Muskegon River Spring Steelhead Fishing Report – April 17, 2015

Muskegon River

Vince, from SE Michigan, with a nice male Muskegon river steelhead.

The Muskegon river near Newaygo, MI is still running a little above average flows for this time of spring, but has been dropping over the last few days.

We are in the middle of our spring steelhead run on the Muskegon river and fish are in all stages of their annual migration, “staging, spawning and dropback”.  Staging refers to when the fish enter the river, get near spawning grounds, but are not yet ready to actually spawn.  The spawning stage is fairly self explanatory and dropback refers to fish that have already spawned, have “dropped back” off spawning grounds into nearby holes and runs and will eat, quite aggressively at times, before heading back to lake Michigan.

We are fishing for them with both fly fishing and light spin tackle gear at this time, it’s all a matter of what one wants and is the best chance at getting fish on the line.

Present water temperature is in the 47-48 degree range and sure to rise with the warm days ahead.