The Tobacco River: little trout creeks named for old characters

The Tobacco River begins as a tangle of small, brushy creeks in the swampy southeastern corner of Clare County, and the names on those creeks are half the fun. The North Branch is gathered from Beaver, Jose, Spikehorn, and Mostellar creeks — and yes, Spikehorn Creek shares its name with the bearded old showman who ran the bear den up near Harrison. They start small and overgrown, the kind of water you have to fight your way into, and they hold healthy populations of wild brook and brown trout.

That combination — close to home, but genuinely good fishing — is what makes the Tobacco worth knowing. It runs within an easy drive of the crowded country to the south and east, so it has long been the weekend trout fisherman’s river. The headwaters are tight and technical; lower down, the stream opens up enough that you can actually fly fish a stretch toward Ross Lake without snagging every backcast in a cedar.

The whole system has three branches and drains a big chunk of Clare and Gladwin counties before a dam at Ross Lake, up near Beaverton, separates it from the Tittabawassee. That dam matters to the fishing: it walls the upper Tobacco off from the warmer, slower water downstream and helps keep the cold, trout-friendly headwaters to themselves.

It’s not a famous river. You won’t find lodges or guide services lined up along it the way you do on the Au Sable. But if you like working small water with a short rod, listening for nothing but your own line and the creek, the Tobacco’s brushy upper creeks are a quiet place to spend a morning.