"Climate Change Grips Trout Streams Across the Nation": Anglers Respond

"Across the country, anglers have watched as droughts, floods, and high temperatures batter the rivers they depend on. Now, they’re calling for swift action."

"The air is rich with the scent of wild river as David McCool sets his boat in the Au Sable River in northern Michigan. The early morning silence is broken only by an occasional bird call and the soft susurrations of the crystal clear water. It’s a river that Henry Ford and John Rockefeller fished, and a place Ernest Hemingway deemed “good stuff for essays.”

An angler for 20 years, McCool has done this more times than he can count. He never tires of the sensation. The clear waters of the Au Sable, which courses across 138 miles of northern Michigan forest, is one of the country’s renowned places to cast a fly. It’s a river so revered as a trout fishery that in 1959 a group of Au Sable fishermen formed Trout Unlimited, now the country’s premier advocacy organization to protect cold-water streams in Michigan and nationwide.

More than 60 years later, the river is ill. A slow emergency is brewing in the peaceful waters. Michigan’s unusually warm winter temperatures, followed by a historic drought and one of the hottest summers on record are warming the Au Sable. When the water is warm, much of the trout population flees to the river’s tributaries, instinctively searching for oxygen-richer waters."

Laura Gersony reports for Circle of Blue November 1, 2021.

Source: Circle of Blue, 11/03/2021