Manistee River Fishing Report RSS

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...

It feels like fall is starting to settle in.  The temps have cooled down and we finally received some rain.  Despite the rain we have received the water levels are still low (Grand River 2820cfs, Rogue River 150cfs, Muskegon River 990cfs, Pere Marquette river 460 cfs). Looks like we have some additional rain forecasted to come in the next several days so hopefully the water levels will continue to tick up, fingers crossed.  The king salmon are still occupying real estate in nearly every river and if you look hard enough you can find a steelhead or two among them. ...

Cool seasonal weather has returned and we were even blessed with some rain this week. It was not enough rain, but some is better than none. Rivers have bumped up a bit and with the cool nights in the forecast, water temps will start to slide. Increased flows and cooler temps should ramp up the bite this weekend. King Salmon are in full swing with reports rolling in of plenty of fish in nearly every river in the state.  Warm water bite has still been good and plenty have been getting out and capitalizing on these local options and ducking...