Muskegon River Fishing Report – September 9, 2025 – Newaygo, Michigan

The Muskegon river is amidst change that comes with the arrival of fall in west Michigan and we’re on the front end of our fall Salmon run ! Other rivers such as the Pere Marquette, Betsie, Grand and Manistee rivers are already seeing good numbers of Chinook Salmon arrive on their annual spawning run.

The Muskegon river went through the most significant 24’ish hour “change” last week, than I’ve ever seen in nearly 3 decades of full time guiding……..a 7 degree drop in river temperature overnight ! I thought that my thermometer was malfunctioning, but no…it went from 68 to 61 in one day, which is pretty amazing for a BIG river system like the Muskegon.

We’re still getting some Smallmouth Bass on the Muskegon right now and I saw a few trout taking both dry flies and emergers the other day, as well as a few salmon in certain runs that have colder water springs nearby. With the quick jump into fall-like weather, we’ll be seeing more salmon on the move in the Muskegon in the coming days.

The Pere Marquette river is fishing good for salmon in the lower stretches of the river and in no time, many of those fish will be pushing through to make it up river closer to spawning grounds and the peak of spawning should be in the next 10-15 days on the Pere Marquette.

With the Muskegon river having a later fall salmon run, we’ll see overall numbers rapidly increase in the next week-10 days, with peak numbers bring present in the river in mid to late October.

With both fly fishing and conventional equipment setups, it will be a focus on salmon as they continue to show up, as well as resident Brown and Rainbow trout feeding on the salmon eggs come October, then fall steelhead from latter October – end of 2025.

More to follow….

Jeff