We interrupt our regularly scheduled carp and News Update Friday programming to bring you this PM update. I’m sure some of you are utterly devastated without News Update Friday two weeks in a row now, but that’s the kind of sacrifice you have to make sometimes.
Kirk and Tim managed to swing by the Pere Marquette for a few days of trout fishing after Operation Michigan Tropical so we hooked up on Wednesday night for a float.
The upper river is running low and fairly clear. We started seeing risers about 7pm and by 8pm they were going with a full head of steam. There were some caddis around, some fairly large, unidentified pale mayflies that honestly looked like small hexs, a bunch of other random, small mayflies, and clouds upon clouds of gray drakes around the riffles. It was a textbook gray drake hatch and very nice to see, despite my poor picture of it below. We didn’t get any significant spinner fall before dark, nonetheless trout were more than willing to slurp down gray drake spinner patterns.
We caught six or seven trout in the 10″-14″ range and two larger fish that didn’t make it to the net. It was a really fun hour or so of dry fly fishing. As darkness fell Tim switched over to a mouse and Kirk was content to just take in the action from the back of the boat. Tim rolled two nice fish right off the bat, one of which was hooked for a couple seconds. We rolled probably eight or nine fish total with one fairly small mouse eater to the net, but this is a pretty good result considering how early it is in the season. Note the thoroughly chewed up mouse pattern below. Definitely some food for thought on mouse fly design as it seems they were definitely getting the main body of the fly into their mouths.
All in all it was a great night of fishing with some great guys. We have some great openings for guide trips both here on the Pere Marquette and up on Beaver Island in June and July, so if you’re looking to get in on some of our great trout fishing or head up to the unexpectedly exotic Beaver Island archipelago for huge carp and smallmouth of the flats, drop us a line.
