Fishing is good here on the Pere Marquette, though as is the norm this time of year, some days are better than others. Walt had an epic day with his clients on Saturday landing 11 steelhead on egg patterns. The egg bite is still the best bite. While it may be obvious from afar that in order to catch steelhead on the swing you have to swing flies, after a couple hours of nothing (and to be clear this is what happens to me, not Walt) it’s easy to pick up an indicator rig and blame the fish for not eating a swung streamer despite the fact that you’re just lazy. So on Tuesday I went out with nothing but my two handed rod and a box of big flashy streamers and a pile of resolve the size of my house.
I only got to fish about 5 good spots in the afternoon, but one of them produced an absolutely perfect chrome fish, though it took a little coaxing and a hook change before I actually hooked up. She hit the fly four times, each time with increasing vigor, almost ripping the rod out of my hand on the fourth take, over the course of about 10 swings. I was finally frustrated enough to change the hook out of the tube fly. The hook looked perfectly fine, but apparently it wasn’t because when I put a fresh one on she was hooked solid on the first take about three swings later. That kind of aggressive fall steelhead is what I live for on this river. That and mousing for browns, but I can’t think about that too much because it’s so far away. This steelhead wailed a giant black, pink and purple temple dog style streamer that was very flashy, about 4″ long. Sorry Larry. It all happened 15 minutes after you left.
This is a great time of year to swing big streamers for big chrome fish. We have several days open over the next couple weeks. Let’s fish the lower river before it freezes solid!
