The Huron River in Ypsilanti's backyard has become a casting hub for the rod-and-reel crowd with the opening of
Schultz Outfitters, a retail fly-fishing outlet and guide service. The store offers a full line of fly-fishing gear, instruction, guiding, and events such as fly-tying nights at the Dexter Pub.
All six people working for Schultz Outfitters are fly-fishing guides running trips both near: the Huron, Flint, Shiawassee, and Kalamazoo Rivers – and far: Chile, the Bahamas, Alaska, Montana, and elsewhere in the midwest.
Co-owner Mike Schultz chose Depot Town for its reasonable rent – about one-third of what an Ann Arbor storefront would cost – and the shop's seat on the bank of the Huron.
"We're on the river, so it's really nice to be able to walk down and cast a rod versus giving somebody a rod and going, 'Go cast this on the concrete,' he says. "It's nice to have the water to be able to instruct, to do in-house product demos, and educational things on the river."
"I always tell people Michigan is a great warm water state, and we are a fair-to-good trout state," Schultz says. "We have world-class warm water fishing right at our doorstep here at the river, and also on Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie. People come from all over the world to fish those watersheds."
Source:
Mike Schultz, co-owner, Schultz Outfitters
Writer: Tanya Muzumdar
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