Muskegon River Fishing Report – Newaygo, MI – October 31, 2016

Muskegon River Fishing Report – Newaygo, MI – October 31, 2016

The Muskegon river near Newaygo, MI is running a little above “average” flows for then end of October. 

We are coming into the last phase of our fall Chinook salmon run, as the last of the “kings” make their way up the river on their annual spawning run. 

Father-son fishing outing on the Muskegon river ! Greg and his son Drew tussled with several Chinook salmon and ended the day with a “double”, and Drew coming out with the bigger fish !….and was quick to remind dad ! Fun day, thanks guys.

Overall and in the “big picture” of our salmon fishery in recent years in MI, we have had a good run.  Most of the salmon spawning activity has been in the upper stretches of the river and now that the salmon are coming to end, FALL STEELHEAD are the fish of choice from now through the holidays and even into the new year, depending on weather and water conditions.

John, from SE Michigan, with a nice and FAT fall steelhead caught on our outing the other day.

The fall season in general was late in coming and you can tell by the late fall colors, rather mild and even warm air temperatures at times, to water temperatures in the river still staying well above average as we get into the month of November.

With both fly fishing and light spin tackle equipment, we’ll be fishing fall steelhead in several different stretches of the river from Croton down to near lake MI itself.

David, from Louisville, KY, fished with John for a couple days and along with a bunch of trout and a few steelhead, they got into some pretty fresh Chinook salmon as well.

Fly fishing options include indicator nymphing around the last of the spawning salmon, to bottom bouncing -a.k.a. Chuck-n-Duck- or swinging streamers with both 1 and 2 handed rods for those interested in spey casting.

Light spin tackle setups would include bottom bouncing egg and insect imitations or fishing those same offerings under bobbers with longer rods.

With such a late fall/early winter season, we will have good steelhead fishing through December, unless we get an extended arctic blast in the next couple weeks….but not likely.

Present water temperatures have been hovering around the 55 degree mark for several days.