Muskegon River Fishing Report – February 7, 2024 – Newaygo, Michigan

The Muskegon river has come back down close to average flows for this time of February, after having come up with the warm weather, rain and snow melt-runoff the last week+. It’s still quite cold, with our readings a couple days ago around 34-35 degrees.

With a lower than normal winter steelhead population in ALL Michigan rivers this year, most are either gutting it out for whatever they can find for steelhead, but also quick to switch to resident Brown and Rainbow trout, as the fishing for them has been pretty good given our up and down, yo-yo like conditions.

We’re not far from seeing the first “groups” of spring run fish staging at the Muskegon pier heads and once river temperatures warm a bit, we should see new steelhead coming in from lake Michigan on their annual spawning run.

With both fly fishing and conventional equipment, we’ll be fishing for them and resident trout, from early March – mid May, unless we have a hiccup from Mother Nature that finds our spring steelhead run on the Muskegon river wrap up early.

We could surely use another round of snow to help with spring melt and runoff and if not, we will have to deal with low water spring conditions and hope that we get some rains to help with early and mid summer trout fishing, followed by Smallmouth and Pike mid to late summer.

If anyone is considering getting out for some walk in-wade fishing and would like some input on rigging, locations, gear or other more specific information, certainly call or send me an email – 616-560-3195….jrbacon@jeffbacon

For now !

Jeff