SWMTU has its 2009 Steelhead float trip for members and friends on the Muskegon River for Saturday, April 18, 2009.
Temporary title #7296
State Files Lawsuit Against Golden Lotus, Inc. Over Pigeon River Fish Kill
The Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources, and Michigan Department of Attorney General announced today that a civil lawsuit has been filed today in 46th Judicial Circuit Court, Otsego County, naming Golden Lotus, Incorporated (GLI) as a defendant and alleging violations of various state environmental laws resulting in a significant fish kill in the Pigeon River. GLI has owned and operated the Song of the Morning Ranch dam and the impoundment located in the Pigeon River Country State Forest since May 26, 1969. The function of the dam is to control the water level in the impoundment, which...
Seminar and movies in March and April
The Fly Fishing Film Tour is coming back to Grand Rapids, and Frank Willet of the PM Lodge will join us for a seminar.
Fly fishing for carp
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) By Dick Smith The carp come onto the long flat to feed and the smallmouths shadow them. Sometimes there will be two or three bass swimming along with a carp. Generally the bigger the carp, the bigger the bass with it. The carp work the bottom and stir things up. The bass feed on whatever the carp chase out and can’t catch right away. There is a lot more looking than casting in that kind of fishing. I don’t...
Fly fishing for pike
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) By Dick Smith The Grand River is famous for its big pike, but they are generally caught by accident by someone who is fishing for something else. Pike are very specialized predators. They hunt from ambush. Their large anal and dorsal fins are set well back near their tails. Those fins act as vertical stabilizers, but those two large fins also act in combination with the tail to accelerate the fish from motionless to top speed in only a...
Fly fishing for smallmouth bass
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) By Dick Smith In the second summer of their lives, when they are about 5 or 6 inches long, smallmouth bass begin to feed heavily on minnows, and for the rest of their lives minnows make up a majority of the food they eat. Smallmouths like crayfish, and they eat them whenever they can catch them. But crayfish are nocturnal and they are very good at hiding where the bass can’t get at them, so they are not a...
Floating soft hackles
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) By Dick Smith My friend Evert VanderWal spent a lot of the first summer after he retired fishing the Muskegon River. He fished almost every day and he developed a system of fishing soft hackle flies that has worked extremely well on the Muskegon, the Manistee, and almost everywhere else we’ve tried it. The flies he uses are simple and easy to tie, and his method is easy to learn. He is better at it than I am, and...
Nymph fishing for steelhead
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) By Dick Smith The farther upstream steelhead go, the more likely it is that small flies will be needed to catch them. If the water is very clear, or shallow, or cold, or the sun is shining brightly, it is more likely that an anadromous fish will take a small nymph or a single egg fly, than it is that the fish will take a larger fly, such as a streamer or wooly bugger. One of the most common...
Fishing streamers for steelhead
(Editor’s note: Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman. This article first appeared in Trout Talk.) When steelhead come up the large rivers of Western Michigan in the fall, they are inclined to lie close to the bottom, near one of the main lines of current where they take up a resting or holding position. Those current lines can be identified easily because that is where the bubbles concentrate on the surface. In the fall, steelhead like water that is about three feet deep and moving at about three feet per second on the surface....
Great Lakes Steelhead history and tactics
(Editor’s note: This article first appeared in an edition of Trout Talk. Dick Smith is a long-time board member of SWMTU and avid fisherman.) Steelhead have been in Michigan since 1876. Rainbow trout have been a spectacular success in the Great Lakes. A lot of Atlantic salmon were planted in Michigan streams before rainbow trout were tried, but the Atlantics were a consistent failure. Atlantic salmon were native to Lake Ontario, and there were fabulous runs of them there in the middle of the nineteenth century, so it was assumed that they would do well in the Upper Great Lakes....
Weekend outing at Fuller’s NBOC
This is a great opportunity to visit and enjoy a weekend with friends and family at one of the most historic fly fishing destinations in the country.
Holiday Get Together
Please join with other members and friends of our chapter for an informal get together for the holidays. Bring your stories, fish photos, information to share and any questions you have that we might be able to answer. We will also have information on upcoming events. We will be providing salad, bread sticks, pizza and soft drinks for all. Cash bar will be available. Please RSVP by Saturday, December 6 by contacting Larry Risbridger at [email protected] or by phone (home) 616-891-0148 or (cell) 616-890-8327. LOCATION: Pietro’s Back Door Pizzeria (28th St. & Breton) DATE: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 TIME: 6:00pm...
Enter box title
Click here to change this text