October Colors 10/ 3/14

Early October feels like November when a cold front comes in with overcast skies, occasional showers and wind. By noon the rain started to let up but the day had not improved much. If I was going to fish this was as good as it was going to get. This looked like a streamer day. Don't waste time just cast and twitch, strip or let hang. The river had come up a foot since I last visited and was off color...Yup a streamer day.

Second cast into the first run connected with a 14 inch brown. It was a male colored up as they do in the fall. Moving down stream with an Olive Pine Cone streamer and working cover and banks produced five browns in all, two of which were pretty nice in the mid teens. One female was very bright with a butter colored belly and brilliant red surrounding the brown spots on her side.

I picked up two bonus rainbows from this years state stocking. They were healthy but didn't appear to have grown much since they were stocked. 4 hours on the river bringing 7 trout to hand is not a bad way to spend an otherwise crummy day.

Beach

Dowagiac Creek 9/6/14

I intended to fish the Little E all day on Friday September 5th but soon realized the water temp in the river had crested 70 degrees. 70 degrees is kind of that ceiling temperature that one should not trout fish if you intend to release the trout alive. I managed several trout on dry flies prior to the 70 degree spike.

On Saturday the 6th Brandon Rasler and I made a short trip north to fish the Dowagiac Creek north of Cassopolis Michigan. The creek there was shallower than the Little E and somewhat less volume but nice clean cold water. The fishing was kind of tight with trees and tall grass lining the banks. Nymphing was difficult due to the only depth being in the log jam cover. We soon found trout feeding on the surface on hatching Blue Wing Olives. We both were utilizing a BWO sparkle dun and picking up several small browns. The fishing was best during the hatch that happened with the overcast morning. By noon the skies had cleared and the fishing slowed but we still managed trout. Several places we needed to do our best Joe Humphries immitation at casting under tangles into the runs.

I ended up with an even ten small browns and Brandon had 8 or 9. We fished from 8:00 till 4:00 trading first in line after every trout since the creek was not wide enough for two abreast in most areas. I highly recommend this creek and expect to try it again.  

-Beach