Winter fishing is a fickle thing. Though on the Pere Marquette, when and where you’re fishing matter a lot no matter what time of year it is. We have made contact with several steelhead over the past week or so on hex nymphs, 8mm beads, and hot’n’tots, but only today did the fish make it to hand for a little photo shoot. The fishing can be great or really crappy depending on where you’re fishing and what time of day it is. There seem to be good numbers of fish throughout the system, better concentrations in the upper river, but they are all over. You just need to find them in the mood to eat.
I fished the upper river for a few hours yesterday with the nymph rig and caught several decent trout including a big brook trout, something of an oddity for the Pere Marquette (great picture, I know), on clown eggs. I also stuck a nice colored up buck on a clown egg fishing the dark water around gravels.
At the same time, Kevin and Sweet Chili Martinez were fishing the middle river with an InFisherman camera crew and landed four steelhead, a coho, and several “very nice browns” on hot’n’tots. Let us pray there are pictures. Fishing report part II tomorrow? Hopefully.
