Muskegon River Fishing Report – February 6, 2026 – Newaygo, Michigan

The Muskegon river is in full “winter mode” right now, with news worthy ice jams just below Henning County Park making headlines a week+ ago and river temperatures wandering around the 32-33 degree mark.

The river was pretty much locked up with ice, something I haven’t seen in 30 years and the first time the river was not navigable down stream from Newaygo itself. It’s open up closer to Croton dam, but we still have shelf ice on most inside bends and areas with stagnant water or no current.

Once we get a few days of air temperatures above freezing, some of the water edge ice should melt and that will be the time to get out for a few hours here and there, as the fish have not seen hardly any pressure over the last month.

It won’t be long before signs of spring arrive and with that will come our spring steelhead run on the Muskegon river from mid March – early May. We could see the onset of the run arrive earlier if we have warmer weather in the Midwest and the steelhead run could go further into May with favorable river conditions.

Should be a good spring steelhead run based on what we saw for fall steelhead in ’25 and based on several factors such as river conditions for the spawning seasons in 2022 & 2023, reduced creel limits and good salmon fishing on lake MI the last couple summers, which finds charter boats not having to “go far and go deep” for steelhead, as an alternative for iffy Coho and Chinook salmon fishing in lake MI.

More to follow as we get closer to March !