Friends: show

Is the web address for my good friend Al Bullock. If you are looking for a guided float trip on any of the Northern Michigan Trout Streams contact Al. That's Al in the middle of the boat in the picture above. Al and I have been tying and fishing buddies for years. Al resides in the Detroit area during the week as that is where his job is. His home is in Grayling Michigan, where he will be retiring in the not too distant future. Al's wife, Beth, lives in their home, nestled between the two of the Midwest's best trout streams, the AuSable and the Manistee. Until Al pulls the pin at work and becomes a full time river guide he'll only get to enjoy Beth's company and some great fishing on weekends or vacations. Fortunately for me I got to share some quality time with Al a couple of weeks ago, we floated the Upper Manistee (Hole in the Wall to Yellow Trees) for a couple of days. I was lucky enough to have Al let me row the boat. I have rowed a boat since I was a little kid whether we lived in Minnesota or Wisconsin we were always near water but couldn't afford a motor boat. I've even rowed a drift boat on the Madison and Big Horn (both in Montana) but they are big rivers and you can see trouble coming from a ways away and plan accordingly. The Manistee on the other hand isn't a big river; it is more a scenic, twisty turny trout stream with good flow but it has at least a billion board feet of pine and cedar sweepers as well as fish habitat structure either put there by nature or man. Sweepers are trees where the crown has fallen into the flow and the root strucure remains anchored to the bank or left behind logs from the early days when they used the rivers to float massive rafts of timber downstream to the sawmills. The channel is kept open as there is quite a canoe rental business occurring on both rivers. The AuSable is much more open than the Manistee. As I indicated earlier Al let me run the boat but I don't know if he knew how close he was flirting with certain death or simply disaster. As I mentioned earlier the channel is maintained. They will cut a river spanning fallen tree, about 5 feet from the bank, enough to easily get a canoe through but a river boat is another story. It's 5 feet wide with oars sticking out from the sides... We made it and the only wet we got was from the torrential rain. The only time I recall getting stuck was when we hung on an unseen submerged log and that was due to the 4" of rain water in the bottom of the boat had us riding low. I did keep the boat in position long enough at times so even Al caught fish. Other than the occasional lightening strike I think we had a wonderful time.