Manistee River Trout Fishing Report

June 17, 2020

This week we dodged a bit of a bullet and most of the heavy tropical rain missed us. The Upper Manistee river is running pretty clear and the lower stretches have a nice stain to them.  All in all the river is in great shape.

Big Bugs of June

This time of year is all about the dry fly fishing and particularly larger mayflies. Iso’s have begun and we have seen a couple days of decent bugs. With any decent hatch there have been some substantial fish looking up.  Headhunting or daytime boondoggling with an Iso dun has been producing some quality fish as of late.  Brown drakes are still around though with cooler nights it has been a challenge to find many of them.  The evening spinner falls have been lackluster with the cooler nighttime temps, though that should get back on track later this week with the warmer weather.  There have been Iso spinners starting to show so make sure to have a few spinner patterns in your box as well.  Others bugs of note this week have been Cahills, the very last of the Sulphurs, and some stretches have had a good number of Stones flying.

We still have some prime time openings for both Iso’s and Hex, which should be here soon, so give Cherie a call at 231-228-7135 and get up for some of the best fishing that Michigan has to offer.

Tight Lines,

Matt Barthels

The recent executive order from Gov. Whitmer allows us to guide anglers as long as we maintain social distancing. That means, according to Conservation Officers we can generally take one angler in drift boats and two anglers in our power boats. The exception is that we can have a party of two from the same household in our drift boats.  Hawkins Outfitters is abiding to these rules while many other guides are not. It’s your decision whether you want to or not but be aware that there are penalties.