Fishing Forum

We left the Manistee late Saturday afternoon and headed for the au sable , arriving around 4:30 , fished untill dusk , nothing was happining . O ne fellow steelheader reported he saw one fish taken around 10 A.M. , we did see that fish and it was a nice one !
It was the only fish of the day .
Sunday , we returned just after another angler , Sam , cought his one and only for the day , a small male .
Everyone took turns trading off spaces and that was pretty cool , ocasionally someone would get a good bump and everyone would croud that spot for a bit and then return back to their favorite spot after a half hour or so .
Around 11:30 a guy had a hit and a little bit of a battle on his hands . This fish decided to head downriver than back up to the dam , not just once either , 3 or 4 times this repeated untill the fish tired out . It wasen't untill the fish was netted and pulled out that the reason for the behavior became aparent .
He had hooked into a beautiful male King Salmon , 33" long and 11 to 12 pounds in weight , probably a week or two into the river system by the black color that was starting to show on it's belly .

Steelhead that were being cought were on waxeys and stonefly patterns , numbers are very minimal at this time and very few are being cought in the upper streches of the river .
People were also icefishing foote pond at it was totally covered in ice .

Lakes cadillac and mitchel also saw quite a few icefisherman on saturday .

We did fish the tobacco river in beaverton , nothing going on there , the upper stretches of the au greys and rifle were void of any fishing activity and Omer reports were nothing spetacular that we did hear from the locals .
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I'm working this weekend but had just enough time to shoot over for a couple hours this evening .
Thw water is very high , in fact you couldn't see the small dam for the coffer (under water ).
The slow side was anything but slow , one of the large spillway gates was wide open . The water is slightly stained like a cup of weak tea .
The fishing , that was unreal !
Not one steelhead cought under 10 pounds , most were a week or two into the river , some were fresh .
All were hitting very light on the bite .
The color , I'm keeping that a secret [] .
Now what was really a treat was the walleye I was catching and putting back , man if the season was only open !

5 to 8 pounders at least ! I gave up counting the fish after an hour or so , all on my home tied flys !
I'm heading back wendsday for shure , darn cold over at the dam , lots of snow blowing and that bald eagle soaring around the river till dusk !
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The fishing has slowed down since they closed the overflow gates , three to five fish are being cought per day at the dam .
Further downriver the bite is going fair , pier fishermen are doing the best in Oscoda .
The color is orange this week for your spawnbags , go small on the size .
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Wednesday ???? As in the 23rd?

I might be able to do that.

I've been itchin to get up to the Ausable for some walleye.

Let me know.

Mike

When is it open season for walleye again in the LP? I think it's the last saturday in April which would be the 26th is that right ????
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Yep , walleye opens this Saturday .
I did fish the Au Sable on Sunday .

One steelhead on until my leader snapped , inspection showed a few nicks and freys from the rocks and zebra mussles . If I had landed that fish it would have been the third fish anyone had seen that day .

One shore fisherman landed a cromer , a boater latched into a jumper but later lost the fish when it wraped around his anchor line and finally there was my near catch .

The bite was very light from the steelies , I did have to change the presentation from a 5" sinker drop to a 2" drop , the leader line was shortened from a 5' to 6' lead line down to a 3' lead line . Hooks , from a #8 to a # 10 . Color was small red bags , last week you had to use pink or green . Flys , well absolutley nothing worked for steelhead until I switched over to a tan olive wing (#8 ) .
Several suckers were fowl hooked an all the other flys used , all of the bugle mouth bass were released .

While I was there , some dillweed was fishing the coffer and continued to fish the area even after a few of us warned him about it being illeagle . A few hours later after a fellow angler called the R.A.P. line a D.N.R. C.O. showed up .
No license , clamed no one warned him and did not see the signs he kept walking past . The C.O. was in a good mood and let him off with a warning after taking all his information , if cought again he would recive full penalties .

Just before I left Footesite , the D.N.R. trainees were installing the lamprey live traps in the river . It's great to see the future caretakers learning the finer points of maintaining a fishery , they had several questions to ask their instructor and a few for us anglers on the rivers edge .
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