My life story as told by water
Who I am, and how that's shaped my fishing life
(n.b. Title brazenly stolen from the master, David James Duncan, who used it to head a must-read collection of his essays.)
Nick Parish
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Inside this entry
- Meet your instructor
- An alternate universe Up North
- Learning from local fly fishing clubs
- Giving back and going west
- Self assessment: what will your autobiography look like?
Meet your instructor
I grew up in a place with a lotta water. Michigan, the Great Lakes State. My parents had a place in one of the newly-created suburbs of Detroit, A sort of edge zone, or borderland, where we had a hundred acres of forest behind the house and a subdivision in front.
There was a decent-sized pond about ten minutes’ walk through the woods from the house, and a great little creek, Tarabusi Creek, a tributary to the then criminally polluted Rouge River. The Rouge was famous at the time for its industrial decrepitude, but has become a healthy fishery, thanks in part to advocates like the Friends of the Rouge River.
Our little corner of pre-suburban wilderness also had a fishing shop nearby—"Lakeside Fishing Shop 2"—on a street named after another river, Grand River. About that time I was old enough to ride bikes on my own, and have some pocket money. I invested in a rod and a little Plano tackle box with lead-head jig grub patterns that I would use to catch bluegill from the pond.
Fly anglers with thousands of dollars of tackle on their person don't like to hear this, but fishing with a nymph under an indicator isn't really much different than that. And that's not a bad way to start out, if you're an absolute beginner, to get the feel of things. That's how we start our first-ever Intro to Fly Fishing class trip. Things are a little more delicate, with smaller hooks and lighter line, and more than just bluegill in the mix, but in its essence it's not far removed.
Back home I devoured my dad’s fishing library, at least the stuff I could understand, the Time Life-type series on fish and angling. The fly fishing stuff was too advanced. But, I had my own personal copy of Pond Life and wore it out.
An alternate universe Up North
My grandfather was instrumental in nurturing the fishing bug. He and my grandma lived in a town called McKinley, “up North” in the tip of Michigan’s mitt.
Far, far away (3.5 hours in the car, but a lifetime in the mind) the smells and sounds were all different. We looked for rare Kirkland's Warblers, and drove grandpa's old Land Cruiser with the "awoooooga" horn up the sandy two-track to O'Brien Lake after dinner to look for deer and bears munching on wild blueberries.
I caught my first trout about that same time on the river that ran behind his house, the Au Sable. We were floating down the river in his aluminum rowboat, and I was dangling a snelled hook with a nightcrawler on it over the side. How many hundreds more fish have I caught in quite a similar manner, slowly gliding along the river.
The Au Sable is known for a lot of things. One of them being very large, hungry fish, another one of them being a very large, special kind of insect, very large mayfly called a Hexagenia limbata that only hatches at night and drives large trout crazy.
Suffice to say it's a pretty famous river system. I had no idea until later. It was just one of the places we fished. There’s a famous fly shop there, too, Gates’ Au Sable Lodge, and its current proprietor, Josh, has written several love letters to the river in the form of books called Rivers of Sand and Trout Water both of which I strongly recommend.
Learning from local fly fishing clubs
The Au Sable was where Trout Unlimited was born, when a group of concerned anglers joined together to help preserve the river’s health. Trout Unlimited advocates for cold water habitat and resource protection and protecting and promoting the nice places trout live.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was growing up getting exposed to this amazing and pristine river, stretches of which are's known as the Holy Water in fly fishing parlance. But I was a kid, and I didn't know better. I just liked to fish.
It wasn't until I was probably in my late teens that I had a mentor and a pal—my dad—who got me into fly fishing as well. And we were part of Michigan Fly Fishing Club together. Michigan Fly Fishing Club is, as you might imagine, like a pretty fun group.
Their motto is bastard Latin: "Qui vermes mergent nin inferis frigent" roughly translated as those who dunk worms should burn in hell. The club has lots of meetings with guest speakers, outings, and fish-alongs and things like that.
It’s pretty safe to say without the support of the club and its members I wouldn’t be the angler I am today.
And so we had a great community. I was one of the youngest members by 30 years, which to me was great, because there was a lot of experience to draw on. Every summer the club took a DIY trip to Montana. We always stayed at a place called the Slash E Ranch near Island Park, Idaho, just a few miles from West Yellowstone.
