed us to gab while experimenting to see what might work for the trout. A pair of Loons was working the lake and having much better luck than ourselves – so we waded out from the boat launch and tossed our crawlers out past the drop off. We stripped out line and went back to shore and set up some forked sticks and waited. It didn’t seem like we had the right program until we got ready to leave and found three fish on our various lines including a bass, a perch, and a rainbow. By then it was dark but we learned a lesson – hold onto the line and feel for the strike.

Working the shoreline at Pickerel Lake

A year later we tried it again. This time we worked the shoreline by the campground and caught a respectable number of bass, bluegill, and a few trout. Here again it was more of a social engagement, lots of jabs, a cold beer, and a chance to fish a different way than the more serious solo trout fishing we do on the trout streams. The lake produces fish easily. Use crawlers or worms with or without a bobber. Someday I’d like to take a boat out on the lake and explore, fish the drop-offs, and cast for bass.

The DNR made some improvements to the campground a year ago in hopes of luring more campers. If you are thinking about checking out the Pigeon River area it is a nice spot to camp for fifteen dollars a night. There’s a ranger station further up Sturgeon Valley Road (turn left on Twin Lakes Road after you cross the Pigeon River) that provides free maps of the two tracks and hiking trails. Driving around in the morning or evening you can see deer and elk. I’ve seen some postcard bull elk just driving around.

Pickerel Lake is centrally located to some of the best trout streams in the state including the Pigeon and the Sturgeon. Fishing the lake in the evening is a nice change of pace from wading and casting streams.

Posted in Trout Camp and tagged , , ,
23 Sep 2011

Guitars and Trout Fishing

Bray Creek campground was empty except for Mike and Denny. They were gone but we recognized Mike’s pop up camper. Feral and I pulled in late afternoon with our tents and set up. This was a couple years ago.

Bray Creek campground is on the Baldwin River in Lake County, Michigan. At the upper end of the campground Bray Creek feeds into the Baldwin making a pool that is slightly warmer than the rest of the river, and almost deep enough for a swim. As kids camping with our grandpa, we fished Bray Creek for chubs as the water was too warm for trout. I caught my first trout on the Baldwin.

Feral and I brought guitars, including my Les Paul Studio electric and my battery powered Fender Amp Can which looks like a coffee can on steroids. I also brought my zoom pedal which provides a variety of guitar voices including some pretty ragged distortion that sustains till Monday. Feral brought a jumbo bodied acoustic of unknown brand that sounded sweet with plenty of volume and low end.

Mike and Denny showed up toward evening and we still had the campground to ourselves so we pulled out the guitars. Feral and I have been playing together a long time so we dug into some of our old stuff, and, as happens most times we get together, I handed him the electric. Since Denny was there, maybe Neil Young’s most devoted fan, we decided to try “Down by the River,” a classic mostly in E minor though I’m no student of music theory. It’s one of those songs that you can do a short version or you can do the long version with a lot of “out there” lead guitar. Feral was up for the challenge. We started out slow with Denny and I trying to reach those high vocals that Neil Young can manage with ease but in my case leaves me hoarse for the next few days. Feral soared on the guitar going places I didn’t know he could go – triple picking leads in a wall of distortion at decibels that would have stopped cars on Highway 10.

We did some of our other standards too but Down by the River was the standout. I know we’ll never do a better job on that song.

We knocked down a few beers that night and slept well. I suspect we fished the Baldwin the next day but for some reason the only thing I remember is the guitar jam and Feral treading new ground on a song played to death by bar bands in the seventies. Feral’s also pretty good on a trout stream. Maybe it helps he’s a musician.

Posted in Trout Camp and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
18 Sep 2011

Trout Camp

Jake, Natch, and Feral

Twice a year I get together with friends and relatives for several days of hard core trout fishing, wilderness camping, mushroom hunting, guitar jams, and hanging out. The faces have changed over the years with exception of Feral Tweed and me. Everyone else seems to be looking older. Ha! What I mean to say is people have dropped in an out of the annual gathering, but Feral and I seem to be the constant denominator, not to mention the constant dominator on the streams. Ha again?

It is the start of a new year. The trout opener in Michigan falls on the last Saturday of April and for those of us ingrained to trout fishing, for all purposes this is our New Year. Never mind January 1 Times Square frenzy, for us it happens on a remote camping spot along a favored trout stream. There was a time we would stay up to midnight and head down to the stream with bait and a bottle of something to open the season at the first minute. We always caught trout, even though we were not bait experts. After a couple hours we would stumble back to camp and wake late morning. The morning conversation, often over breakfast at 2 star restaurant, was a strategic and tactical effort to “Call” the best stretch of stream before anyone else called it. Of course, once we got to our stretches they were already picked over by the guys that didn’t stay up till Two AM and then go out for breakfast. If you fish the Michigan opener, prepare to share. After the opener weekend, the streams are miraculously cleared of anglers and you can fish long stretches without seeing another soul.

The trout “Closer” falls on the last day of September. Lately, meaning for the last ten years, we have camped up in the Pigeon River State Game area which has three stellar trout streams, the Pigeon, the Sturgeon, and the Black. We often wilderness camp with a free permit – available at the local ranger station. If we plan on jamming with electric guitars and portable battery powered amps we know we won’t be disturbing the quiet crowds in the many campgrounds enjoying the portable generators. (We don’t always jam, and if yes, it’s usually with acoustic instruments.)

The trout closer usually provides the best fishing and worst weather, which go hand in hand. The final night includes a mess of Cajun spiced fried trout, the last of our supply of Labatt’s Blue, and the unspoken dread of another long Michigan winter waiting for the opener.

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