The river

Weather-awesome

Water color- slight stain,perfect

Water temp- 34 degrees with slight rise

Fish numbers- good, the whole river system has fish

Tactics- fly rod or spin cast

Baits-Egg flys stone flys and hex nymphs

Get out there and fish this weekend, great fish numbers and slight traffic makes this January thaw a perfect chance.

Brown trout goodness

What do fishing guides do in the winter when their not working?....FISH what the hell else would we do? Sure there's honey to do list to take care of from months of fishing everyday, but the winter is where we get to fish and try some new fly patterns out. The pattern below is called a Zonkora, I am not sure who created it, I have heard that Ray Schmidt started tying this pattern after a trip from Argentina.  I know that I have caught alot of smallmouth on this little gem around Beaver Island, Carp, Salmon and Northern Pike even like this fly. where this pattern really takes charge is Brown Trout, don't ask me why, but I have turned some bleak days around when I tied this pattern on. the color combo shown are my best here in West Michigan. I have tied this fly with white bunny and body leaving the orange tail and swung it for steelhead with good results, either way It doesn't matter. Hard to question something when it works so good.

Hook-favorite streamer hook 3x #4

Tail-marabou

Rubber legs

Body-Crystal chennile

Wing-Magnum zonker strip cut to form double wings

medium cone head

Three in three

One of the great things about this area of Michigan is that in less than an hour we can be on two other great rivers that fish good for steelhead ,salmon,trout and smallmouth, so for fun and a change of pace we did the Three in Three, three different rivers in three days. Day one- Big manistee which is about 35 miles north.Great river for all style of fishing, big water moderate flow and full of logs, lots of fishy spots to hit and plenty of logs to lose hooked fish.on this day it was Matt Dunn from fishbeer.com and I. Just to make sure we covered all the bases ,we swung Streamers, fished indicators and threw hot-n-tots .Fishing was a little slow but we hooked a couple and landed one nice steelhead

Manistee river steel

Day two was the Pere Marquette river, which is my baby, i love this river not only because its my home river, the sheer tranquility of this river is unbelievable. late fall is quite nobody around and you normally have the river to yourself. The order of the day was fishing floating lines, indicators and egg nymph combos.fishing was fair with most fish ramming logs and brush, although we did manage one that couldn't find any wood.

Pm river chrome


The last day of three was spent on the Muskegon river.the muskegon is about 45 miles south of us and fishes great in the late fall. the "MO" has a later run of kings than the other two rivers so fish will be located around spawners late in the year. The method for the final day was to swing streamers only, of course i always carry a indicator rod just in case we need to mix it up.We slid the boat in and started fishing pockets where spawning kings used to be ,but nothing was around to hold steelhead there,although there were some spawning cohos and i actually had one eat my streamer as i watched of course i jumped the gun and never got a hook in the fish.Later in the day we managed a small steelhead on the indicator rod,that saved the day of the only steelhead hooked. three great rivers in three days what a week.

November winds

The winds of November can really howl here in west Michigan,so when it does a trip to lake Michigan is always a great opportunities to grab some cool shots of  giant waves, not as big as i had hoped but still pretty cool.