Enjoying the Au Sable by canoe is great in the fall

Part 1 of a two-part series about canoeing on the Au Sable

Depending on who you are, the words “Au Sable” conjure up various images and activities.

For me, the first thing I think of is a fly fisherman standing in the cool, flowing water with the rising sun.

However, that is not my first memory of the Au Sable. When I was in college, we treated the Au Sable as a party destination.

Although I was known to float down the river wedged between a cooler full of adult beverages and a massive inner tube, I also carried a garbage bag picking up discarded containers and other trash.

Every since those days of my younger years I’ve yearned to go back to this marvelous river and experience it through the eyes of a canoer.

The Au Sable is held up by many as a special place, a place where Trout Unlimited was born and where thousands of anglers try their hands at landing fish, mostly trout. By far the gem of Michigan’s rivers, I wanted to experience this special place.

For well over a century, the Au Sable’s blue-ribbon fishery is its legacy. In the 1800’s, this was a great place to catch grayling. That is until the logging industry used the river to float logs to lumber mills, scraping this sand and gravel bottomed river to the point where fish barely survived.

Thankfully, those days are over and most of the Au Sable has returned to what you would have seen before Europeans came and ruined it.

Starting humbly 20 miles north of Grayling, two small streams merge to form the AuSable. After turning east in Grayling, the river heads slightly south of east until it unloads its crystal clear water into Lake Huron at Oscoda.

Studying our maps, we decided to put in at Burton’s Landing, just east of Grayling. The Au Sable is quite wild, rapid, and narrow for the first several miles as it winds through cedar and birch forests.

Landmarks consist of a few bridges, landings marked by the DNR or forest service, and occasional tributaries emptying into the Au Sable. From Burton’s Landing to our first night’s stay, White Pine, our travel time was about four hours on flat water.

Having the whole campground to ourselves in the middle of nowhere is an experience one hopes for when traveling in such a wild area. The river lulling us to sleep with its trickles, ripples, and gurgles without competing with highways, cars, and human machinery is something that everyone should experience. Moreover, this experience is easily attainable on the Au Sable. A great reward for respecting the river

Although canoeing in fall will pretty much guarantee a low volume of traffic, the tradeoff is the iffy weather. Preparing for such a trip required keeping all your gear in waterproof containers. We found it wasn’t so much for falling in the river but from keeping falling rain from soaking our gear.

Cool, cloudy, rainy weather prevailed as we huffed and puffed downstream in forty-degree weather. Although not the best weather, the wildlife and scenery was amazing, as we would sneak up on herons, mink, bald eagles, and beaver.

One bend after another, two bridges and twenty-five miles later, we pull out at Luzerne County park. Again, an abandoned campground, one that had not seen a tent in three weeks welcomed us. Although we had the whole place to ourselves, it was accessible by vehicles. The number we saw fit on one hand.

Next week, follow Tom portaging around the massive Mio Dam and finishing his recent trip on the Au Sable.