Last Thursday was quite eventful. Justin was up from Indiana for a couple days and we started out by hitting the lower river for some pike. The upper part of the section we floated is not known for great trout fishing. There are a lot of pike and it gets quite warm in the summer. But the trout that are there get pretty big, probably some of the biggest resident trout in the Pere Marquette. And about 10 minutes after the first cast, something big and brown and super aggressive blew up on Justin’s white Conrad Sculpin.
This is one of the biggest resident trout I’ve ever seen caught in the PM and it was really something to get it 10 minutes in. Congrats on a beautiful fish Justin. And nice river pike too.
We floated the upper river on Friday. The water was quite stained from some rain that rolled through the previous day so Justin threw streamers for a while and picked up a fish as soon as we switched over to white. They didn’t want black, yellow or olive.
Also picked up some fish on dries: small hoppers and the best fish of the day on a Isonychia spinner even though we didn’t start seeing any isos hatching until right before dark. Justin rolled two fish on a mouse. Water was just too stained I think for the mousing action to really get going.
One more thing that made Thursday so eventful was our first hex sighting of the year. With warmer weather in the forecast, we should start to see some decent hex hatches by the end of the week. We have some great dates still open for hex. Get ’em while they’re hot!
