Well I’m back from a nice week on the Au Sable River with the family. I have a lot more to report about the trip and I think you guys will really dig some of the stuff. For now, here are a few photos from the trip.
Au Sable River – Mainstream
Brown Trout from the Au Sable.
East Branch of the Au Sable.
Another pretty brown from the Au Sable.
Me fishing the mainstream of the Au Sable.
This is my dry fly. More about this later.
Grayling that is sadly no longer in the Au Sable.
Iconic river that I have unfortunately never seen except in pictures. I look forward to more Paul.
Thanks Howard. I really love that river. You feel the history while there and it’s beautiful.
I have lived in Frederic which is like 10 minutes from grayling, I have always gone to grayling schools and I have always wondered what a grayling fish looked like. I have never seen one in person but would like to see them in the asauble like they once were. But the thing about grayling is the fish hatchery releases a bunch of fish to “repopulate” but there sterile so they can’t. So why would they release sterile fish? It makes no sense to me. and I was wondering why are grayling fish no longer coming to grayling?
Hi Charles,
The reason why they only release sterile fish is so the stocked fish won’t reproduce with native fish. This protects the native fish.
The reason why there are no longer grayling in the Au Sable is because of the booming lumber industry back in the beginning of the 1900s. They cleared a lot of the trees that were next to the river and they also floated a lot of logs down the river. This was too much for the grayling to take and they could no longer survive. After the lumber industry declined, they tried restocking the Au Sable with grayling again, but sadly, they did not survive. I hope that helps.
Thank you for the question!
-Paul
Thanks that helped a lot