Iron River fly fishing guide shares journey from music industry to trout stream

IRON RIVER, Mich. (WJMN) — Fishing guide Seth Waters now spends much of his time helping people find a great catch or a higher power. While he took a big detour to get here, he says the roots of his journey can be traced back to a single moment.

“My cousin gave me a fly rod and gave me like a ten minute casting lesson in his backyard back in 2009. And the rest is kind of history,” said Waters when we asked him about how he came to open his now-successful fishing gear and guide shop.

The history, however, was a longer story than he let on at first.

Originally from Wisconsin, Seth Waters Found his way to the Upper Peninsula after a tumultuous end to his career in music production.

“They say you don’t do the music industry right unless you wind up in a substance abuse treatment program,” said Waters. “So, I checked that box down in Tennessee, went through a faith-based substance abuse treatment program down there, and I got involved in ministry.”

He said it wasn’t the fishing that brought him up to the U.P., but his calling to be a pastor at Calvary Chapel, a nondenominational church in Iron River.

Once here, however, he said he could feel he water calling to him. “There’s over 300 lakes. I think in our county you can’t stand anywhere in our county and be less than a mile away from a body of water that holds fish. That’s not including any of the rivers. So we’ve got thousands of rivers of thousands of miles of trout streams just in our county… When you look at a map and then you see all the water… I went, ‘wow, this is crazy.'”

From there, Waters said he was hooked. After wetting his line a few times, he said what really caught his attention was the quality of the waterways in the area.

“As our history goes, native brook trout rivers that hadn’t been managed or stocked with brook trout… the amount of rivers that contain those fish up here are countless,” said Waters. “A lot of people try to find native brook trout in their natural habitat, and the thing that’s cool about the Upper Peninsula is that you’ve just got limitless miles of that.”

As Waters embraced his new surroundings, the solitude and slowness of fly fishing grew on him more and more.

“When I get out on the river, when I’m only with one other person, we can just talk and we fellowship, we hang out. Things make more sense when you can just calm down and get to the quiet exploration,” said Waters.

Seth runs his business out of a brick-and-mortar in Iron River called Dark Waters Fly Shop, where anglers can get just about all the gear they need to get after their next catch. Wasters thinks his best offerings, however, are his guided expeditions.

“The trips that have become where people have become really good friends, you know, that happens a lot,” Waters said. “I’ll stop people before they get in the water and I go, ‘Hey.’ and they’re like, ‘what?’ I’m like, ‘we’re doing it. This is it. If you’re any happier or less happy after this moment, it can go either way. But right now he there’s some serious dopamine rolling around,’ you know, and it’s like, ‘we’re enjoying this. It’s cool.’ And if you can take that, everything that happens after that is what it is.”

From April to November, Waters ushers hundreds of guests through the pristine fishing grounds of Iron County.

“We do walk and wade trips, but what I like to tell people is, ‘we’re going to guarantee 6 hours on the water. I’m going to make a gourmet meal for you with which I may have or not may or may not have foraged half of it while you’re fishing,'” said Waters.

He said while some anglers may want to go after the catch of their life, Waters says his approach to being a fishing guide is more focused on providing a great experience regardless of what’s biting.

“They’re going to come, they’re going to learn a lot,” said Waters. “They’re going to get history on the rivers. They’re going to hear crazy stories. They’re going to have a great opportunity to catch big fish, you know, and we have we have a ball. So that’s kind of where if I get package out, right, that’s what we’re doing. And a lot of times they do they do catch fish. And a lot of big fish. But it just just depends on the day.”

You can learn more about Seth and Dark Waters Fly Shop on their website or social media page.

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