Muskegon River Fishing Report – June 15, 2020 – Newaygo, Michigan

Muskegon River Fishing Report – June 15, 2020 – Newaygo, Michigan

Brennan, from Zeeland, MI, holds a GREAT Muskegon river Brown trout caught recently.

The Muskegon river fishing report for June 15, 2020 around the Newaygo, Michigan area is about the last good round of insect hatches we’re approaching and the dry fly fishing opportunities that come with them.

We have seen a very odd last 2+ months of weather, some of which  came with heavy rains that brought all river levels in Michigan up for quite some time.  We saw significant flooding for several days, but avoided the major damage that our neighbors on the east side of Michigan incurred.  Click HERE for current and forecasted weather for the Newaygo, Michigan area.

The Muskegon river is finally coming down though and presuming the rains forecasted for the end of this week aren’t too severe, we’ll be back near normal flows in less than a week.  Click HERE for current Muskegon river water flow data.  Should the rains ahead stick around for the better part of a day or more, we’ll probably see river levels come up once again.

Many fly fishing enthusiasts are getting what they can with regards to dry fly fishing, as the high water prevented many people from going out for a few hours of walk in/wade fishing at their favorite, local stream.  Now that most rivers are wade-friendly, we’re into the last 1/4 of our strong hatch schedule here in Michigan, with the last of the Gray Drakes, continued Caddis and Sulphurs and the onset of the Isonychia emergence and flights.

With 5 and 6 weight fly rods, we’ve been trying to target dry fly fishing, but when no bugs are flying or no fish rising, we’re going subsurface with wet flies, either swung with light weight or light sink tips, or indicator nymphing with standard and “drop shot” indicator rigs.  Streamer fishing had been decent to good before river levels dropped, but this is normal at this time of summer on the Muskegon river.  

We’re not far from the beginning of our 2+ month smallmouth bass/trout combo season.  I say “combo” due to how I think we could see this “summer” pan out.  In recent years where we’ve had cool weather and water, up to early to mid June, we’ve found trout to active much longer into the summer on the Muskegon river.  For many years, this was not the case and after about the first of July, I didn’t target trout much due to the fatigue it puts on them to hook, fight, land and release them in warmer water temperatures.  I’m not saying it’s a given that we’ll have that again this summer, but it’s looking good up to this point.

Present flows on the Muskegon river around the 2500 CFS mark, normal is around 2100 and water temperatures have held steady in recent days around  64 degrees