Third Coast Fly

Seems like the consensus is that this is one of the earliest and strongest runs of salmon the Pere Marquette has had in many, many years. Some experienced guides have even said it’s the best early run since the 80s. Not only do we have great numbers of salmon all the way from the river mouth to the fly water already, but there are a lot of very big fish. We’ve all already hooked several 20lb+ fish. We had one on yesterday that wasn’t an ounce shy of 25lb. And the water temps are so cool for this time of year that these fish aren’t tiring out so they are extremely hard to land.

Alan and his seven year old son Jack came up to fish with me yesterday. Had a great time. It was very cool to see them team up together to fight these big, hot salmon. We only got one to the boat, but it was an awesome day. Kevin lost count of how many they hooked on Monday. Only one of those made it to the boat.

Also, seems like we’ve had some good streamer biters in the middle river this year which is always nice to see. Walt Grau landed a nice one on a large fire tiger streamer the other day after losing several others to log jams.

If you want to get in on some of this incredible early salmon action, now is the time. We have several days open over the next few weeks. Drop us a line- matt [at] thirdcoastfly [dot] com

Kevin sends the following:

The last many years I’ve been so into fly fishing that I really don’t get excited about catching fish on spinning or casting gear, with one exception: early king salmon. If you haven’t experienced this bite, it is as exciting and hard hitting as fishing gets in the Midwest. Start out with a super-slam hit and follow it up with a couple minutes of crazy trouble.  In this warm water the salmon will do cart-wheeling jumps followed by a couple hundred foot, non-stop rip, likely into a log jam. Or possibly they’ll end the fight with a quick knock-out by hitting, running and wrapping the anchor rope before everyone realized there was even a fish hooked.

These fish are so much fun that I’ll take them anyway I can get them. But if you just have the fly fishing bug so bad that you can’t stand the feel of a spinning rod in you hand, your in luck because they’ll hit big bright streamers as well, just not as well as lures.

The streamer below is one of Walt Grau’s old favorites for trout that he calls the Flash Forward. Walt used this pattern successfully while guiding for kings in Alaska this summer and was excited to give it a try back home.

We’ve got king salmon in the Pere Marquette in good numbers. We went 4 for 12 last Wednesday on Thundersticks. These fish are hard to land. But it’s a lot of fun to try.