What a great day! Dewie and Dave, Shrems West Michigan Trout Unlimited members, joined me today to take the float trip Riverquest donated to Shrems TU and which Dewie and Dave successfully bid upon at the annual fund raising auction in March. Both guys have summer places close to my family’s cottage in Leland so we talked a bunch about the North we love—rivers, lakes, restaurants, and so on. Both guys got into the casting, line management, fish fighting regime well and were rewarded with double digit hookups. With the river beginning to drop and clear and temps rising, the steelhead are highly motivated to get on gravel, meet Mr. or Ms. Right, and get the job done. We were blessed with happy fish—fish that took our flies readily— Antron Hex, Schmidt Stone, chartreuse caddis, and Oregon cheese/steelhead orange nuke eggs. Oh, and lest I forget: our hottest fly was a fly for which Captain Don Graham has a particular affinity—the egg sucking leech! In this case, a mini-pink and olive egg sucking leech. I know Captain Don is proud of me for fishing this pattern since it has given him so much enjoyment of late….
Dewie and Dave, thanks for a most memorable day. I truly hope we can do it again, whether on the Muskegon or on one of the other great Michigan rivers Riverquest fishes. Pictured are Dewie with a couple of his steelhead and Dave with one of his. (Dave took his first steelhead ever today and by day’s end he was hooking them so frequently that we started calling him “The Vacuum.” Without question, today had to be one the top “first times” for one of my clients. Happy for you both!
Captain Tom Kuieck
