With the advent of May it would seem impossible for a Michigan outdoorsman to be bored. Featuring the season’s best trout fishing at the beginning of the month and maybe the best bass fishing as that season opens at the end, the pan fisherman also finds good fishing. He can begin bugging for bluegills as the shallow waters of lakes begin to warm.

Forget for a moment the Great Lakes fisherman who has probably been visiting his favorite pier or trolling among chunks of broken ice before May arrived. Instead, consider the fellow who wades the brushy streams. The fellow who waits for spring showers to warm the waters and turn previously sluggish brook and brown trout into ravenous feeders. May is his month.

Consider the bass fisherman and how he can best seek the fish of his choice now, because they are bedding in the shallows and defend their nests vigorously. At no other time of the year are bass so visible or so aggressive.

Consider the fellow who most likes to fish for the big bluegills with top water flies and spiders. In May he has but to scout the shores of his favorite lake for telltale light colored patches scooped out of the bottom by spawning fish. Once this bedding area is found he is almost assured of fast action and a mess of fish.

If fishing is not your favorite activity then how about hiking, canoeing, gathering mushrooms or wildflowers, or taking pictures? How about a combination of these?

The same warm rains that stir the trout, coax fat morel and beefsteak mushrooms from the forest floors. A woodland hike with mushrooms and flowers as its object can be a most rewarding experience. Take your camera and record these findings if photography is your special interest.

This is the time to glide down the state’s many wild waterways too. With scarcely any paddling except to steer, a canoe can be frequently guided silently around bends to where the ducks are startled into flight, beavers are observed gnawing on trees and spindly legged fawns are being taught to drink by big eared does.

I look forward to visiting a place on a river where owls call to one another at twilight as bright brown trout swirl after minnows in the shallows. I hope to visit another wild bog where a deep wild stream emerges into a clearing. A clearing where a pair of bald eagles have nested for several seasons and where a lucky observer may find them perched in a dead tree or soaring high overhead. In the third place I hope to find beefsteak mushrooms on the steep banks or another small stream, tucked back in some North Country hills.

May is an institution in Michigan, rivaled only by October for sheer beauty and for the chance to see Nature at its best.