Fishing Report 5/7/21

Manistee River Below Tippy Dam

Trout fishing is starting to pick up on the Manistee below Tippy Dam.  Small minnow and fry patterns have been productive.  There are a few steelhead still spawning in the upper reaches and the smallmouth pre-spawn bite has been worthwhile if you are willing to grind it out with bigger streamers. A few caddis have been around in the evenings so a caddis and emerger or soft hackle have been a productive combination for trout there.

Upper Manistee River 

We finally received the much needed rains this week and the river came up quite a bit.  It is off color and streamer fishing has picked up with the uptick in flows.  The weather has been difficult this week on fishing-cold fronts have made it really hard to dial in any sort of hatch program.  We are on the tail end of the Hendrickson hatch and there have been lots of caddis popping off throughout the day as well as blue wing olives have been getting some of the fish to look up. Hemingway caddis, peacock caddis, x-caddis and the missing link caddis have been productive.  Experiment with some attractor dries as well once it warms up a bit.  The cold weather has really been our biggest hurdle this week for trout fishing.  Super excited to see the rain and the bump in water levels, but it is dropping fairly quickly and once we get some stable warmer weather it will take off.  Sulphurs are around the corner!  

Boardman River

The rains definitely helped the Boardman! The streamer bite was pretty solid this week.  Nymphing has been still producing feisty fish in some of the riffles and pools.  Evening mayflies have been slowed by the cold weather.  The upper sections have been productive, so get out and explore.

Inland Lakes

The cold weather this week slowed down the process of the fish moving into the shallows, but the pre-spawn bass bite has been good.  Some toothy critters are moving about and we have been wanting to get out on some of our favorite lakes, but time seems to be getting in the way of that pursuit.