The king salmon finally finished up spawning over the past week or so on the Big Manistee River. There might be a few stragglers here and there still, but for the most part they’re done. We were lucky to get some high water in October which brought in quite a few steelhead. The steelhead fishing was very good at the end of October with the fish almost exclusively lined up behind the spawning salmon eating eggs. There were quite a few skippers in that first push of fish. Skippers are steelhead that weigh one to three pounds or so. They have probably spent less than a year in the big lake. The line gets blurry when they hit that four pound mark, but either way, they’re still steelhead. Towards the end of October we were hooking two to three skippers for every large steelhead we hooked, and the large ones were very difficult to land.

While the salmon were in the river we had success both fishing egg patterns under indicators and using chuck-n-duck rigs. By far the most successful egg pattern for us while the salmon were in the river was an 8mm trout bead in the color “peachy king roe.” We caught a couple fish on sun orange and a few other colors, but 95% of the fish wanted peachy king roe.

The last couple weeks have seen the water levels drop back down to normal and the egg bite slow way down. Fish are still being taken on egg patterns, but hex nymphs, stoneflies, and basic attractor nymphs have started to play a bigger role under the indicator and on the chuck’n'duck rig.

There are more bigger fish moving through the system now as well. They can be found all the way from the lake to Tippy Dam. Swinging streamers has been productive on days when you can find active fish in water that hasn’t been fished yet, but casting plugs such as Wiggle Worts and Hot’N'Tots has been the most productive method since early November. The hot baits have been black with white spec Wiggle Worts and copper and orange Hot’N'Tots. Casting these diving crank baits allows you to not only elicit a strike from a lethargic fish, but it also allows you to fish places where other people cannot. We’ve been finding fish mostly behind and actually in logjams, places where it is difficult to back plugs into from a boat, to drift flies under a float, or really to fish effectively any other way than casting diving crankbaits. We’ve done some streamer stripping on heavy sink tips targeting these same areas, but have yet to connect on a stripped streamer this fall.

Currently the steelhead fishing is as tough as it’s been since early October. There are fish in the river, but you need to work to find them and they are rarely in the mood. Another good shot of rain will help things dramatically and some weather moving through, even if it doesn’t produce a lot of precipitation, will also help.

King salmon have been in the Manistee River for several weeks now, though exactly where the fish are on any given day is sometimes tough to predict. We’ve been finding fish between High Bridge and Rainbow Bend, though fish are surely making their way towards Tippy Dam as well. With the good north wind we’ve had over the past few days, new fish are also stacking up in Manistee Lake and will be trickling up the lower river every day.

The Manistee has been running near all time lows for the last week or so. As of the posting of this report it is running at 1170cfs, which is 200 cfs below average for this date. We’ve come within 10cfs of new record lows a couple times over the past week.

To get  new fish up the river we need some high water. Similarly, the Betsie River is very low and while there are fish in the river, we really need a shot of rain to get the fish moving. The Platte River is currently at a new all time low, 91cfs, beating the old low of 94cfs set in 2000.

The Big Manistee is certainly your best bet for finding fishable numbers of chinook salmon right now. We’ve been catching them primarily on fire tiger Thundersticks, both the standard and the Mad Flash versions. We’ve also picked up a few on large inline spinners such as the Classic Vibrax in a #4 fire tiger.