Hi guys,
Just thought I’d post before the upcoming weekend. These “reports” always feel a little bit redundant to me these days as most, if not all, of the photos shown have already been published on social media, (Views available on our home page for those without accounts.) but my assumption is that at least some of you do not follow those or, might actually be interested in other things I have to say! ????
The weather has been pretty cold for the most part with forecast for even colder in the short term, but we have heaters for the boats and the fish as well as the lunches have been hot!! We still have lots of great open dates for myself as well as John K, John R, Donnie and Kam (Kam available for the Muskegon or Grand rivers as well.) in November and December so if you’re interested in getting in on what we consider to be one of the best parts of the year with us just give the shop a call and grab a date or dates! We’d love to have ya… 231-745-3529
I spent the better part of this past week with Dennis in my boat (Steve as a second for one day of cleaning and one day of fishing.) and simply put, it was steadily an awesome time as always. We didn’t crush big numbers on every single day, but we were successful on all of them with more action on some than others.
There are fish all thru the system at this point with more pushing in daily and every section has reported some nice action on those better bite days. Dennis and I started our six days of fun flurry on Thursday running the length of the fly water hooking lots of fish, landing a couple of Steelhead and a good number of trout.
Friday found us mid-river with Steve from Barski where we played with some trout, ate some fantastic exotic food by guest chef Steve and hooked a few Steelhead, but only one of those big fish wanted to be famous…
Saturday was our annual BBT Fall River Cleanup and I was very happy to see a better than average turnout for a change! Still, for whatever reason, not near the numbers of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but a refreshing trend back that way. ?
There are NEVER enough people to get it all, but the more the better and it always makes a big difference no matter what! We had a boat or boats in every section from M-37 all the way to Walhalla and everyone of them gathered large bags of garbage. High(er) water hid much of what is normally speared from the bottom or right along shore, but log jams and decorated tree branches kept us busy!
The appreciation after party was awesome as always and is not nearly enough to express our gratitude to those who participated. From all of us at BBT as well as the river herself, THANK YOU!!!
Did a very quick trip just to say we got out with Dennis on Sunday and caught a few trout, but the only Steelhead we had on was too hot to handle first thing in the morning and we rowed out early to get out of the way of friends and colleagues who were actually guiding in already heavy traffic. (Also to get a short nap in before what turned out to be another great beer pairing dinner at Barski that night! ? Try it next year if you can, it’s awesome…)
On Monday we decided to go low despite the gauge at Scottville continuing to rise and it turned out to be a good plan. High water yes, but great clarity, some willing fish and less traffic is hard to beat! (Finally starting to drop down there now btw…)
Decided on a repeat for Tuesday, our last day, and it worked out well again. (Even better actually.) We split our time between drifting flies and pitching hardware while outside of the flies only over the course of our flurry having success on both ends. Nuke eggs and hot-n-tots were the main ticket for us, but various nymphs have been working well for friends of mine recently as well and should not be overlooked.
I spent yesterday relaxing at home and am doing much of the same today except for a few chores like this report that needed to get done and some prep work for my guide trips the next two days. Not much more to add to this now really except to say that I hope to see some more of you in my boat soon and, sorry, I just can’t help it, fact is… Jeffery Epstein probably didn’t kill himself! ?♂️?
Tight lines all,
Steve
