Muskegon River Steelhead March 23, 2011

warming up fingers 

Mansel w/ a nice one

Got out for a late afternoon fish.  Water was up good but clear and fishable.  Fish are certainly ascending the river daily and the river is poised for some great fishing. On the other hand, weather for the day was brutal.  One of the coldest on the river in a while. Winds were relentless and the air was damp.  I found it hard to believe how cold it was seeing that we have come through a pretty cold season, many days in the teens.  We fished the upper river, up and down from pine street.  The fish we hooked were on both clown eggs and ice minnows.  Water was on the rise during the time we were on the water which we felt affected the fishing quite a bit.  All in all it was a good day considering the weather and water conditions.

Muskegon River guide trip 3/7 - Steelhead and Trout combo

Dennis with one of his first steelhead ever, not bad!

The more people request these combo trips in the winter the more I like them.  They just make sense.  Fish both low light periods for steelhead(when they are most active) and fish for trout the rest of the time.  It amazes me how many people plug away for steelhead all day long and miss the great trout fishing that is right in front of them.  I picked up Dennis Goertzen at the Gray Drake at about 9:00 am  and headed out to the river.  This was his first time fly-fishing(he said it was on the bucket list) and the trip was given to him from his wife for Christmas.  Nice gift!  Being his first time he said he would like to do whatever made sense.  We had talked about steelheading so we decided to go for both.  Started with a quick tutorial on casting a steelhead rig and proceeded to move into the run suspected of holding a few steelhead.  A half and hour later Dennis had five fish that were hooked and two that were landed.  One of which was a 9 lb buck with magnificent color.  After things cooled off the sun was getting higher in the sky so we decided to start retooling for trout.  Dennis picked up the basic mechanics of casting with the lighter trout rod and he was soon into his first trout.  The wind was very reasonable and the sunlight we had was a welcome warmth, a truly beautiful winter day.  Took a couple seine samples near Pine Street boat ramp and in a word it was SCUDTASTIC.  As my buddy Kirk said the other day "scuds are like popcorn to the trout".  Continued to fishing for trout until about 3:00 pm and then started making our way down the river to hit a few steelhead runs to finish the day.  Dennis hooked two more steelhead and landed one to finish the day.  Three steelhead and a dozen or so nice trout...not too bad for his first time out!

another beautifully colored  fish

Muskegon River guided trip 3/6 - Steelhead/Trout combo

Jim with a hog

John with his first steehead...not bad!

It was very brisk to start the morning and blue skies looked as if they were going to stay.  Low, clear water as well let us know we had our work cut out.  Jim Geise had booked a trip to treat his good fishing buddy John Bebow and wanted to fish for both trout and steelhead.  When he asked to fish for trout as well he didn't mean catching a couple trout by accident while steelhead fishing.  Jim made the right call.  Started fishing for steelies right off while the light was low but no takers.  As soon as the sun got high we switched over to trout and things warmed up quickly.  The Muskegon River scud went to work and by the time we decided to switch back to steelheading they had boated well over 30 nice trout...but who's counting.

Another shot of John's steelhead

One of many nice trout 

solid, colorful bow

Jim with a quality rainbow

Made our way down from Pine Street boat launch and finished up the day with a steelhead each!  Couldn't get much sweeter.  Well, maybe it could.  When Jim had booked the trip he told me that John had never caught a steelhead he would love it if he could.  John's fish was the last one of the day.  All of this on top of a couple of fly nuts that were fun to be around, truly enjoy being on the river, and would have had a great time if we had only caught chubs.  The way fly-fishing is supposed to be.

heavy winter brown

Muskegon River Steelhead Feb. 2, 2011

nice bright fish on a clown egg


Met up with Bob and Drew and hit the river at about 11:00 am on Monday.  The plan was to fish only for steelhead, so everyone(except me) left trout rods in the car.  This was a good thing because if we had all brought trout rods we would have been seduced at some point by a nice looking trout run and would have missed out on some nice steelhead.  Fished our way up from Thornapple boat launch and had  good success. We fished eggs and leach-type patterns with most of the fish taking leaches.  We mostly fished chuck-n-duck since we were looking for fish we could hook with clients.  Water clarity was good but levels are starting to get in the "low" mode.  Right now finding fish means moving around a lot and fishing areas you have a pretty good idea there are fish present.

                                               

Bob with a nice one caught on a fly of alien origin

Road Trip! 70's and sipp'n trout 2/13-2/16

perfect eastern brown 

 beautiful stretch with baetis eating fish

Greg with a WOW! rainbow

Just got back from a breath of fresh air.  Greg and I went down to TN to mix some business with pleasure. We had a couple great afternoons on the S. Holston River near Bristol TN.  If you have never fished this river make a point to.  The fish get hatches year-round and when there is an emergence you can be sure they will be sipp'n them.  We ran into both baetis(size 18-20) and gray midges(size 20-22).  When the fish weren't eating them on the surface the were subsurface.  Fished an A.B. Blacktail baetis and A.B. gray midge pupa to catch them subsurface.  It was so nice to be there when there was a shot of warm weather.   The fishing was made that much better by the warm sun hitting the river as we fished.  Didn't catch any monsters but a lot of solid,  beautiful  wild browns, and colored rainbows

                                                  

                                                                 golden hues on a warm sunny day

Muskegon River Trout - Feb. 2

hand painted winter trout

Well, at this point I feel my blogs on the Mo.  are starting to sound redundant, but I've yet to get sick of good days on the water.  The winter fishing is just about as good and predictable as an angler could hope.  It is not without its challenges but all in all it is usually, and has been lately, very good.  As I've mentioned before, finding the fish is the most difficult part of winter fishing but once you've become familiar with a couple spots you've got it made.  Part of finding the fish is also a positive outlook that at any time you are going to hit the mother load.  You can spend an hour or two combing a likely area and start fishing sloppy just when you've waded up to a killer spot and never know it because your drift stinks right when you need it most... But alas! This blog is different.

17" jack steelie caught on #18 mo. scud

I fished down from Pine and caught a 17" steelie along with about 31 trout.  All the fish came on a Muskegon scud and the steelie ate a size 18!  The fish were in typical winter lies but also in a few peculiar areas.  About 10 or so of the fish came out of 1-1.5 ft water.  I thought I would just make a couple casts to the shallows and was shocked at how many fish were feeding there.  The water was shallow and slow right off of a couple gravel bars.  Water just dark enough to make to fish comfortable.  It was a spot I just thought I would try and it was a nice surprise.  Caught more rainbows than browns.

Muskegon River- Jan 21,22,23

Sasquatch spotted entering woods

I had already planned to fish with my good friend and old roommate "Beaver", so when I read the forecast for the weekend I just sighed.  The weather predicted daytime highs that would not even break the 20 degree mark but he was coming and we were determined to get some fishing in. Mark has done a couple tours over in Iraq so we were due some catching up and guy time.  On friday he was supposed to get in around noon but was delayed so I decided to hit the river for a bit until he got in.  Fished down at 72nd and did pretty good considering the cold.  It gave me hope for the weekend.  Saturday and Sunday were no better for weather but we were dressed well and neither of us

"white noise" we love on the river

got cold enough to call it early.  Saturday we hit the San Juan area and the fishing was quite good.  Mark was working out the kinks since he hadn't fished for a while, but managed a few fish.  The weather changed about every hour and it was beautiful on the river.  On sunday I got up, made a pot of joe and walked outside to look at the air temperature.  The thermometer read well below 0 degrees.  I later saw the high for the day was about 12.  The wind was calm for most of the day and    

hold-overs do exist

again the fishing was good.  We ended up with around 20 fish brought to the net.  I was real surprised at our success just from the temp. standpoint.  I never took a water temp. but it couldn't have been much higher than 33.  It always amazes me how good winter trout can be.  Being out in the elements all day under such harsh conditions gives yo a great feeling when you get back home and remember the day.  It makes you feel like you've really done something.