Hey guys, John just posted a new report on Wednesday if you missed it, but it’s been a minute for me as well so I’ll share a little too! First and foremost, a huge thanks to everyone that took a little time out of their daily lives to help us and river out with the annual cleanup! As always, not as many as we hoped, but a fair turnout of many familiar faces as well as a few new ones and we most certainly made a difference!

We are missing a few here that didn’t make the photo, but here is the morning crew!
Thanks to the good folks at the Pere Marquette Trout Club for the nice sign and garbage can they left on their dock!

We wound up having at least one boat go thru every section from M37 all the way to Walhalla and while that is not nearly enough to get it all done with not enough hours in the day most came away with a pretty substantial amount of rubbish and gear. Steve from Barski and his son Steve joined me and worked hard getting as much as we could…

Great job Steven… 👊😎👍
Always a tough job removing line, leaders, lures and flies from the trees without sacrificing too many of the important leaves and limbs that provide important cooling shade to the river corridor, but Steve did a great job at that also!
Part of our haul for the day…
Good friends and great people at the appreciation dinner afterwards…

Dennis, who hasn’t missed a cleanup in I don’t know how many years, came up on Thursday night to fish on Friday ahead of time and was rewarded with some of his saved-up fish Karma before having to head back home for a family emergency very early on Saturday.

A nice start to a great day!

Many don’t know this, but this year started a few new rules and regulations for inland guides in Michigan from the DNR. One of those new regulations is that we have to report the body/section of water fished, hours fished, how many clients, number of fish by species landed and if they were kept or released…

I’ve never been much of a numbers guy figuring that the only thing that really matters is if you’re having a good time or not and learning something new, but this new regulation is forcing me to do otherwise and just for fun, I’ve even taken it a little further a few recent days out of curiosity.

As it happens, I already possess a half dozen click counters from some years back and a few fun Salmon clients so those have proven to be a great way of keeping track of fish accurately for my DNR reports. On the day above with Dennis I decided to use an additional one strictly for fish that we either rolled and got a good look at or even hooked and got off. Quite the eye opener on a pretty active day!

On this day with Dennis, we rolled and/or hooked 41 we could confirm, landed (And released) 11 brown trout and 1 bonus steelhead for a very nice total of 53 fish encounters…

My main methods have continued to be either streamers or spinning rods with hard baits (or both) and I have yet to target any rising fish, but there have been some opportunities and the hatches are picking up speed! As John mentioned “look for BWO’s, hennies, sulphurs and gray drakes not too far out.”

Steve and his son Steven (shown here) did not wet a line at all on Saturday’s cleanup preferring to focus on the task at hand, but we managed to squeeze in a nice float on Sunday afterwards….
Not quite as active as it was with Dennis on Friday with high sun and pressure most of the day, but we caught a few nice fish both wild and planted, rolled a few dandies and a had a great time! (I did see in another report that it picked up a little more in the afternoon evening hours that day.)

Again, as John already mentioned, so far, the rains have been perfect! We’ve had just enough to keep the water level up a little and retain a nice stain, but not so much to make it muddy or effect the dry fly visibility…

One of several we encountered that are likely some of this year’s supplemental plants…

Steve rolled/hooked 17 and landed an additional 2 while Steven rolled/hooked 8 and landed an additional 4 for a total of 31 encounters.

Don’t go expecting these clicker pics is in every report by any means… I will likely stick to just a couple of them for a boat total by species as I did in April strictly for the DNR report and post just a few of our fish pics, but I had the right people in my boat for a few days to have some fun with it. The last thing I want to do is promote the numbers game or competition; that almost always takes that fun out of it…

Johnathan joined me for an instructional type trip on Monday that started off with a bang when this dandy took an olive lap dancer not too far into it! (I don’t usually measure either unless I think they’ll make 20″, this one was skinny, but came in at 21 1/4″ a personal best for Johnathan. 😎)
Black, olive and white streamers, mostly with rubber legs, did trick nicely for a good part of the day…
I didn’t take pics of them all, but here’s another that was brought to hand streamer fishing and we rolled some other nice ones! Did a little nymphing at lunch time also and had two Steelhead on for a bit on a 4wt! That was fun… 🤣

We have a guide or guides available for most of the summer if you’re looking to get out on what’s shaping up to be a great trout season! Fly, spin or a mixture of both are available and we welcome all anglers regardless of age or experience level. The river is a fantastic place to clear your mind…

This fish and two below are some from a fun float with John K, John R and I. They were already posted on social media promoting the cleanup but were not posted here…

Shop hours are currently 8am – 6pm daily. We are still looking for some additional shop employees, so if you or someone you know might be interested please give us a call…231-745-3529.

Speaking of the shop, it is loaded up with inventory that we’d love to get rid of so if you get a chance, please stop by or give us a call for your fly, spin or bait fishing needs! As always, we can’t thank you enough for your support past, present or future. We love what we do and you all make it possible…

Wishing you the best of luck! Be safe, be well, and above all, just get out and have some fun!

Steve