Friday July 6th is 17th day of Summer 2012. 77 days await plans for summer fun and growth. Today is the day of the fish fly.

The Fish fly made the Wall Street Journal when a reporter beheld the abundant fish fly hatch emerging from Lake St. Claire and attempted to walk and drive around Grosse Pointe collecting stories. He was clearly from out of town because the streets slickened by crunched fish flies amazed him. Where does the Wall Street Journal and New York Times find all these dewy eyed reporters who understand nothing Midwestern and who don't bone up on the two hour flight from JFK?

The abundant fish fly hatch from the smallest Great Lake hasn't caused locals to bat an eye in decades because the fish fly swarm has been plentiful since the seventies, a sign of the recovering ecosystem of the lake. How bad did Lake St. Claire have to grow to suppress the hatch? Don't ask. I hear the damage was profound. It's as tragic as a woman experiencing a stress so great, her menstrual cycle goes dormant.

So, it intrigues me to see hundreds of fish flies hunched on the sidewalks of Kewadin Shores, the casino resort located on East Moran Bay, north of St Ignace. Why so few up north of the lower peninsula, up here where the water should be purer than that of Lake St. Claire. Why so long after the hatch reported in the Wall Street Journal.

I hated crunching a few of them, unavoidable because the fish flies were still legion if not a plague. Nature has hinted at a story here and I am so unschooled in her ways, I can only guess at the facts. I am thinking that this great wild has a rolling hatch, this hatch event a tapering from the series of more fecund hatches.

A fellow who lived in Grosse Pointe before following the call of Charleston, New Orleans or New York City got really familiar with the fish fly. He had eighteen late spring infestations to draw upon when writing his first novel. So when he titled his murder mystery set in the wards of New Orleans, he titled the book after the short-lived snack for bass and walleye. I haven't read it yet but I know it has to match his intriguing writings on arts and culture.

Right on cue, a fish fly has landed on my untucked shirt tail, demanding a close-up.