Jim Navarre is a lifelong Michigan angler and twenty-year professional guide who operates from the legendary town of Grayling on the banks of the Au Sable River. The Au Sable holds a special place in American fly fishing history as one of the first rivers in the United States to receive dedicated trout management, and Jim honors that tradition by guiding from hand-built Au Sable riverboats — flat-bottomed wooden craft designed specifically for the river's shallow, sand-bottomed runs and cedar-shaded pools. Floating the Au Sable in one of these traditional boats, casting dry flies to rising brook and brown trout as the current carries you silently through northern Michigan's pine and hardwood forests, is an experience that connects the modern angler to the earliest days of American fly fishing.
Jim's guiding calendar spans the full range of Michigan's fishing seasons. Spring brings the famed Hendrickson and Borcher's drake hatches on the Au Sable, followed by the legendary Hex hatch in June and July, when enormous Hexagenia limbata mayflies carpet the river at dusk and the largest brown trout of the year rise to feed. Autumn shifts the focus to steelhead and salmon on the Pere Marquette and Manistee rivers, where Jim guides both swing and indicator anglers through classic Great Lakes steelhead water.
Jim is a certified Michigan DNR river guide and an active participant in the conservation of the Au Sable watershed through his membership in local river preservation organizations.
Contact Jim Navarre — Au Sable River Guides directly to book your guided trip.
