Upper Manistee River Trout Fishing

Manistee River Trout Report

Upper Manistee Trout Fishing report for the first week of July and the July 4th holiday week has more sweltering heat remaining in the forcast throughout most of this week again. There are still some Hex Spinner falls in the evening, but we decided with the intense heat late last week its time to move on to other fishing opportunities that we can do during the cooler parts of the day or target warm-water species instead of trout. The recent intense heat and warm nights have made the water temps get too warm to fish for trout on most of the Upper Manistee. If you are a catch and release angler heading out in the evenings, make sure you take temps before fishing and play the fish quickly and give them lots of time to recover before releasing them.

Temperature

It’s not too often we need to preach about when or how one should be fishing, but in this heat wave you should limit your fishing to the first 4 to 5 hours of the day. The evenings and early night time water temps have been too warm on the 90 degree days as of late. Last week the Upper Manistee reached daytime highs of 72-73 degrees in all sections below Yellow trees. Please do not fish in those sections this week that go over 70 during the heat of the day, give the fish a break until this heat wave moves on. This type of weather is the number one reason why we teamed up with TU to get a river monitoring gauge established around the CCC Bridge area last year. Please use this link here for temp and flow data this summer to help you remotely monitor water temperature before you even head out to the river.

If the temps are going to go past 70 degrees for the daytime high, it’s probably just best to stay home. Last week the amount of safe cold water was really constrained to the sections above Yellow Trees, typically it will be 3-4 degrees colder than the current reading at the monitoring station. Above M72 appears to maintain temps 4-5 degrees cooler than the current readings at the monitoring station. These numbers are not exact and you should still use a thermometer to check the temps before fishing in those sections.

Hex Hatch

This past week the Hex hatch was feeling like it was showing signs of slowing down. We had a few spinner events and one hatch by the middle of last week and due to the heat wave we called off the dogs. The 2020 Hex hatch was good overall, lots of great fish were caught and plenty of new stories were made to be shared again on future trips. As we move forward from here we will be starting our hopper trips after this heat wave moves on and spending some time after dark chasing some fish that we couldn’t connect on during the the Hex hatch. We are already looking forward to chasing the Hatches again in 2021!

There will still be some remnant Hex spinners over the next week I’m sure, but as things come back to normal on the temperature scale we should still see some Light Cahills and Isonychia Spinners in the evenings and the Summer Olives and Trico’s in the mornings. Fishing Hoppers/Terrestrials on the Upper Manistee during the late summer months can be a great way to spend the day taking in everything she has to offer from the scenery to the fish themselves.

Trout Guide Trips

Looking to book a Northern Michigan summer Trout trip? If so you can reach us at 231-631-5701 (leave a message) or shoot us an email. We are booking well into July and August now, with hopper and mousing trips. Ed only has a few nights left open for mousing and the daytime calendar is filling up fast so don’t hesitate to call for availability. If you’re thinking about giving the midnight creeper a try, click the link to the tying demo, this fly is easy to tie and very effective at night. It’s also not too early to start thinking about fall steelhead adventures on the Lower Manistee River for steelhead, and late season streamer trips for brown trout on the Upper Manistee as well.

Tight Lines,

Ed