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3. Deer flies, Page 2

News Flash from the Holy Water!
State authorities and local volunteers have entered the second day of an intensive air and ground search for a missing Novi, MI. man. Witnesses claim that he was last seen drifting the Au Sable smoking a bong amid a cloud of ravenous mosquitoes and deer flies and may have become disoriented.

Black Flies are especially evil because the little devils like to crawl and they don't hurt as much so the damage can creep up on you. I can remember a few unseasonably warm ice-out seasons in Maine when I would have been driven literally insane by them if it weren't for a full body net suit from L.L. Bean. Had to keep it in a zip-loc at night sprayed down with Deet to keep it charged. One poor fella came back to camp looking like Rocky after Apollo Creed worked him over.

The black flies out here don't seem to bite for some reason. But we have marshy bogs along some of our spring creeks that can drive livestock (or the unprepared angler) crazy with mosquitoes. One favorite in particular is pretty interesting. Where it ends by disappearing into a sink next to the side of a lava ridge, there is a short stretch of beautiful water only approachable by crossing a flooded pasture up near the road. You had to cross it in the heat of midday sun, otherwise...

The stream was far enough away from it that the skeeters were tolerable. It was amazing the difference a few hundred yards could make. Anyway, along about sundown my fishing buddy noticed a van pull up. "It's gonna get a little crowded", he said. The guys suited up and started across the pasture. They hadn't made it halfway before they turned around and sprinted back to their vehicle screaming girlishly the whole way. Needless to say, we didn't make the trek back until well after dark and the temperature had dropped substantially...

"Witnesses claim that he was last seen drifting the Au Sable smoking a bong amid a cloud of ravenous mosquitoes and deer flies and may have become disoriented."

Hmmm, haven't considered that approach...but one would have to keep the cloud of smoke going constantly, so somehow I doubt much fishing would take place after the first half hour or so...not to mention, if it makes deer flies HUNGRIER like it does for humans - I don't even wanna go there...

Twenty years ago while visiting the bayou near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, my ex-wife and I ran into some pretty fearsomely-sized horseflies. We had brought along Green Ban, a eucalyptus-based botanical repellent. (Claimed to work in the Australian rainforest, blah blah blah...) Well, when we put it on, we must have smelled like flowers because they swarmed us! I swear some of those bastards were the size of cicadas...saw some mighty big ones for these parts on the Au Sable today myself while teaching class (which today was mostly floundering around in the river trying to catch fish & inverts).

I'm still kicking around the contact-paper-on-the-hat idea. Might look silly but might just work too. Hey Tony, maybe if I make it a tinfoil hat? That will do double duty for keeping the CIA from reading my thoughts through those boxes they had the aliens plant in my head...

Jonathon

P.S. On second thought, how about tungsten or lead instead of tinfoil? Doncha think? Nah, too heavy...

Apparently, a similar idea has been tried with some success, Jonathon, but the catch seems to be in the last sentence below.

From an Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet:

Back when I was a little tike folks were fond of those "fly-paper" strips...

Hanging at Grandma's kitchen up near Cadillac MI, it was an appetite killer, seeing all those poor souls stuck up there dangling just yards from the kitchen table...Stuck...But not quite dead...Yum!

If we could come up with a version for us anglers that would hang from the vest we could have our fakes hanging from the fly patch and the real dying ones hanging from the bug strip...

Remember you heard it here first...Just like the air freshener my angling buddy came up with, when we were sitting one morning on the banks of the Au Sable, after a big wonderful breakfast at the Grayling Restaurant...It was to protect the fisherman from what he called "wader farts" and hung on the inside lip at the top of the wader...Now those will kill a bug or two...:)

Spence

Those sticky fly papers are nasty, my wife hung one in our garage last week and although she did catch a few flies, i was drawn to a shreaking noise coming from our garage while tying flies, and to my surprise I found a wren stuck to the paper. I removed him as gently as positble but he had lost a large number of feathers, i tried to move him as far away from my dog as possible which is easy due to our invisble fence, but I hope he was able to elude the neighborhood cats, racoons, foxes and coyotes. I am not a fan of those things.
Eric

Eric,

Your wren was probably trying to pick off some of them flies and got in over its head...:) Too bad we couldn't get a few of those invasive starlings to fall for that...We could lose a few and have some nice soft-hackle feathers at the same time...:)

The other part of the above story was at my grandma's old shack we didn't have any electricity there at the time...We had these old kerosene lamps and we would be playing Chinese Checkers or something after dinner and every so often a big old moth would plow in to it and get itself fried...

She would use one of these lamps as a night light for me and set it on low...I woke up one night to see the reflection from the old organ it was sitting on flashing across the floor and there sat the cat with a live mouse between its front paws...He would ignore the mouse until it tried to make a run for it and pounce...I fell back to sleep and woke up the next morning to find that the poor mouse's heart just couldn't handle the pressure and it passed sometime during the night.

Loved that old shack...Many good memories there!

Spence

Jonathon, If the deer flies are as bad as I can imagine, no cigar smoke will keep them off. The only thing I know that really works is a headnet, and deet. They will bite right threw your clothes. And you don't feel the biting until its too late. And the bites are horrible. I think there are clothing made to resist bites also. I have seen hats with a sticky band on them that seems to help somewhat. I've taken canoe trips up in the BWCA in northern MN, and it seems after a few days of not showering it helps with flys and mosquitoes. Maybe having a few days of B.O. layered up might help. Good luck. Jason

Folks, my Mom and Dad are visiting and I wanted to show them Clark's Marsh on the north side of the lower Au Sable. On the drive in, not even near the wet areas yet, deer flies started following our car. By the time we got to the parking area, there were four of them on each rear-view mirror waiting for us to get out of the car...which we didn't, we said screw this and went elsewhere, fortunately to a couple of places where they were (nearly) absent (had to smack one at the Pine River). Why there were almost none at Tuttle Marsh, which is wetlands as far as the eye can see, and yet we couldn't even get to Clark's Marsh without being assaulted in the upland woods, I will never figure out...

Thank goodness the little bastards will be dying off for the season soon - not soon enough for me!!! I still can't even walk ten minutes to the river for a snorkel without getting bombed...

Jonathon

An Oscoda Story...For Jonathon

My wife and I were on the road for 17 days on a summer vacation where we basically looped the upper part of the lower pennisula of Michigan...

Started in Grayling for 6 days, family reunion near Evart the 21st of July, one night in Baldwin, drove up 31 through Manistee, Bear Lake etc to Traverse City, one night in Charlevoix to take ferry to Beaver Island for a week, back to Charlevoix, through Petosky, Harbor Springs, Cross Village, Mack City and Mack Island (for the first time in my life...this is unheard of for a Michigander at 58), drove down the coast of Lake Huron on 23 to Alpena and a glass bottom boat ride to ship-wrecks, then to Oscoda.

Oscoda is at the mouth of the Au Sable where it finally reaches its end at Lake Huron. Jonathon lives near here. My folks have a small rather old cottage here and we had a key.

We drove to the market to buy some grub and had a nice dinner at the cottage in a little breakfast nook there and headed off to bed early...The plan was a visit to the Tuttle Marsh that Jonathon has mentioned here.

Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke to a rather loud scratching sound which I thought was outside the open window. It was hot in the old cabin and we had a small fan blowing on us from the top of the dresser.

I had left the night light on in the bathroom since we were in a strange place and I didn't want us banging in to anything in the dark...I suddenly spotted a bat flying in circles over our heads in the half-light.

Damn!!!

I got up and switched on some lights and went looking for the critter. I found it perched on a curtain in the same breakfast nook where we had had dinner earlier...What to do? I know that if I put him outside the chances are good that he'll just fly around to where he gets in to the house and we may be dealing with him again later.

I walked out in to the living room and picked up the ash shovel from next to the fireplace and walked back in to the kitchen...I decided that I really didn't want to deal with him flying in my face and I said to myself, "Make this count!" and I dispatched the little soul and nearly tore the curtain off the wall...I then took him out and placed him in the flower garden.

I was a bit surprised that my wife was as calm as she was and after looking around the place for any of his cousins that may have decided to follow him in we went back to bed. Around 3:00am I awoke again to more scratching noises this time behind the wall near where my head was lying on the pillow...I got up and even though there were no more bats about I turned to my wife and said, "Dear...I think mother nature is telling us it is time to end the vacation...We are going home."

My wife packed the suitcases and food back in the cooler as I shut off and drained the water to the cabin down in the basement...We were on the highway south by 4:30am with the lake keeping us company to our left and a full moon setting to our right...Finally the sun started to creep up over the lake and my wife was asleep.

Great vacation...Odd ending...Sorry Jonathon but Tuttle Marsh is just going to have to wait. :)

Spence

Spence, we saw ospreys so close I thought one was going to poop on my Dad's head! Lots of egrets, herons, kingfishers, terns, etc. out there too, and some nice wildflowers - cardinal flower, blazing-star, Joe-pye-weed, black-eyed-Susan, etc. - on the roadsides. I'm sure your trip was plenty scenic without Tuttle Marsh! Poor little bat...they're pretty much my constant companions when I fly fish the evening hours. My buddy Zach and I saw a really cool swarm of them working over the small shallow cove of [REDACTED] Pond through which one reaches the rest of the lake - must have been a midge hatch going on, and we both paddled our kayaks through them on our way in as darkness was settling in.

Glad you got a little fishing in per your other post! So now you like 7'6" 3-weights, huh? It's pretty amazing what you can do with a small rod if it's well made. I throw bass bugs on mine (not real far, mind you) in the spring and may be again soon once the deer fly scourge abaits somewhat. Hope you didn't run into too many of them!

Jonathon