The summer run of skamania strain steelhead is in full swing! I spent the last two days near the Indiana/Michigan border checking out some of Lake Michigan’s tributaries in search of the fish of “a thousand casts”…. NOT! In the small creeks right now it’s more like the fish of fifty casts! I only spent several hours each day fishing and my friend Kyle and I hooked almost a dozen fish. Every fisherman I talked to was having some success. At times I could see several fish moving around the deeper pools. These steelhead average 2-4 lbs more than fall/winter run steelhead as a result of spending one more year in the big lake. I believe that because they don’t spawn until January/February and are in the river so early they are less distracted by their urge to spawn therefore more aggressive! They were hitting nymphs, leeches, and spey flies in darker colors, but that’s just what we tried. They might have eaten anything. Things on the St. Joe were a bit different. I checked out the dam at Berrien Springs for the first time hoping to find some summer steelhead to play with on my spey rods. The river below the dam did have some spey favorable water but after talking to some fisherman and fishing some nice runs for an hour I declared we would have better luck in the smaller streams. I camped at a small park on the Dowagiac River, a tributary to the St. Joe that gets good returns of steelhead. We fished a couple pools by the campsite and near the dam on Pucker Street and didn’t find any fish. We talked with another couple fishing for steelhead there who said they had a couple bites last week but nothing all day. Things seemed much slower than I expected on the St. Joseph and Dowagiac Rivers. Indiana is going strong!
Egg Dangler Spey Fly right in the kisser!
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