I love spring. I also love summer. If it’s nice and warm out, I’m a happy guy. Normally. I’m not exactly sure what all of the reasoning is—changing climate, rotating jet stream, freak weather—or some combination of everything, but what I do know is that we seem to have bypassed a normal spring here in northern Michigan, and gone right to summer. Mid 80’s weather and full sun in mid March? I would have said that would have been the case if we were down south, but not up here in the northern Lower Peninsula!
Again, I love hot weather. But the steelhead don’t. And my steelhead guide customers fishing with us at Manistee River Salmon probably don’t like it either. Sure, it’s wonderful to be out with only a t-shirt on, but with rising water temperatures, the steelhead aren’t following their normal routine, just as Mother Nature isn’t. A slight warming trend can bring tremendous fishing. Quickly warming water tends to shut it down. Rapid and dramatic water temperature increases cause steelhead to head directly to their spawning gravel and back out to Lake Michigan without much lingering in the river system. What this means for us as anglers, is that we have less opportunity to catch active steelhead that aren’t on their spawning redds. For those of us who prefer to leave steelies be when they’re on the redds, this can leave few options, and sometimes fewer fish.
Recent trips haven’t been quite as productive as we’d like. We’re still catching fish, and customers are happy for the most part, but we’ve had to work for our bites. Muddy water has been a culprit, along with the much higher water temperatures. My gauge showed an increase of almost 8 degrees in water temperature within the past week, most of which was in the past 4 days!
Even though the steelhead bite hasn’t been red hot—we’re still enjoying ourselves, and getting a head start on our summer tans.