Pere Marquette River Fishing Report RSS

Well if you haven't figured it out yet, winter is here. Most of our rivers have locked up in the last few weeks, which can be good or bad depending how you look at it.  Locked up rivers means less ice and slush mix floating down the river that poses hazards to boats and wading anglers. Fishing closer to dams or fast moving usually means less ice slush and chunks in the current. The water coming out from under the dam is usually a touch warmer a the discharge and has to travel a few miles before ice starts to...

While the weather seems to be up and down with temperature the trend has been towards the cooler side and the water has started to creep down around 33 degrees in most systems. It's safe to say most of the fish are in their winter holds and should be fished accordingly.  Lately we've been focusing on slower holding water with either structure or depth. The rivers are still low and clear so the shallower runs that we are finding fish in usually have some sort of structure that they are holding close to. Log jams and boulders are great places...

Lately on most river systems we've been playing the game "how low can we go" most of our river systems haven't seen rain in over 2 weeks. Any that have, never got any real rain water in the headwater sections. This has left the rivers in very rough shape for our migratory fish. Most runs are a week or so behind and have been small steady trickles of fish with no real pushes. Cooler nights have helped bring water temps down and bring in more salmon and a few early steelhead in the lower state rivers. Despite the conditions fishing...

Fall is a time of change and presents many opportunities for fishing. We have been fishing multiple river systems across the state. The Grand, Muskegon, Pere Marquette, and Flat River have all been producing fish for us in the last couple of weeks. The best part about the fall transition time is the abundance of opportunities for the angler. Warm water, cool water, and migratory fish are all in the rivers at the same time. In the last two weeks we've fished for smallmouth, egged for trout behind kings, sight fished carp, and swung flies for salmon and steelhead.  Keep in...

A few of us got out over the holiday weekend, and despite the heavy canoe traffic, low clear water and blue skies, the Trout fishing was decent. We caught several Trout on nymphs out of faster pocket water. Stoneflies and soft hackles were the main producers.  Mousing continues to produce in rivers that aren't over-run with Salmon, although the lower water levels exposed the weeds on the surface and it was tricky to put the fly in the right spot on the inside bends without getting weeds on the fly. We didn't roll a ton of fish on mice, but...