Remembering Luzerne Pond’s Brown Trout.

A big hook-jawed brown trout splashes on the surface of Luzerne Pond.

It happened about 30 years ago. Back in the early to mid-1980s, and as a news item it didn't draw much media attention.

Big deal. So what. Another dam went out and silted up a small trout stream. Most people didn't pay too much mind, but it was a catastrophe for me.

Luzerne Pond, midway between Grayling and Mio on highway M-72., sat nestled between low hills, and many years before a dam had been built across Big Creek, and slowly the pond took shape. The land around the pond is privately owned but it did have a small dirt boat launch.

The Pond didn’t get much traffic, and we seldom had to share it with others.

I came to know it well back in the mid-1950s, and it long had been a favorite of my mentor, Max Donovan, of Clio, and me. We fished it often from his AuSable River long-boat, and occasional from a canoe, but the river boat provided us with a more stable fishing platform with a built-in live-well, if we decided to keep a fish.

The late 1950s and through the 1960s and early 1970s was the heyday of my young fishing career. Me and Max would paddle out onto the pond, and ghost slowly along over the gin-clear water. We seldom fished it during the day, but we prowled its waters relentlessly after dark.

We usually fished without lights because no one used a regular boat and motor, on the pond but on occasion when the fish forgot to feed, we'd shine a light into the water. The browns were always there, the large and small ones, but none wanted to feed right then.

Max was a hemophiliac, and I supplied the brawn while he handled the brains department. We each started with a fly rod with a No. 4 Muddler Minnow or Doodle Bug knotted to a 3X tippet, and a spinning rod with a minnow threaded on a double-hook rig. One or the other usually produced some great sport around midnight.

We'd shove off, and within minutes Max would be flailing the water, and and if any browns were to be caught, he often hooked them on the Muddler Minnow. In the darkness of this valley, the air often turned cold once the sun went down and the fishing heated up.

Max hit a big one late after a long fish-less stretch of fly fishing.

I lost track of the number of browns that I netted for Max, and not quite as frequently, he'd do the same for me. I remember a five-pounder was as big as we ever landed, but once he was convinced he’d hooked a really big fish.

The fly stopped as Max worked it slowly across the still surface in stops and starts, and he set the hook with a firm lift of the rod tip. The fly line buzzed off his reel, and soon he was down into his backing before I got the river boat turned around and under motion. We slowly caught up with it, and out went more line.

"What do you think?" Max asked. "Should we shine a light on him?"

"I don't think so, Max, not yet," I offered. "You know a sudden bright light really fires them up. Fight him as long as possible, and when it is close enough to the boat to net, we'll light him up and take a good look."

Max fought hard, and it never broke water. After what seemed to have taken 30 minutes, the bulldogging bruiser was on the surface less than 10 yards away.

"I figure it is one of those big hook-jawed browns we've seen occasionally," he muttered, now carrying the fight forward.

"Could be, Max, but he hasn't splashed around on the surface," I said. "It's not fighting like any brown trout either of us has ever caught. Get him a few feet closer to the boat, and I'll turn on my head lamp."

The boat would move sideways a bit, and Max couldn't take it any longer. "Light him up," he yelled.

I picked up the net, flipped on my bright head lamp, and six feet away was a big beaver. The light hit him, and we could see the No. 4 fly hooked into his hide, and he wasn't happy to see us.

The beaver slapped his tail on the water, dousing both of us with cool water, and then it dove under the river boat, and the leader broke. "Great fish, Max," I said. "Too bad you lost him."

Another time a brown bat nailed his fly as he was making a back-cast to dry out his fly, and we got him unhooked without having to handle the bat. It flew away into the darkness, and we were happy to see it gone.

Our nights often were filled with prolonged struggles with fly-hooked browns, and when the flies failed, we'd toss minnows and work them slowly through the water and just over the weeds. The browns were beautiful, well marked fish, and often we had the pond to ourselves.

Then, one day the Luzerne Pond Dam went out in a spring freshet, and the dam was never rebuilt. What we had known as superior trout habitat was nothing now but mud flats with the stream still flowing through the middle.

Such spots were an item of great importance during my youth, and until I was about 40, and when it went, I shed a silent tear for what had been and what would never be again. Gone were the big and small trout, and one suspects many of the browns found their way down Big Creek and into the AuSable River west of Mio.

Max passed away a few years after the dam went out, and now, well over 20 years later it is impossible to drive past Ma Deeter's where a sign still stands stating: “This is God's County, Please Don't Drive Through Town Like Hell.”

I never go there anymore but  still recall fondly those earlier nights. Now it is like a wake for what had caused the death of a brown trout pond of legendary proportions, and knowing full well I'd never see its likes again except in my mind's eye on these hot days when I long for an evening of fishing sprawling Luzerne Pond.

It's easier to remember it in its prime than to remember the day when the damn dam broke, and all of my childhood and some of my adult trout-fishing dreams died with it.

Title: Remembering Luzerne Pond’s Brown Trout.

Tags: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors brown, trout, Luzerne, Pond, fly, fishing, AuSable, River, long-boat))

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors