Successful MGFTU Winter Youth Activities Featured Ice Fishing and Fly Tying

Mason-Griffith Founders Trout Unlimited’s winter youth activities recently wrapped up following several fly tying sessions hosted by Old Au Sable Fly Shop and an ice fishing event at Lake Margrethe. 

            Enthusiasm was high for each of the five fly-tying instructional sessions, with up to 14 students attending a single tying event, organizer Jim Wilkinson said. This year the chapter gifted fly-tying vises to 10 of the Grayling Middle School students who attended the tying gatherings. “All who needed one got one,” Wilkinson said of the vises. The tying sessions took place inside Old Au Sable Fly Shop thanks to volunteer Andy Partlo’s efforts to open the shop for the student tiers and to help run the events. Other volunteers, including MGFTU board president Karen Harrison, assisted as well.

            During the tying sessions, students spun up various fly patterns, including the venerable wooly bugger, foam terrestrials like ants and beetles, pheasant tail nymphs and colorful egg patterns. In additional to donating vises to the students, the chapter also gifted students with a variety of fly-tying material, including marabou, chenille, a little hackle and lots of hooks. “We passed out a boatload of material,” Wilkinson said. 

The ice fishing was just as successful, Wilkinson reported. On a mild Saturday in February, two dozen Grayling Middle School students took part in a tip-up assault on the predators and prey of Lake Margrethe. “It went really good,” Wilkinson said, “we caught nine pike—and a couple bluegill.”

The chapter supplied the fishing gear and most students tended the tip-up rods while a few jigged through the augured holes in the ice. Students trekked out onto the frozen lake via McIntyre Landing all bundled up and ready to reel. “It was a beautiful day—we didn’t need shanties,” Wilkinson said. Several students captured memories of the event with grip-and-grip photos of the fish they hoisted from the icy depths.

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