My long time friend Jim Hagar is a member of the Pere Marquette Rod and Gun Club and manages to get to the river in the fall for the salmon, steelhead, and browns. Unlike our rivers here in Wisconsin, which fluctuate greatly, in tune with every rainfall, no matter how small or large, the Pere […]
This spring has been a difficult one for the steelhead fishers here in Wisconsin. Too much water. Cold and ugly weather is no problem, but rivers that are ripping at 5000 cfs when they normally flow around 200 cfs are just too much of a challenge. Well, one of our favorite rivers took a brief […]
It’s that time of year when the tributaries of the Great Lakes host their anadromous salmon, steelhead, and browns. Here’s a nice story from Theo Baakelar who fished with Harry Schoel and Chuck Furimsky for steelies on Elk Creek and 18 Mile Creek, tributaries to Lake Erie.
The weather and water are not cooperating for me this spring. The day after I got a good report from my fishing friend, John Beth, it rained and the rivers leapt out of their banks one again. The water had dropped to about twice what I consider really fishable, and John managed to find another […]
My friends John Beth, Dan “Doc” Zavadsky, and Dale Thompson hit the still-high waters of Wisconsin’s Michigan coastal streams on Thursday, 3/22/12 and found the steelhead in numbers. They also found spawning suckers in really serious numbers. The suckers relegated John et al. to egg flies, which they fished with real zeal. The water was […]
The steelhead and browns of the Salmon River in New York were tuned into two fly designs during the time I was fishing there. One was the Steelhead Flea. Amazing simple in design, it was amazingly effective, too. The other was the Roe Bug—basically an easy egg with a veil. On the first day, we […]
I received a question about John Beth’s bunny flies and his other “giant killers” that he uses for Lake Michigan tributary salmon, browns, and steelhead. The question asks: “Hello! Do these flies ride hook up or hook down? I see the eyes on top of the hook (like a clouser) so I would think they […]
While I was flying home from Denver, my friends John Beth and Dale Thompson were out tearing steelhead lips–or at least trying to. I say trying because they very nearly got skunked. John managed one male steelhead that was caught while fishing “blind.” They didn’t see any fish to cast to and they didn’t even […]
Last week we had another big rain storm that drove the river to 10 times normal flow. Of course, all fishing plans were cancelled. Yesterday, my friends, John Beth and Dale Thompson, couldn’t wait a moment longer, so they tore over and hopped into 600 cfs of cloudy roaring water. Surprise, surprise, the fish were […]