By Bill Diem
The good news about fly fishing is that it is good for the soul, says Kevin Stockwell.
“Fly fishing gives people time to slow down,” he says. “It takes your mind off six lanes of traffic downstate.”
Stockwell opened Stockwell Outfitters last September on US-2 at the Gould City corner because “I always wanted to have a shop.” It’s the only fly shop for three and a half hours, he says, with his competition in Marquette and Iron River.
Fly fishing is not the big-time sport in the eastern Upper Peninsula that it is in, say. Grayling, where the Au Sable River has thousands of fans.
At Mick’s Bait Shop Curtis, Mick says she sends people interested in fly fishing to Stockwell. “I carry a few things for fly fishing; I have to,” she says, “but here it is mostly lake fishing.”
And at the Fish and Hunt Shop in Curtis, says a clerk, “We have nothing for fly fishing. That’s more north of Newberry.”
Newberry gets its share of fly-fishing traffic on the Tahquamenon, Fox, and Two-Hearted rivers and their tributaries.
Mark Yeadon, at Mark’s Rod & Reel in Newberry, says someone stops in nearly every day with fly fishing on their mind. He sells 80 different kinds of flies, and carries some equipment like rods and reels, but many of his customers already have their own equipment.
“Some people come in and ask, ‘What’s hatching?’ but I say they should go down to the stream and look, because it’s different everywhere,” Yeadon said.
On US-2, most of Stockwell’s customers are travelers. During an interview, a couple and their son from Bay City came into the shop, and the father bought a selection of dry flies that he plans to use in the Porcupine Mountains. It was a typical visit, said Stockwell, but he also has local customers from Curtis and the Hiawatha Club at Naubinway.
Many visitors are new to the sport. “They want to do something they will enjoy,” he says. “It’s another method of getting outdoors, finding yourself.”
Down below, Stockwell once guided people who preferred spin casting, and he took them in a fast boat to where the fish were likely to be. “People weren’t relaxing. They weren’t paying attention to that eagle in front of the boat. They were going from a fast-paced society to fast-paced fishing,” he said.
Here, he often takes people outside his store to practice casting as a first step.
“Anybody can pick it up. Anybody can cast a fly rod,” he says. He encourages people to fish on lakes like South Manistique, where bluegills and crappies readily take flies. He’s also fished for pike and muskies with flies, but the main targets for most fly fishermen are trout.
Since spring, he has been out guiding about twice a month, including places like the Sucker in Grand Marais, the Fox at Seney, and the Tahquamenon, where the DNR has planted brown trout. In the fall when salmon are running, he expects to be busy nearly full-time on rivers like the Carp, the Brevort, the Milakokia, or the Manistique.
Stockwell is willing to fish big waters or small ones with clients, and he wants to take them places they can get back to on their own.
One place he won’t guide people to is the water south of Gould City itself. Simmons Woods, he says, is for his Gould City neighbors, and for himself.
