The Grande River - River Journal - Jim Bedford
Posted by Nick Amato on
The Grand River in southern Michigan has been my home river for more than 50 years. I still have vivid memories of pedaling my bicycle as a young boy to the Red Cedar River, a major tributary to the Grand that was less than a mile from my parent's house.
Wild 16-pound steelhead with deformed back.
When I was 11 a smallmouth bass of very large proportions for a river bass grabbed my night crawler rigged on a harness. After what seemed to be an eternity, I wrestled the bronze fish onto the bank. That smallmouth measured 20 and 1/2 inches and remains the largest smallmouth bass of my fishing life.
Coho Salmon.
While the river was my childhood playground and a special place, all was not always well. I witnessed in agony several fish kills due to toxic discharges and dissolved oxygen depletions from rain following dry weather periods that washed waste with a very high oxygen demand from catch basins into the river. Toilet paper clinging to your line was a constant nuisance and in some years weed growth from the heavy nutrient load choked the river and made it virtually unfishable.
16-pound lake-run brown.
Fast forwarding to a few years ago finds me standing in the same reach of the Red Cedar in March battling my first steelhead on a fly. My fly fishing mentor and partner is Tony Pagliei and I had just watched a bright-colored male steelhead move out of the deep riffle and inhale his version of an albino eggsucking leech. While I have dabbled with fly fishing in the past, most of my fishing has been with a spinning rod. Following retirement in 1998 from my day job as an environmental toxicologist I've been doing a lot more fishing with the fly rod and Tony has been very helpful when I have had questions or needed a special fly. He is a guide on the Grand River specializing in fly fishing for smallmouth bass, carp, steelhead and salmon. Tony is also a professional fly tier and an avid fly fisher. He will be contributing the fly, hatch, and tactics sections of this volume and his fly fishing expertise will be weaved in throughout.
Snapping turtle near shore.
A steelhead in the Red Cedar represents the fact that the good ole days of fishing in the Grand River watershed are occurring as you read this. Pollution control since the enactment of the Clean Water Act has greatly improved the water quality of the river and the fish have responded. The smallmouth bass is the primary resident game fish of the mainstream and many of the tributaries. Walleye, northern pike, channel and flathead catfish, and carp also provide great fly rod sport in the mainstream. These fish, along with brown and brook trout, are also found in the Grand's tributaries. When the water temperature of the Grand cools in the fall coho and chinook salmon, steelhead, lake and brown trout join the resident fish.
