Au Sable vacation 2010

Well I've actually been back for a week now but just now getting around to resizing/editing pics and stuff due to having a busy week after being gone for some long. Like every years vacation with the family to our cabin on the Au Sable I always enjoy it, but this years was not as good as years past mainly due to unfavorable weather conditions. Super hot daytime temps, and lots of rain kept me from doing any trout fishing at all this vacation. And it also kept me from taking the boat out as much as I usually do as well so this year I spent a good deal of time wading some of the open areas below the dam fly fishing for smallies the entire trip. The smallmouth fishing wasn't very hot either as compared to most years. This was actually the about first year since about 1984 where I failed to land a smallmouth over 20". Most the fish seemed to be in lazy mood most days, most likely due to the water temps being 79degrees as well as the rain each day washing food into the river so they didn't have to search much to find food. But still with that said, I've been fishing the Au Sable for close to four decades now so I know where to find fish even in the worst of times, so I did manage a decent number of smallmouth on the fly that ranged from 14" to 17".

At the end of this post there's a 3min video that has a ton of pics in it of fish as well as other wildlife. I figured that would be a better way to share the pics rather than posting 100 pictures and having guys that are on a slow connection have issues downloading them, so watch the vid at the end, but here is a sample of some of the highlights I enjoyed.

Took my niece & Nephew down and rigged them up with spin rods one evening so they could get in on some action. They are both growing so fast I'm afraid it wont be long till they are off to college and no longer be joining Uncle Steve on the river

My niece with the first fish on the rod I built for her last Christmas.

Couple pics that just begged to be B&W in my opinion.

I must be getting old because I can remember when the above dilapidated shack was actually a bait shop back when I was a kid.

My buddy Mark was able to come up and spend a day pulling streamers with me, we lucked out and had nice weather that day thankfully.