Every fall, sometime around the first clear-skied cold snap, the Au Sable reminds me just how fickle it can be. The water turns to crystal, the trout become skittish, and a fishing trip can hover right around “scenic cruise” status. After the good rainy day fishing, we had some real butt-kicking days…especially over the weekend. Early this week it warmed up and we got back to catching some trout. We even found some fish rising. That should continue into this warm weekend.
The trout are very much podded up and anglers have to choose their topic. It goes something like this:
North and South Branch will have good brook trout fishing in the riffle water using soft-hackles and small streamers, or maybe even finding a pod of trout eating BWOs in the afternoons.
The Holy Water stretch will offer better nymph fishing, and can be very good streamer fishing at low light periods or when we get some clouds.
The middle river down to Mio dam offers the chance at some pre-spawn trout that haven’t yet moved upriver.
Below Mio can have some great streamer fishing, as can the Manistee.
We aren’t seeing much in the way of spawning activity yet though you might run into a few early beds. The bulk of the spawning will occur much later in October. Which brings me to this:
We need volunteers for the 2026 Redd Survey, 11/7, 9 am at Gates Lodge
What is the Redd Survey? Well, we survey the brown trout spawning beds on the Au Sable, by foot and by boat. If you have a boat, great! If you don’t, no problem. We use GPS units to record the whereabouts of each individual spawning beds. We eat donuts before we go and pizza after we’re done. It’s a great way to spend half a day on the water. Knowing where the trout spawn helps inform our habitat projects as well as track the numbers of adult spawning brown trout in the Au Sable. Sign up by emailing me at [email protected]
Most of our lodge guests right now are doing some combination of fishing and hunting. Almost all of us in the fly shop are grouse hunters of varying intensity, and I’m pleased to report that bird numbers seem to be up in our area. There are acorns and berries all over the forest right now. Unfortunately, the National Guard has closed all the land north of Stephan including north Wakeley Bridge for experimental weapons testing, so there’s a good chunk of popular grouse lands that will be closed for the rest of October. Not going to stand on a soap box about this — I don’t know enough about it. I do know it’s bad timing for lots of locals and visitors that wait all year for this month of the season.
The above picture was from late September. Still green. But right now the leaves are changing rapidly and this week and weekend will be peak color in and around the river valley. From fishing to hunting to sight-seeing, this a sweet season to be outside.
