Lovells' Tradition of Fly Fishing, Cool.

Dining Room, Fuller's North Branch Outing Club

A few days ago I drove to a tiny Northern outpost called Lovells, about 15 miles northeast of Grayling, to gather information for an article (August, Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine) about the Au Sable River’s role in the founding of Trout Unlimited, the renowned river protection group. TU was born on the banks of the Au Sable and celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with a shindig August 18-22 at the Grand Traverse Resort, near Traverse City.

Lovells has a couple of trout fishing icons within its Lilliputian boundaries--the Lovells Museum of Fly Fishing and Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club--and I figured they would likely have some good stuff to add to the Au Sable trout tale. I wasn’t disappointed.

Glen Eberly, the gentleman who was kind enough to show me around, first took me to the local diner, where I had a stuffed cabbage roll and mashed potatoes. This had nothing to do with trout, but it did seem like something good to eat if you were going to go fishing and needed to fuel up.

Then we headed over to the museum. Like Lovells itself, the Lovells Museum of Fly Fishing is tiny, but it is filled with good stuff. As always, I was captivated by the old timey photos of people fishing, legendary fishing guides, and so forth. I also liked the early documents from the founding of Trout Unlimited, like a typewritten list of the 16 people who attended the first organizing meeting at the home of George Griffith. And a handwritten document by Art Neumann explaining what was behind the principles of Trout Unlimited that he co-authored.

The artifact with the most gee-whiz factor was a copy of a page from the guest register at the Douglas Hotel (now Fuller’s North Branch Outing Club). On May 21, 1938, five men signed in: John D. Rockefeller Jr. (of the Standard Oil family), Walter P. Chrysler (scion of Chrysler family), Edsel Ford (son of Henry Ford), A.P. Sloan Jr. (of General Motors fame) and John L. Lewis, the legendary labor leader. Men representing some of America’s most powerful organizations gathering at a distinctive time--the Great Depression had eased but not gone away, Germany was in the midst of its military build up, but was a year away from invading Poland. The labor movement was in full swing. So what were these men talking about here in Lovells as they cast for trout and shared beverages at the tables of the Douglas Hotel? Maybe just how good it is to go leave their cares for a while and go fishing on the Au Sable River. Who knows.

Fuller's North Branch Outing Club

Eberly found the signatures as he was working through a project he took on: scan every page of the guest register from the Douglas Hotel. It opened in 1916, so he had been through 22 years’ worth before he came across the names of the five men. What was that moment like? “It was as exciting as a big brown trout rising,” Eberly said.