(Provided by Michigan DNR)

Mention the Au Sable River and most folks immediately assume you're talking about trout fishing near Grayling, where many of today's trout fishing traditions and associations were conceived.

But there's a lot more to the famed river than flies-only, catch-and-release trout fishing. There are many, many miles of river past the first impoundment downstream from Grayling at Mio Pond Dam, where fisheries managers are hard at work trying to maximize angling opportunities.

"There are a lot of things going on that are related to the lower river and the changes in Lake Huron, its food web and direction of its management," said Dave Borgeson, DNR fisheries biologist who oversees the river. "We used to stock a lot of Chinook salmon below Foote Dame. We eliminated those."

Indeed, as the alewife population in Lake Huron collapsed, biologists concluded that stocking Chinook salmon was akin to throwing money away. Instead, Borgeson says the DNR is concentrating on two other species: steelhead and Atlantic salmon.

Steelhead fishing has been on the upswing in the last couple of years and the DNR is experimenting with a strategy it used for Chinook stocking - net pens near the mouth of the river - to see if it can be even more improved.

"With steelhead, we've been carrying out a paired-planting study to see if using net pens will acclimate them," Borgeson said. "We're evaluating that based on creel returns. We went down and shocked Harrisville Harbor there to see what showed up there and we found a decent number of steelhead. I don't know if people are taking advantage of that or not, but they should be."

Similar shocking studies have been conducted in the lower river and in Van Etten Creek according to Borgeson. So far, the net pens do not appear to be yielding dramatic results, though the experiment is on-going.

Another management strategy in use in the lower river is increased cormorant control.

"Cormorants use the lower river," Borgeson said. "Sometimes they move up north pretty quickly and sometimes they stay in the area for a longer time. This year they stayed for a long time because things were frozen up north and the cormorants were hanging around about as far north as they could.

"We're working with (U.S.D.A.) Wildlife Services to try and mitigate their impact through harassment and some lethal take - you need at least a little bit of lethal control so they realize we mean business."

Borgeson said a lot of local anglers believe the cormorant control is bearing fruit.

"The anglers really believe we saved a lot steelhead with that program," he said. "It may be a combination of factors, but we have seen some of the best steelhead fishing for a long time here on the Au Sable, especially this past year. I think control efforts have been very effective and they've reduced the avian take of our spring yearling steelhead stocks."

The Atlantic salmon stocking efforts are a reaction to the incredible success Lake Superior State University has enjoyed with its program on the St. Marys River.

"For the past few years, we've seen some contributions to the Lake Huron fishery," Borgeson said. "They're above and beyond what we would expect, a really high percentage of returns.

"We wondered if we could duplicate that, so we started getting some Atlantics into the Platte River State Fish Hatchery," Borgeson continued. "We've been fairly successful rearing them - they've done a great job of learning how to rear them at Platte, though were having a problem getting them to the size that they are at Lake State."

Borgeson said the difference in size and timing at stocking the young Atlantics may be attributable to difference in the water supplies. The Lake Superior State facility uses water from the St. Marys' which comes directly from Lake Superior.

"The Platte facility is on surface water that warms up more quickly than Lake Superior water," he said. "So we have to release the salmon a little bit earlier in the season than they do at Lake State. We're studying it to see if our fish can return at the same percentages as the Lake State fish. We're stocking some fish from the Platte up there, augmenting that plant. That'll serve as a paired-planting study so we can see if there's a difference in the return rate of the hatcheries.

"The fish are coded-wire tagged, so we're looking at the relative contribution of those fish."

Preliminary returns seem to indicate the Lake State hatchery fish are doing better than the Platte River fish. The Lake State fish, which are allowed to smolt naturally from the facility, don't have to be transported across the state to be released like the Platte River fish do.

"We're following that intently to see if there's something we can do that more closely approximates what Lake State is doing," Borgeson said. "If we can get anywhere close to the survival rate on the Au Sable to what Lake State is getting, what a fishery that would produce!"

Further upstream, the DNR is conducting a paired brown trout stocking study in the river below Mio Pond Dam. The DNR is stocking both the traditional Wild Rose strain of brown trout from the hatchery system as well as the naturalized Sturgeon River strain.

"In the Au Sable River, the Sturgeon River fish seem to be doing a bit better," Borgeson concluded.

For more information on fisheries management efforts in this area, check out the Northern Lake Huron Management Unit's webpage.