Muskegon River Fishing Report – Newaygo, MI – October 25, 2015

John, from SE Michigan, with a nice Muskegon river steelhead.

The Muskegon river near Newaygo, MI is presently running around average flows for late October, however this may change a bit in the next day or so if the rains from the last 24 hours make it through Croton dam.  Possible, but not probable as we had been void of good precipitation for nearly a month and the ground and foliage likely soaked up most of it.

We are amidst our annual fall Chinook salmon run and at the beginning of our fall steelhead season on the Muskegon river.  The salmon run has been pretty good so far, especially compared to some other west Michigan rivers who had/are having a less than stellar year.  This is not “news” by any means, as most are aware of the low Chinook salmon population in lake Michigan.   All that said, we have had some quality salmon in the Muskegon river so far, we’re just unsure of how long the run will last.  We could be seeing the last of our salmon either in the river now or entering it with the slight rise in river levels over the last 24 hours.

We have been getting a few fall steelhead over the last week and I have to believe that with this new water and near ideal water temperatures, we’ll see more “chrome” show up in the days ahead.

We’ve been fishing both species of fish with both fly fishing and conventional tackle.  Both are producing fish, it’s all a matter of how one wants to fish, however weather has played a role over the past week in dictating which technique(s) are used.

As we close in on November, thoughts will shift to fall steelhead and we’ll be fishing for them right up to the new year.  Last years fall steelhead fishing was pretty good through the end of October and all of November, however we had about a week-10 day “sweet spot” the end of November and early December that found a combination of good steelhead numbers and VERY little river traffic.   This was our best fall steelhead fishing of 2014….will it repeat ?

Present water temperature in the mid 50’s.