Great evening of dry fly fishing today with friend and client Jeff and his guest Mark!  Both guys are dry fly neophytes, but with trout rising to cinnamon caddis for well over two hours, the guys eagerly ventured into the world of dry fly fishing,  They were rewarded with continuous action, which at one point, featured a double hook-up.  Both Jeff and Mark have fished steelhead with me, and while they love chasing chrome, their enthusiasm for dry fly and streamer fishing for trout was off the charts.  Of course, the atmospherics were spectacular:  no wind, high pressure, clear skies, and the woods lush with early summer vegetation; it was simply a special night to be on the water.

Minnow and crayfish patterns,  fished on 200 grain sink-tips, also produced well, but the day belonged to the four weight rods.  As for drakes, only a few emerged around 10:15,  We hung in there until 10:45, but no big emergence or fall in our area,.  Pictured is Mark with a fat bow taken on the top with a #16 caddis—a real accomplishment for a guy who had never cast a floating line before.  Does he look happy or what!!  Congrats, Mark!  You and Jeff are well on your way to becoming dry fly guys!  Thanks to both of you for a most memorable and satisfying evening on the Mighty MO.

Captain Tom Kuieck

Captain Tom

Great to be back on the water, refreshed from vacation!

Rivers…..one section to the next can surely be two different worlds! After reading Capt.Tom and Don’s reports from yesterday, I am feeling pretty beat! Kevin Chapman and his father joined me yesterday for a day trip by request. Fishing was very tough, swung Iso nymphs produced marginal fishing and stimulator dry’s worked over-time to even fool the “cheese”.

The trout we did catch were gorged, careful  handling produce belches of nymph parts and crayfish pieces. The smallmouth were noticeably off as well. The moral of this post= its a big river and it can be very different with a few miles of variation!

Capt. Steven Kuieck

And so return we did, but first, of course, we had to see if the trout would play, and, indeed, they did.  Action was fast on streamers and before we knew it, it was anchor time.  We quickly located the anchor and after one “hooked but lost” swipe, Don latched on to the object of our affliction.  Pictured is Don just after he hooked up with my beginning to apply the throttle to tow the anchor to shallow water, where you can see me detaching the chain links from the pyramid, just so we could handle the dang thing.  But, by the grace of the Good Lord, success was ours and with anchor and chain safely in the boat, it was time for more fly fishing.

The trout were very active, whacking minnow and crayfish patterns, and for about an hour giving us some nice caddis dry fly fishing—all under bright sun.  Interestingly, nearly every dry fly-hooked fish was a brown!   I even managed to lose two very good fish on streamers, neither of which I was able to fight long enough to see.  In all, though, despite our trials and tribulations, today was a wonderful day of fly fishing under the most improbable of weather conditions and circumstance.  And, as for all that bad luck—the busted rod and the anchor debacle—I’m sure I’ll look back on the entire experience with no small measure of good humor and smiles.

Kudos to Captain Don for his expertise with his anchor catcher, which, given all the RiverQuest guides’ proclivities to lose anchors, will now find a home in the barn at the Muskegon River Lodge—there at the ready for its next encounter with a lost anchor.

Captain Tom Kuieck

Just so everyone knows:  guides have “those days,” too…  It’s Saturday afternoon and with the wife hosting a bridal shower, it was a chance to escape to the river with Captain Don.  Beautiful day, light winds, excellent flow—in short, perfect!  And so it was, until I hung up on the bottom with a demo rod from a company other than Scott and Sage.  A couple of “Can I get it off tugs” and, “Whoa!  This rod just blew up!”  El-Snappo, right in the middle of the butt section.  To make matters worse, I lost the tip, and the upper two sections of the rod in the process of trying to save the what I could.  Yikes!  All the while, Captain Don continued to boat trout after trout on his streamer, though the one pictured is one of my few.  Even though I started over with another rod, no matter what fly I tossed, Don continued to lay a clinic on me…

“OK, the sun is getting lower, time to head upstream for some dry fly action.  Surely, my fortunes will change,” I think.  We stop and have a nice chat with a couple of our fly fishing friends, and soon we’re casting away.  “Let’s see…I’ll move the boat right over to there….Lift the anchor…  SNAP!  KA-SPLOOSH!

You know, 130 lbs. of anchor makes a heck of a splash when the rope that holds it cashes in its chips!  Now we’re drifting down river, anchor-less!  Unbelievable!  Fortunately, however, after a couple of drifts over where we thought it went Bye-Bye, we found it. Now how to get it back…

No problem, per Captain Don’s Plan A, strip off the shirt, empty the pockets, and bombs-away, into the river I go, holding on the gunwale, anchor rope in hand.

“Swim down to the anchor and tie off  the rope,” chirps Captain Don.   Right, I’ll just do that in eight feet of water flowing at 2100 cfs.  Needless, to say, that plan, however plausible it may have seemed to Captain Don, made absolutely no sense to me or the river.  No way was I going to reach that anchor, tie off, swim to the top, and smile.  So, on to Plan B—return to the river Monday and try to extract the anchor with Don’s soon to be fabricated, custom anchor-hooker-upper.  Stay tuned!

Captain Tom Kuieck

Steve and Donna from Indianapolis are celebrating their twenty fifth wedding anniversary fishing the Muskegon River. Yesterday and today, Donna spent most of her time reading a good book, and counting the fish that Steve boated. It was a pleasure to share this special celebration with the two of you, CONGRATULATIONS.

Capt. Don Graham

Jim Arl from the St. Louis, MO area joined me on Grand Traverse Bay for a bit of carp fishing today. The day started out overcast and still a bit cool with a slight NE breeze. I was surprised to find that even with the heavy rains we have had up here the past few days the water level had dropped noticably since I was out yesterday rendering out first choice of locations devoid of targets. We hunted hard and covered many miles of water to no avail, the few we saw were in deeper water and cruising and even more spooky than normal. So what to do – fish smallies. Jim is an excellent fisherman and followed directions to the letter resulting in our making lemonaide out of our day with a few nice smallies like the one pictured above. It was a real treat to get out on the bay and see some new water after our long spring stint on the Muskegon, thanks Jim for the opportunity!

Capt. Dave DeVries

Some much needed vacation is in store for my wife and I, as we head south to Costa Rica. I will be bringing the fly gear and hope to share some pictures of the much anticipated Rooster Fish that I will be catching!

The rest of the RiverQuest crew will be keeping you up-to-date until my return the on the 18th.

Capt. Steven Kuieck

Finally, finally, I was able to get back on the river! After competing in the annual northern Michigan, Deming/Kuieck “pasture pool” tour based at our cottage in Leland, I was thrilled to be back in Captain Don’s boat on the Muskegon. With the river up, slightly colored, and running at 62 degrees along with a cool shower from above, we decided to fish streamers. The trout liked our choice, though the larger fish proved elusive. Blue winged olives, sulphers, and a caddis here and there graced the water, but little happened on top until later in the evening when, much to our delight, the grey drakes started popping to the surface. As the hatch increased in density, the trout took note, and the rises came fast and furious. Don and I shotgunned the rises with only a one mid-air tangle—the result of our rapid-fire casting. We were rewarded with confident, first-drift takes. Very, very satisfying. We wished the emergence lasted longer than its fifteen minutes, but the temps continued to drop, shutting down an otherwise excellent hatch. Pictured is a carryover rainbow, taken on a grey drake dry fly and likely stocked last year. These fish run 13-15″ or so and are fat and feisty. Here’s hoping the water-cooling efforts of the DNR and Consumers Power keeps our river temps below mortality levels this summer so that this year’s stockers can live larger to test us next year.

Captain Tom Kuieck

The fishing last night started out with wet flies and then switching over to dry, at first a lot of small rainbows, then we spotted a couple of nice fish feeding on the surface just before dark. This one took an isonychia dry.

Capt. Don Graham

Last nights fishing on the Muskegon had the highs and lows of dry fly fishing. Joining Capt . Dave and I was Patti, Duane, John, and Meredith of Reel Women & Reel Men of Indianapolis, Indiana. After a very successful early season streamer trip the group returned for some dry fly action. Isonychia, sulphers,  and caddis were the primary bugs of the evening though a few drakes mixed in at dusk. The Isonychia duns were very heavy on the water from 7-9pm, however the resident stockers were primary players. With devout effort, Meredith managed this nice brown under fading skies.  We need to keep the rain at arms length this evening….

Capt. Steven Kuieck