Tom Buhr is a writer, angler, and conservationist who has spent his life close to the water.
Born in Michigan, he moved to Boca Raton at fourteen, just in time to watch Old Florida disappear under new development. That loss gave him a conservationist's eye, and he carried it back north years later, eventually settling in the Au Sable Valley, where he has lived for more than two decades.
Over more than thirty years of freelance writing, his work has appeared in Field & Stream, Florida Game & Fish, The Fisherman, Michigan Out of Doors, and Midwest Fly Fishing, along with several academic journals.
He served as editor of The Riverwatch, the newsletter of the Anglers of the Au Sable, and in 2011 received the Sierra Club's Award for Conservation Journalism. In 2007 he founded the Au Sable Big Water Preservation Association, and he has served on the boards of several Michigan conservation groups. That work continues today: in 2026, Bridge Michigan featured him among the leading voices in the fight over the future of the Au Sable's dams.
Tom now writes books from his home on the river. His fiction includes The Outgoing, the first of the Spinnerfall thrillers, while his nonfiction, The Big Water and the co-authored The New Au Sable, sets down the long history of the river he loves. The Outgoing and The Big Water have each earned Silver Medals in the Global Book Awards.
When he is not writing, fishing, or working to protect wild places, he follows the Leicester City Foxes, the Michigan Wolverines, and the Miami Dolphins.
