Muskegon River Fishing Report – October 12, 2019 – Newaygo, Michigan

Muskegon River Fishing Report – October 12, 2019 – Newaygo, Michigan

Bob, from the Chicago area, caught this beast, one of the largest Chinook salmon I’ve ever held, on the Pere Marquette river recently. Measuring out at 42″ and with a 26″ girth, not hard to do that math = 30+ # King !

The Muskegon river fishing report for October 12, 2019 in the Newaygo, Michigan area is about the onset of our annual Great Lakes big game fish season for Chinook salmon and steelhead.

The fall run Chinook, or “King” salmon are on their annual spawning run and will be through October and even into early November.  There are truly some BEASTS out there this year, with many salmon in excess of 30# having found their way into my net so far this season on the Pere Marquette and Manistee rivers.  These other river systems get their salmon before the Muskegon river, which will be coming into its prime in the next week-10 days or so.

With both fly fishing and spin tackle, I have been chasing salmon around in west Michigan for the past month+, along with some steelhead as of late on the Manistee river in the Wellston, Michigan area.

Chris, from SE Michigan, with a beautiful Manistee river “rocket” of a fall Steelhead caught recently.

Aside from the Grand river, which has its own unique “run schedule” of great lakes migratory fish, the Muskegon river is the southern most river on the lake Michigan shoreline,  that gets a large salmon run, which is followed by arguably the largest and longest fall/early winter steelhead season of any river in the Midwest.  Much of this is dictated by a combination of lake Michigan and Muskegon river water conditions, the latter of which should be changing some due to the consistent rains we’ve had the last 24 hours or so.  Click HERE for current and forecasted weather for the Newaygo, Michigan area.

As river temperatures drop and hopefully levels rise with this recent round of weather coming through west Michigan and the Midwest,  those salmon that have been “staging” in the river in deeper pools and runs, will be seeking out spawning grounds to complete their reproduction “mission”.  River temperatures had begun to drop on a consistent basis over the last week+, click HERE for current Muskegon river water flow data from the Croton dam area.

I’m hoping that the Muskegon river follows the same general “schedule” for the early part of its salmon run, as the Manistee river did.  That started with high water bringing not only good numbers of salmon into the system, but also a good pack of early fall steelhead who were eager to feast on the loose salmon eggs flowing down the river.  The one hiccup in the equation, is lake Michigan water temperature, which was near the mid 60’s in recent days….kind of warm for the second week of October and we could use some east wind to help us out there.

There are some giant salmon around this year and we may see the 40# mark be reached or close to it, over the next few weeks on the Muskegon river.

Click HERE to read a short article on the Muskegon river fall Chinook salmon run.

The cooler weather forecasted for the next week+ will only help with our fall, great lakes big game fishing season on the Muskegon river, which will go well into December and even January, depending on how fast ‘Ol Man Winter really gets here !