We received a good shot of water the other day and it brought the river up quite a bit. This is good because it really helped clean the system out of a lot of zombie salmon. Salmon numbers have fallen off quite dramatically over the last several days, but the ones that are around are fresh and quite aggressive. There were still more than enough to target in the upper river on Saturday, particularly with the lack of angling competition.
The river picked up a nice stain so streamer fishing for browns would be OK if the high water also flushed some eggs out of the system, but I think it might be a while before their appetite returns. And we’ve seen a lot of dead browns around, maybe eating themselves to death? Particularly on those hard white dead eggs? But if you like stripping streamers there are good numbers of cohos in the upper river right now that will track down and nail a streamer most days.
Good numbers of steelhead in the lower river and this rain will hopefully bring in another batch. King salmon season on the Pere Marquette is winding down. We’ll see if the recent rain will bring in some fresh fish and keep this already epic season epic a while longer. We’ll see.
