Several months back a couple of trolls on the Michigan Sportsman website were giving the locals a hard time about how trashy the Huron River is. They were saying that if we really cared about our home waters we would take the time to clean it up. So some of us took them up on that and the Huron River Trash Bash was born. Actually the first person to start the process was a local fisherman named Carl. A few weeks later he and I and one other gentleman met and we picked 6/4 as the day to do it. We got the word out the best we could and on Saturday morning we met at Huroc Park along with 8 other people and 2 boats. From there we split up into 2 teams. 5 people with the boats and the other 5 on land working the shoreline of both Huroc Park and Dodge Park. 4 hours later and some dirty hands and muddy feet we were done. Our pile didn’t look that impressive but in a way that is a good thing. That section of the river wasn’t as dirty as we thought. We did manage to recover what seemed to be several miles of fishing line though. Some people hate seeing the plastic blue worm containers, discarded fishing line really bugs me. That stuff never breaks down, gets wrapped up into everything and is a life threatening hazard to the local wildlife. Anytime I can get it off the ground and out of harm’s way is a plus in my book.
It was a good thing we finished up when we did. As we were piling up the garbage bags into the trash bins provided by the City of Rockwood it started to rain. Not much at first but enough to motivate us to get the job done. So after that was done the group loaded up, said our good byes and went home. It was great to meet a few of the local fishermen who care about their home river as much as I do. I’m sure this will become an annual thing and hopefully it will grow to cover more of the lower river.
On a side note. One of the benefits about doing stuff like this is the knowledge you sometimes receive. A participants was nice enough to tell me about some gravel beds and winter holding areas for steelhead on the river. They are only accessible by boat, which I can arrange. A couple of hours of manual labor and I learned a few new winter fishing spots. Not a bad trade off if you ask me.
Muskrat Adventures 