Meet Your Fly Fishing Guide: Nick of Superior Outfitters

If you've ever thought about picking up a fly rod but weren't sure where to start, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a pretty incredible place to figure it out. Up there they have streams you can fish for an entire season without bumping into another angler and the kind of local guide who's been reading a single piece of river for twenty years.

We sat down with Nick, owner of Superior Outfitters in downtown Marquette, and one of the fly fishing guides you can book through the Adventurtle app. Superior Outfitters is the only fly and tackle shop in the U.P. that's open year-round, seven days a week, with a full guide service. Here's our conversation, lightly tightened up for the read.

How did you personally get into fly fishing?

I was fishing from a young age — diapers, basically. My grandfather passed away when I was six, and he left some fly rods that I started messing around with when I was nine or ten. I actually started tying flies before I could really cast. Once I had a pile of flies, I started trying to use the rods. It didn't go well — turned out my grandfather's reels just had backing on them, no fly line. I had to go to the library and figure that out from books. This was before YouTube.

A few years later, I got proficient enough to tie flies commercially, and that landed me my first guiding job. Michael Johnson and his father Jeff Johnson took me under their wing and taught me how to row. I learned a ton from them and from other guides, and once I started driving, I was running my own trips. After that, I was pretty much guiding year-round.

How did you end up in Marquette?

I grew up downstate, east of Lansing. There was a shop called Switchback Gear Exchange that needed a fly fishing guide, so I interviewed and took the position — guiding plus a few hours in the shop, which was my introduction to retail. I grew the fishing side of the business there, and when they eventually closed and relocated, I leased the space, bought out the fishing inventory they didn't need, and started over. That was 2014.

What makes the waters around Marquette and the U.P. special compared to other fly fishing destinations? People talk about Montana, the West — what makes Michigan special?

You can actually explore here. I can't really go out west and explore some new piece of water — every corner is labeled, every access point is on a map. That's not really exploring. Up here, there's so much water I haven't seen, and I'm checking out new water all the time. There are no online resources for it. We don't print anything in the shop. You come in, we'll give you some pointers, and you go figure it out.

We have roadless areas, and even the areas with roads are usually gated, so you're walking in. You can spend an entire trout season without ever seeing another angler. That's a rare experience anywhere in the world, let alone within reach of population centers.

What's the most popular species to fish for in your area?

Brook trout, overall. They're our state fish and they're native here. Some fisheries are good, some are poor — there are a lot of fluctuations with brook trout populations, and they move seasonally within a system. What was good in May might be poor by late June. It's interesting to follow.

What can someone booking a fly fishing trip with you expect on a typical day?

We're going to ask you a lot of questions before we decide what to do. We have a lot of variety of water, and our trips aren't “hop in the drift boat, here's your bobber, flip it out, we'll float.” We match you to the water that suits your abilities and what you want to learn. We have three different boats, and we also do walk-and-wade trips.

A typical day in June might be smallmouth fishing during the day or early morning, then evenings spent trout fishing — chasing dry fly hatches, late nights, mosquitoes, that kind of thing. You can expect to have the water to yourself, unless you specifically want an easy access point — we know those too. June trout streams are quieter than July, and often some of the best fishing is in June.

July and August are a really pleasant season for brook trout. The bugs drop off to almost nothing. That's a lot of wet wading and dry flies for brook trout, and it's nearly everybody's favorite. You can go in the morning, midday, or evening — you're going to catch fish.

Fly fishing has a reputation for being tough to break into. What's your approach when someone who's never held a fly rod comes on a trip?

I've had people who've always been spin fishermen — they're curious about fly fishing but think it's complicated. I'll often take them to a brook trout stream and let them cast a spinning rod first. We'll get it out of a tree, or off the bottom, or whatever — it's going to be hung up immediately. Then we grab a dry fly. And it's easy. They just plain catch fish. You're not snagging on the bottom, you're not rebaiting, you're not killing fish. You can keep your line on the water and skate a fly out. You can't really do that with a spinning rod.

Gear-wise, what does a beginner actually need versus what they think they need?

Around here, a nine-foot five-weight fly rod is just fine for your first rod. Learn how to trout fish with it. It might be a little cumbersome on the smaller streams, but it's simple. They're readily available in kits that come with everything you need, and they're not expensive — a couple hundred dollars gets you a quality kit nowadays.

Honestly, a lot of my summer brook trout fishing can be done with a lanyard, a few flies, some tippet, and a cup in my pocket. That's really all you need. The fish aren't typically that picky, and you might be the only person who sees them all year anyway. It's pretty simple.

Tell us about a trip — personal or guided — that stands out as a really memorable day.

One in recent memory was with Ray. We've fished together most years, fished a lot of the same home waters, and he's fished all over Michigan. He came up [to the upper peninsula] and we'd planned to do brook trout on small streams, since it was July. But we got a wonderful cold snap that made one of the larger rivers fishable — water temps were good, and the grasshoppers were out.

So we hiked in, busted through some brush, and got to the river. I told him about a little scum line upstream where, every now and then, if you get lucky, there'll be a large brown [trout] just sitting there feeding. It looks like a bass. It's not where a brown should be. Ray had seen that kind of behavior out west but never really in Michigan.

We got in about twenty yards downstream, and sure enough — a very large brown [trout], in about a foot of water, in the middle of the afternoon under bright sun, just feeding. That's not normal. But unpressured fish will do that once they're large enough. Nothing's really going to get them.

Ray made a cast and immediately started swearing — it was a bad cast, well behind the fish. But the fish heard it, turned around, and we watched the wake come. It ate the fly facing us. Ray's a far better fisherman than me, and he just waited. He was patient. I would have ripped it right out of its mouth. He set it gently, and we landed a beautiful, very solid brown [trout]. That was kind of it for the day. I know we caught more fish, but I couldn't tell you what they were. That fish stood out.

That kind of local knowledge — what does it actually mean for someone who hires a guide?

Take that fish [story from the last question]. Every single person who walks into that spot is going to step into the water well upstream of it, and they'll never see him [the fish] or even know he was there. I've made the mistake enough times that I know not to. We take a difficult route, drop in through some beaver slides downstream, and crawl along the riverbank until we get to him. He never knows we're coming.

But if you step into the water upstream, you might see that fish rise once and then he's gone. They [the fish] know you're there. They feel everything. I've spent weekends camping there watching that water. I know where they are on sunny days, I know water levels, they're predictable. You just have to look at a piece of water for fifteen, twenty years.

One thing I see a lot of clients do is get to the water and immediately start fishing. I'm more of a sit-on-the-bank-and-watch-for-ten-or-twenty-minutes guy. If you want to fish at five, get there at four-thirty. Just sit around for a bit.

If someone's curious about fly fishing but hasn't pulled the trigger on a guided trip, what do you tell them?

Be prepared to have it consume a lot of your vacations from now on. Everywhere I go, the first question is where I can fish when I get there. That's how it goes. After twenty-some years, I can't say I've ever had anybody finish a trip and tell me they didn't like it. It's never happened. If you have a good attitude, you're going to enjoy it.

And honestly — if you like being outside, it's just a great way to be outside. We're shed hunting while we walk for steelhead. People look for mushrooms while they trout fish. You've got leeks, you've got morels right around trout season. It all goes together.

Ready to fish with Nick?

Nick guides walk-and-wade and boat trips on water that most anglers will never see, for brook trout, browns, smallmouth, steelhead, and more, depending on the season. Whether you've never picked up a fly rod or you've been chasing trout for decades, he'll match the day to you.

You can book a trip with Nick directly through the Adventurtle app. Find your adventure.