Manistee River Fishing Report RSS

Rainy days and low water?  We've had a lot of damp rainy days the last couple weeks, but really haven't seen enough rain to raise our rivers up. The good news is that we're getting just enough to keep a steady trickle of fish coming up the river systems. This fall has had a really good steelhead run so far, especially when compared to last year!  We are starting to see some of the fish settle into winter holding spots and get a little color to them. There are still some fresh fish pushing up river so we have been...

I sent out a text to the crew on Thursday: "Anyone want to fish tomorrow?" All I got back was "I wish, man" or "I'll be tied up with work". I'd be flying solo. I don't mind fishing from the boat by myself from time-to-time. It can be very meditative, and I'm able to explore different spots that we'd normally ignore. Usually I end up casting to a void, but sometimes you end up discovering new "ninja" spots that no one fishes. I digress... I launched the boat at first light with nothing but two spey rods in the boat....

It was around 3:00 AM Sunday morning and we were 3/4 of the way through our night float. We had been grinding through an hour long mousing lull, and I was about ready to call it. We had caught a 19.5 incher early on, and had a decent amount of non-committal bumps on the surface throughout the night. I was struggling to keep my eyes open in the rower's seat, when I heard a thrash on Shane's mouse. "Got him, good fish, GOOD fish". I gave one hard back-row and we turned our headlamps on. When we saw the fish,...

Thursday night we launched the boat around 9 PM and were able to lock down a good-looking spot and wait for bugs. The water temp was perfect at 65 degrees. Sure enough, around 10 PM, we started seeing spinners flying up river. Not long after, they were all over the water. We were thinking, “man, are there any fish here? They should be rising by now”. We were about ready to pull anchor when the river came alive. Brad heard a good fish rise upstream and I had 2 or 3 feeding right in front of me. Brad caught his...

Another week of shorter days and dark mornings, and even our first snow of the year, but the clocks roll back on Sunday and we have a "long weekend" to look forward to. Steelhead fishing has been a bit slow to start this year. There are certainly fish around, but it doesn't seem like we have gotten a big wave of fish in any river yet. There are a lot of skips around in the Grand River, and not a lot of big fish yet.  River levels are once again falling, but there is rain in the forecast so I am...