Singing in the Rain, Fishing in the Snow

The river had been frozen completely across for the past 2 months. It took two days of higher-than-normal flows to blow the ice out. The ice chunks thrown on shore by the increase in water were a solid 3-4 inches thick, and rather mean-looking when stacked three feet high.

As Dane and I made our way to the river I said that we'd "be heroes or zeroes," not knowing at the time whether there was ice on top of the river. When we made our way around the corner and saw open, flowing stream, we each let out a small gasp of excitement and made our way down.

No footprints on the bank, but fisherman were present at our honey hole. We moved upstream and hit the producer. A bend that starts as a shallow riffle and then dives into a fast run of medium depth, it ends with a deep, froggy-water lie, perfect for drifting a bobber through. Soon, it starts to snow.

Knowing the bucket, I worked out line, imagining what I would do when the fish took the fly. On the second cast a stick snags my fly, oh, wait, THE STICK IS MOVING, fish on! Here we go, keep the line tight. Fight her down through a heavy riffle only to have Dane tail the beautiful girl on the inside of the next downstream bend. Seven pounds of chrome. Nothing better.

Awhile longer, and we move again. The snow is really falling now. Up to an inch of snow covers Dane and I, and golfball sized snowflakes are dropping all around us. Dane catches a nice brown...

We arrive at another popular spot, which Dane always claims is the "best spot on the river." He proves it. Hooking a nice hen, he fights it through the rapids at the bottom of the run. Keep it tight. KEEP IT TIGHT, I'm thinking, watching Dane play the fish expertly into the shallows were I tail her. We get the obligatory hero shots, and send the lil' lady on her way. "I love watching as they swim off," Dane says.

It's snowing even harder now, and seven inches of the white stuff covers what was formerly bare-earth when we had started the day. Good fishing in a snowstorm. What an incredible thing! Ended up landing those two adults and one skip, with a nice little brownie thrown in between the both of us. The weather, however, is what we'll remember about this day...


Frozen river 2/18/11


Open river 2/20/11


My steely


Fighting a fish in the snow 101


Happy guy

Nice Day

"When long faces are seen around gravel, always look to the pockets." This quote is from good friend Dane Ward, and it could not have been more true than yesterday. While the locals could be seen hawking gravel looking for fish trying to do the spawning thing, the real biters came from the dark water in and around that same gravel.

I think that the run is really winding down over there. While I hooked a really good number of fish, other folks I talked to were not doing so hot. So goes it I guess. As for the run winding down, the rivers up and down the west side need water bad, and if they don't get it soon the steelhead congregating around the mouths of rivers will reabsorb their eggs or milt and head back out to the big lake. To anyone reading this, get your headdress out and DO YOUR RAIN DANCE! After the big push of fish a few weeks ago, rivers over there have not seen any good numbers of fresh steelhead. Friends fishing the Pere Marquette in the past week have lamented to me about the lack of new fish showing up.

Simply put, a lack of snow has equaled a lack of runoff. Our easy winter has ambushed our steelhead run this spring. Prayer for rain and be courteous out there...


A steelie on "Phil's beach"


Catch and Release


Purdy buck


Phat hen

Chrome Dome

Got out for some fishing/guiding with a friend from Wyoming yesterday. It was some of the best steelheading I ever had. The fishing was plain out of sight. Unfortunately, I spent the whole day with a lingering sickness that started Wednesday night. However, hooking fish after fish after fish will keep your spirits up pretty well I'd say.

Matt had never flyfished for steelhead before, and he still managed to bag 3 steelhead, 1 huge walleye, a few trout, and some "bugle trout" (a.k.a. suckers). After some instruction, Matt got the hang of it and we finished the day strong with each of us hooking a lot of fish.

Sorry about the short report, I am still feeling rather sick and I think some sleep is in order...


Chrome hen from a hole


Matt with another big hen


Myself with a good hen


A salmon head. Dead salmon provide a lot of extra nutrients for the river and the organisms that thrive in and around it.


Matt's handsome buck


Matt's 8 lb + walleye


Nice brownie


One of Matt's "bugle trout." Look how happy he was to catch it haha


Catch and Release

These fish are only a sampling of what was caught during the day. Above all, I got to spend time with a friend that I hadn't seen in a long, long time. Thank goodness for good friends and great times!

Great Morning

Had a chance today to explore a small great lakes trib that I had not visited in a while. When I arrived the water was very stained, but the particular river I was fishing has a reputation for this. When I decided to fish despite the conditions, I had no idea what to expect. I soon found out however, that the steelhead and trout had absolutely no problems with the stained water. They bit well all morning, mostly on egg patterns. While the two steelhead I landed were skippers, I hooked 2 others that were each around 4 pounds or slightly larger. A lot of small, wild steelhead smolts around today, a very good sign for the future.

Small stream steelheading has a special allure to me. Hooking and fighting a raging steelhead in close quarters requires stealth, precise drifts, and good fish-fighting ability. I learned to salmon and steelhead fish north of the 45th parallel, where the rivers run cold and clean. For example, one of the rivers up north is so clear that a person can literally stand on the riverbank and count the stones on the river bottom in a 6 foot deep hole.

I took my early lessons learned from those northern steelhead rivers, and applied them to other small rivers in our state. Tight little roll casts, the kind you may not learn from a casting instructor, become normal on the stream. A 6-inch difference in a drift can make a world of difference. Holding water is different. In fact, fishing a small stream is just that, different.


20" hen skip


lil' smolt


19" male skip


bobber fishing a good run

Pressured Water

The Pere Marquette is a beauty of a river. A piece of water with countless tributaries, it also provides constant steelhead fishing during the wintertime, primarily because of its spring fed properties and the amount of regulation on the "flies only, catch and release" section of the river. These two items allow for a perfect mash up, where spring fed water decreases anchor ice, and strict regs keep fish in the river and off the grill. It gets fished a lot. Its been said that the fish here are Phd's in egg flies, nymphs, and streamers, having seen them all in the past couple of months. In fact, they have probably seen just about every variation of these bugs imaginable. In this type of situation, changing up your presentation can pay big rewards, and Saturday proved that big time.

As Kyle and I gloomily made our way through the hole we were fishing the third time through, my drift was approaching its end. As my bobber and fly began to swing in the current, a hard strike jolted me out of zombieland. A quick fight ensued, and soon ended after the fish managed to break me off while going in full bore towards some wood. Still, I began to figure out that it was going to take some out-of-the-box thinking to produce on that day.

Fishing for 45 minutes more, Kyle lands a really nice brown out of a very odd spot in the hole we were fishing. As I moved back to the top of the run, I thought in the back of my head that this will be the last time through. It was getting rather dark after all, and I definitely didn't feel like being there as night befell us. Plus, the fishing had seemed to drop off anyway. So, I decided to go against conventional wisdom and threw a large weighted streamer under the bobber. In the clear, pressured water, I thought that throwing a piece of meat might jolt them awake. A few drifts later with the streamer produced the fish pictured at the bottom of this entry. All together, we went 1 for 2 on steel with one awesome brown trout thrown in in about 4 hours of fishing. Another killer day on a memorable river.

Cabin Fever

Everyone knows what it is. At different times for different people cabin fever sets in at some point during the winter. For me, it comes very soon after the cold sets in. The only thing that lets me keep my sanity is looking forward to those breaks in the weather, and each person has their temperature threshold. For some, if the temperature isn't 45 degrees or better they won't go fishing. Others choose to place their cutoff at the freezing barrier, where rod guides start to freeze and make life difficult. For me, 15 degrees is too chilly for sure, if its 20 I may go ice fishing, and in anything over 28 (and sunny) and I will go steelheading.

Looking for the days when the weather pans out is key during the wintertime. People place importance on different elements in the forecast. For me the two most important things to take into account are temperature and barometric pressure. If the instruments measure both of these to be in my favor, I will go fishing.

There is something different about the pull of a steelhead or trout during the wintertime. Something about winter solitude, and braving the elements that makes a fish in the net worth its weight in gold. Kind of reminds me of a day on a river north of here, when my buddy Nick and I were the only souls on the river that day. We carefully walked out onto a piece of shelf ice at a good spot and managed to hook into a steelhead and land two nice browns. It seems that when shelf ice is around the steelhead definitely know how to use it to their advantage. Anyway, here are some pictures from that day to get you through until your next break in the weather...

The Science of Bobbers, er, Indicators

Bobbers have been used by fisherman since, well, probably since the inception of the modern idea of fishing. Whether it is an in-depth top secret bobber rig for steelhead, or a simple worm and weight under a bobber for panfish, bobbers (or indicators, for those who shudder when they hear the term "bobber") are used across the entire spectrum of fishing. Pictured above is just a small sample of the floats, bobbers, or indicators one can buy on the market. Some are definitely better than others. In Michigan, fishing with a bobber has become the go to method in fishing for steelhead. In the past 15 years, the trend has gone from almost 100 percent "chuck & duck," fishermen to a majority of bobber fisherman that one will see during the fall, winter, and spring runs. Now, I will be the first to admit that not all the water on our rivers here can be fully covered by either method, but bobber fishing can greatly outshine the chuck & duck method at certain times. Bobber fishing allows the flies to float over structure that chuck & duck would get snagged up on. In addition to this indicator fishing can be very productive for trout on our rivers during the summer months. I can't tell you how many times, as a kid fishing the Au Sable, that well known guides would pass by me, see an indicator on the leader of my rod, and go "hmm... I never thought of that." Indicator fishing produced some really nice daytime trout for me, even as conventional wisdom led others to believe that 18 plus inch trout were strictly nocturnal.

As I stated earlier, some bobbers are better than others, and none of them can cover all the types of flyfishing one would encounter here in Michigan. For example, during the fall and early winter, I pretty much exclusively use thill ice n fly bobbers, which are in the picture to the left.

I love the way these bobbers float upright when paired with the correct amount of weight under them. In the dead of winter, I will use this bobber, but I usually elect to go with Drennan or Blackbird floats (pictured below). These plastic floats have incredible soft strike detection, and during the winter this is key because at this time steelhead with "mouth" and eject a fly very quickly. In the spring, I move to a bobber that has taken our sport by storm in the last 2 years. The Thingamabobber, while it has a long name, is an unbelievably low key bobber. During the spring run, when the fish are on gravel, a fisherman needs a bobber that won't spook the fish when overhead. This bobber is made of colored (or white) clear plastic that does not cast a shadow on the river bottom. Finally, during the summer months, I use either a small thill ice n fly bobber or a foam indicator (pictured above) for trout, because in general less weight is needed to get down for trout.

To summarize, the key to finding a good bobber, float, or indicator is to find one that you are comfortable with. Even though the most important element to a bobber is the way it floats, look at other components as well including adjustability and visibilty. Bobber fishing has really opened up a lot of formerly "unfishable" spots for me, and I am certain it will for you as well.