Start your grousing, Manistee

I’m planning on casting and blasting my way through the weekend.
For those not in the know, cast and blast is what those of us foolish enough to have fly-fishing and bird hunting as hobbies do in October, when the salmon and steelhead run during grouse and woodcock season.
Cast to the steelhead and blast at the birds.
It’s also inherent in the phrase that I’ll be merely casting to the fish and blasting at the birds.
It’s not called “land and kill” just because it makes a catchy rhyme.
Regardless of what’s in the creel or game bag at the end of day, I’ll know I’ve had a more fruitful time than wasting away in front of the TV.
I grew up hip deep in the great fly-fishing streams of Michigan — the Au Sable, the Pere Marquette, the Fox and, yes, the Manistee — mostly getting snagged on the trees lining the banks thanks to a sloppy cast and a wandering mind. But the time spent in the outdoors was limited mainly to a few weeks in the summers.
Growing up near Detroit, northern Michigan’s mighty rivers and woods were hours away. Now that I’m living in Manistee, they’re right in my back yard.
I’m finishing up my fourth week as a reporter here at the News Advocate. It was a job I eagerly pursued in large part because of its location in the North Woods.
I’ve spent the majority of the last eight years on the other side of Lake Michigan in Chicago, spending too much time looking up at skyscrapers and dodging buses and crowds.
The only current I saw wasn’t on the slow-moving Chicago River, but the throb of traffic on Michigan Avenue at rush hour.
About the only thing worthwhile I caught in Chicago was Meredith, who attended the same grad school and was just as eager to move up to Manistee when the opportunity arose.
We went out for a weekend hike soon after we got to the area. We’d both been stuck in the city for years, and it was great to be able to get out and do something other than have too many drinks with friends or go to a movie on those precious two days between work or school.
We went to the Manistee River Trail scouting for grouse. Meredith had never seen one and wanted to see what I’ll be fool-heartedly out shooting at in the coming weeks.
It was a lovely walk, but we were skunked.
The week after that, we went elsewhere, which will remain nameless (a wary grouse hunter never reveals birdy areas). We walked for an hour and didn’t see anything. Then, that always-startling, heart-bursting sound filled our ears, the whirring-winged flight of the ruffed grouse.
I didn’t have my gun, it was still with all my other earthly belongings in my parent’s downstate basement.
But I got it now, along with my rod and a pen.
Which brings me to my point. In the coming weeks, as the News Advocate deepens its commitment to the community by offering even more local coverage, we will be introducing an outdoors page each week in the sports section.
Manistee County offers much more than fly fishing and bird hunting, and I intend to cover as much of it as I possibly can each week.