Muskegon River Fishing Report – May 31, 2023 – Newaygo, Michigan

The Muskegon river is currently running below average levels for this time of late spring and could really use a drink from Mother Nature !

With very yo-yo like weather over the last near 2 months, river levels and temperatures have bounced around a bit, temperatures more so than levels, but both have gone up, down, up, down…and this is not the normal “behavior” of the Muskegon river. Once a BIG river system like the Muskegon, begins it rise in water temperature starting in in mid to late spring, it’s not common for it to reverse that course, but it has several times since April. All that said, the river IS in pretty good shape, considering the erratic fluctuations.

We are amidst a grab bag of fishing right now, with hatches taking place each day to provide dry fly fishing opportunities for the fly fisher, as well as Smallmouth bass movement/migration that has picked up recently. Some Smallmouth spawning activity is present, we’ll see how long that lasts with the hot weather coming through now.

With both fly fishing and conventional equipment, we can catch resident Brown and Rainbow trout, along with Smallmouth bass, possibly a Walleye here or there and once water temperatures come up, shots at Northern pike will increase as well.

Current river temperatures in the low 60’s and flows around 1300 cfs, which is about 3-400 less than normal for this time.