Trout Water: A Year on the Au Sable

by Josh Greenberg

Overview

"Josh Greenberg is my kind of nature writer."—The Wall Street Journal

It's the beginning of trout fishing season, and Josh Greenberg — proprietor of one of the nation’s most famous fishing outfitters, on America's most iconic trout-fishing stream, the Au Sable River in Michigan —is standing in the Au Sable at dusk when he gets the call that a dear fishing buddy has died.

The solace he takes from fishing — from reading the movement of the river water, studying the play of the light, and relying on his knowledge of insect and fish life — prompts him to reflect on the impact of the natural world on his life in his fisherman’s journal.

Over the course of a year, the journal transcends fishing notes to include some beautifully lyrical nature writing, entertaining stories of the big one that got away, cheerful introspection about a love that’s hard to explain, and yes, a tip or two.

Eventually, Josh Greenberg realizes he hasn’t been all alone in the woods, not really. Much of his relationship with his family and friends has played out on the river. And as he catches — and releases — trout after trout back into one of the most beautiful rivers in America, Greenberg comes to help us realize, too, that there’s more to fishing than catching fish.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612199016
Publisher:	Melville House Publishing
Publication date:	03/23/2021
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Josh Greenberg is the owner of the famous Gates Au Sable Lodge, and writes a popular, on-line fishing report that draws as many as 40,000 hits a month. He has contributed to several magazines, including Fly, Rod & Reel and Fly Fisherman. He is the author of Rivers of Sand: Fly Fishing Michigan and the Great Lakes Region.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction 

I originally meant this book to imitate one of my very favorite pieces of fly-fishing literature, John Waller Hills’s A Summer on the Test, but like with most things I begin (be it chicken coop or fishing outing) the end result differs greatly from my vision at the start. Some of this is material: my summer on the Au Sable, like all summers on the Au Sable, was different from the year before, and much different from the year it is now. Some of this is simply accounted for by my own nature, my propensity to constantly revisit, self-edit, question, and, finally, push forward on what seems at the time to be the best path. In this way, in my life, I often feel like I’m walking through a thick Michigan bog, just trying to find the river.

This is my second attempt at an outdoor journal. The first, in New Zealand, fizzled into its clear rivers. But, while incomplete, and at times laughably bad, that first attempt provided the basis for this book. I recorded my entries at night as my kids settled into sleep in the bedroom next to my fly-tying room. The lateness of such entries undoubtedly colored my perception, just like every minute of every day colors our perceptions. But the Au Sable being a night river, and I being a night owl, it seems appropriate for the words to be hatched under starlight.

Because I don’t cover it in the text, a simple introduction: I grew up in Ohio but spent my summers working at Gates Au Sable Lodge in Grayling, Michigan. Over time I’ve tied flies, served food, made beds, guided anglers, loaded reels, and, a little later in life, understood contracts, taxes, and balloon payments. But it’s the river outside the lodge, and the people that it connects, that has bound me to the business. And it’s the loss of these river people that is really the most difficult part of this job. Thinking for the dead is foolish, I know, but it helps. So in this way, this book is for those I’ve met and lost along the banks of the Au Sable, and whom I visit often for what I think of as their advice.

As this pandemic swept through our real and virtual lives, the river has served as a sanctuary for people on both sides of a supposedly divided country. Owning a fly-fishing lodge on a popular river in a state split almost down the middle right and left allows me a top-view of a clientele equally similar and different, though it seems, powered by social media, that these differences are just more fun to defend ad infinitum, a doubling down on convictions that tend, in my opinion, to stray further and further from reality. If one fly-fished in such a manner, not a trout would be caught. Because trout are caught, I keep the faith that the greatest lessons of trout water haven’t been lost on us.
 
—Josh Greenberg
 

***

Chapter 1: Terry in the Bardo
 
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
                                                —Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism
 

May 5

When you’re waiting on the phone call that will inform you a friend has died, the only place I know to go is the river. It was evening when I arrived, and that’s when you look for rising trout on the Au Sable in May: when the river is silver with sky reflection and the edges are dark beneath the cedars.

It was almost too early in the year to be looking for evening spinners, but I wasn’t looking for evening spinners. I was looking for the river. Only after I’d found the river, and sat on the bank edge, did I look for evening spinners. And, surprisingly, there they were: a small flight of Hendrickson spinners. They trailed unnaturally bright, seemingly luminescent yellow egg sacs—the only spot of color in this repressed spring.

Okay, I thought. So maybe there’ll be some fishing to go with the phone call. Even to just see a trout rise would mean spring. I had a box of Hendrickson spinners I’d tied over the winter. There’s not much I like better than trying out a bunch of winter-tied flies on the first rising trout of the spring. There were no trout rising yet, and there wouldn’t be many in the high water. Many of the trout would be full with washed-in earthworms. The cold water would make them sluggish. But just one evening rise can alter the worldview of a spring-starved angler.

I stood and began to hunt slowly upstream, walking the bank. The river was high and fast, but smooth. The Au Sable is the perfect canvas on which to paint a rise. I saw no rises, however. I saw hardly any life in any form. There was no one in the valley. No one. The river cabins stood empty, their owners downstate or somewhere south, and the cabins had broken branches on their roofs and in their yards, detritus from the long winter. There were no cars or barking dogs or canoers. The river was one cloudburst from being blown out. It was still so brown and quiet, the trees still barren; you’d have thought it was a warmish November evening.

I was determined to find a rising fish. No blind-fishing of any sort: rising trout or bust. I snuck through the flooded shore grass and alders, hunting the surface for rings. Further up the flooded bank, I had to pick through some beaver work. I’d trapped a beaver from this same bank this past winter and used the fur to tie the body of the fly on my hook keeper. I try to examine life, but not fishing and hunting, which I love. It is not an addiction. The examined life is preferred, but it’s dangerous to examine love.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 Terry in the Bardo 1

Chapter 2 The Skin-Walker 15

Chapter 3 Time Is Vertical (or, How I Found Last Chance Redemption) 39

Chapter 4 Fish as if the Upstream Bull Watches 69

Chapter 5 Hexing in the Fermata 91

Chapter 6 Northern Lights: A Journal 113

Chapter 7 Gone Dog 141

Editorial Reviews

”Josh Greenberg is my kind of nature writer: unassuming, accessible and, while knowledgeable, a guy for whom knowledge serves as a reminder of how little he actually knows…. As Trout Water progressed, I found myself growing increasingly fond of Mr. Greenberg’s voice. Even a nonangler will see that the author gets it. He knows how haphazard life is and feels lucky rather than entitled to have fallen in love with fishing, to be connected to the great dynamo of the natural world. — Bill Heavey, The Wall Street Journal

”Worthy of Jim Harrison … Nicely contemplative and featuring plenty of tips for fellow anglers … Every angler will appreciate Greenberg’s adventures and misadventures on shining waters.” —Kirkus Reviews

”Greenberg’s accessible and personal volume concentrates largely on the famous river familiar to many Northern Michigan anglers. … His enchantment with the river comes through clearly and with flair. Good reading.” — Glen Young, The Petosky (MI) News-Review

"In this luminous, limpid journal/memoir, Josh Greenberg has given Michigan’s legendary Au Sable River a pulse and presence in language that is at once clear and immediate, informative and educational,  lyrical and transcendent, like the river itself. This is fly-fishing literature of the first order––a classic for our time–– and should be on every angler’s shelf."
—Bob DeMott, Astream: American Writers on Fly Fishing, and Angling Days

"Josh Greenberg shares with us a heart warming and contemplative celebration of water, the fish that swim in it, and friends and family, both past and present, that have revolved around it."  —Barry Ord Clarke, author of The Feather Bender's Flytying Techniques

"There are two fly fishing authors I seek when looking for a great read. The first is John Gierach—probably one of the most popular crossover fly fishing authors of all time. The second is my friend, Josh Greenberg—the best fly fishing author many people may not have heard of. That is, at least for now. Josh's writing is for anyone (fisher or non-fisher) who enjoys a great read, and his prose is simply amazing—and so is his new book, Trout Water: A Year on the AuSable." —George Daniel, author of Dynamic Nymphing, Strip Set, and Nymph Fishing


Praise for Josh Greenburg’s previous book, Rivers of Sand . . .

"A delightful gem that deserves an honored place in every literate fly angler’s library, because, like Thoreau, he has managed to make the local universal. Greenberg’s accessible, conversational voice delivers the kind of experienced knowledge and wisdom  that benefits fly fishers everywhere.” —Robert DeMott, editor of Astream: American Writers on Fly Fishing

“Every year or two, or maybe even five, a wonderful book arrives that infuses a compelling narrative, accomplished lyric prose, and practical dispensation of rarified knowledge, a singular book, in other words, that could not have been written by anyone other than its author. . . Rise for this book!” —Chris Dombrowski, author of Earth Again

“Pulls you forward with a beautiful and compelling  blend of history, people, rivers, flies, and the introspection of a fine, inquiring mind.” —Joseph Heywood, author of The Snowfly

From the Publisher

2020-12-23
A narrative of time spent on a short but challenging river in quest of the ever elusive trout.

Trout fishing, writes Gates Au Sable Lodge manager Greenberg, is a decidedly existential enterprise. “When a dog goes missing, you know exactly what you’re looking for,” he writes. “But when in trout water, I’m not looking for trout so much as the state of being that the pursuit of trout gives me.” It’s a moment worthy of Jim Harrison, whose home turf lies not far from the Au Sable River, which flows some 140 miles across Michigan. It’s there that Greenberg contemplates matters of life and death, the inevitable but unexpected losses of friends and family. But more, he spends time in the precise and near-scientific pursuit of his prey, trying to coax a rising trout to take his fly. The near science comes in understanding fish behavior, for one, and the flow and turbulence and temperature of water, but also in trying to figure out what the fish will deign to accept. Greenberg recounts negotiating with a hard-of-hearing master of fly-tying to find the magic ingredient. “We’d stand in the fly shop and yell at each other,” he writes. “Finally, with enough yelling and diagrams, an agreement was reached on what the fly should look like, and how many he should tie.” Things were always better on the water yesterday, the old-timers would lament, but that doesn’t dissuade Greenberg from striving to “sneak in on those big, inconsistent fish,” realizing, upon catching one, that the act “redeemed something I didn’t know needed redeeming.” Nicely contemplative and featuring plenty of tips for fellow anglers, the author’s account takes in other waters besides the Au Sable—e.g., when he writes, in near-mystical appreciation, of the difference in the way the sun glints off the surface there and in faraway New Zealand, where he has to learn how to fish all over again.

Every angler will appreciate Greenberg’s adventures and misadventures on shining waters.

Kirkus Reviews