August 19th 2025

While there are some whispers and rumors of fall salmon in some of the river systems, and fall weather patterns loom over us, we are still focused on our warm water fish species and are enjoying every minute of it. Summer is at its peak and we have taken full advantage of as many fishing opportunities as we can this last month. We have been able to target a wide range of species in a lot of different areas. We've fished open water gar, smallmouth in the rivers, largemouth in the bayou, deep water pike, and carp on the muck flats. Here's how we've been fishing them. 

Smallmouth bass fishing has been excellent. We are finding most of our fish on the inside weed edges or close to wood structure in the Grand River and Muskegon river. Minnow patterns and poppers have been our choices for flies. Smaller single hook craft fur minnows and zudbublers for poppers have been our favorites.

For largemouth we've been throwing the same flies that are using for smallmouth just in the wider slower river areas. Using a sonar leader on the end of your fly line helps to get your fly a little deeper in the water column. 

Gar are a blast to catch, the trick is hooking them. Lately I've had the itch to target them on the fly. Using traditional single or tandem hook streamers I've found 1/10 actually get hooked up. Gar have extremely boney mouths and hooks have a hard time finding a spot to grab. The solution was tying flies using separated nylon rope. The fine fibers of the rope get caught in between the teeth and offer a solid connection to the fish. Once the fish is netted it's fairly simple to pick the strands of nylon out of the teeth. To find gar I generally cover a good amount of water looking for a group of gar that are surfacing for air. Usually this is a slack water area on a river or could be the middle of the lake. Once they are located it is relatively easy to tease them and get a fish to strike.

Pike are a cooler water fish and tend to source out deep water when the heat of summer sets in. When water temps rise the fish drop off into deeper water where they can stay cool below the thermocline. To catch these pike we are locating deep weed beds and drop offs with feeding shelves. Typically these are 10-25ft in depth but can vary depending on where a lakes thermocline sets up. Using 5-7" yard sale streamers and a heavy sinking SA 3/5/7 line we are able to count the fly down to the depth of the drop off and start an aggressive stripping retrieve. Most of the fish tend to chase and grab the fly as it makes the final upward pull from the deep water. 

Carp fishing has also been very good many of the local ponds and backwaters that we fish are choked out with weeds making the line of sight of carp a little smaller and making them work a little more for food. We found that once they see the fly they're more apt to eat it and we are not getting as many refusals. Fishing nymphs and craw patterns have yielded the most success. 

We have had a taste of some cooler over night lows which has helped a bit with the trout fishing as well. Mornings are your best bet. Small mayflies and nymphing with light tippet has been productive. 

We still have a few days here and there for guided trip, but most of our guides are petty booked up. Shoot us an email to book a trip.

If you haven't heard, we are hosting a Bass 1 Fly Tournament August 6th it will be a lot of fun. More details and sign up below. 

Tight lines -Capt. Matt