Third Coast Fly

Winter finally arrived here in northern Michigan last week with a good 6″+ of snow after weeks and weeks of freakishly warm weather. Steve and I were out the last two days, including yesterday in an all out blizzard which dumped at least another 6″ of snow, probably a good bit more but I’m so often accused of exaggerating snowfall amounts I’m playing it safe, and has brought in some colder temps. We were all so busy with other obligations during the warm weather since Christmas that we didn’t get a chance to fish much. Leave it to us to head out as soon as the weather turns harsh.

The lower river is finally starting to build some ice in the slower sections and some considerable slush. We had a tough day of it yesterday fishing in the blizzard. We didn’t stick one fish. Granted we didn’t fish nearly as hard as we might have on a nice day, but the lower river has been getting hit very hard by the meat hunters with the warm weather and if a section of river gets fished out it takes longer for fresh fish to move in this time of year. So let’s hope for some super cold weather and a nice protective layer of ice.

The upper river fished a little better on Monday with one steelhead and a few decent trout to hand over about 6 hours of fishing. Everything came on orange 8mm beads.

Couple nice browns and a good steelhead over the past 10 days. And while it can be understandably hard to get excited about a big brown trout or a good steelhead when you’re hoisting 20lb salmon for grip and grins, wild browns and wild steelhead are special fish and we’re really lucky to have such a diversity of wild fish here on the Pere Marquette River.