IT’S MID-JUNE at Pirate Camp in Michigan’s River Country, happy hour, a while before prime time. We grab a quick dinner around the fire circle—tossing paper plates into the pit for fuel later—and disperse to fish the Au Sable.
I drift solo and find the last of the brown drakes and a single decent sipper in the flat water. Captain Jimmy and Chairman Dave float miles downstream, seeking but not finding the first hex hatch, but still getting a few fish. We re-assemble past midnight at the now-roaring campfire. Inside, at the kitchen table, photographer/filmmaker Robert Thompson (“RT”) shares the night’s best catch. And he didn’t even fish.
Camera in hand, hunch in his head, RT spent the night trailing our other campmate, Otis McCurdy, as he busted down rough twotracks and through thickets of alders to wade an isolated run spinners on the water (mahogany duns, slate drakes), and a single rising brown trout, a big one, gulping every bug in range.
