The fishing continues to be very good here on the Pere Marquette River. With daytime highs in the mid 30s and lots of sun over the past couple days some snow has melted and we got a nice bump in water level, though as of last night it’s beginning to fall off a bit. There’s a nice stain in the middle river with visibility around 3-4′. Water temp in the middle river was 36 degrees on Sunday. With good daytime highs and relatively mild overnight lows and some rain in the forecast for Wednesday, we’re expecting higher water levels again by the weekend. This means more steelhead moving up and less skittish fish in the stained water.
All methods have been producing over the last several days, though eggs and nymphs are doing a bit better than streamers. Steelhead have been eating hex nymphs, small black stones, and hot orange egg patterns well. Yesterday was a streamer only day for Steve and Kevin in the lower river and all their fish came after hang down while stripping the fly back, including a nice lake run brown. A Kevin’s Basic Bucktail in all white with pearlescent flash was the productive fly. At the end of last week Steve picked up a brute of a buck steelhead on the swing with a ginger barred zonker strip pattern with a root beer estaz body and gold flashabou.
The number of cohos still in the middle river is astonishing. They’re super aggressive and will take any large, bright streamer that swings in or is stripped past them. It’s been a great couple weeks here on the PM and we have high hopes for the spring.
