Muskegon River Fishing Report – October 12, 2025 – Newaygo, Michigan

The Muskegon river is amidst the annual Chinook and Coho fall salmon spawning run. Despite the record low river levels, we’re seeing not only the salmon make it in, but also some early fall Steelhead and of course the resident Brown and Rainbow trout are there to be caught as well.

We are in the heart of a weeks long, no nearly months long drought that finds most Michigan rivers at the lowest fall levels I’ve seen in nearly 40 years. Current forecast for the end of next week shows a chance for rain a few days over the weekend and we could surely use it.

All this said, if one can find the right spots on the river to fish, you’ll have a good chance of hooking into one of the great lakes big game fish, or resident trout that have responded well to the return of cooler conditions, which has brought river temperatures down.

With both fly fishing and conventional equipment setups, we’ll be chasing all these fish for another couple weeks, then the focus will be on fall/early winter steelhead up to Christmas and resident trout are available as well.

Normal flows for this time of year are around 1600-1800 cfs range, we’re currently just over 700 cfs and river temperatures are in the 63-64 degree range.

More to follow as we get further into October…

Jeff