I finally got a break in the everything but west wind on Tuesday so I decided to capitalize on it. My tournament partner and I hit Lake Michigan around 0900 and after checking quite a few areas from 40fow to 15fow with nothing to show for it, I decided to make a run a little north and good thing I did! It didn't take long for my Lowrance to light up with bait and I knew it was only a matter of time before one of my flicker shad where going to fire. All of a sudden I head o

The water levels on one of my smaller rivers became perfect for steelheading. During the mornings we loaded up on steel with creek candy beads, spawn and jigs under floats in the deeper holes but during mid day the fish became more active and were chomping at the bit to eat small stone flies and egg patters. Best news from this week is there were no suckers! My larger rivers are coming down from flood levels at a rapid pace and will be fishable next week as long as we don'

While running back from Minnesota I checked the river flows and noticed that they all bumped up to perfect levels. Friday I took a coworkers husband out for steelhead and it didn't take long to tie into my first fish. Since Tony is brand new to steelheading I let him reel it in on my Raven Tackle 14' IM8 rod and Matrix fully ported reel. In the first spot we ended up getting 3 fish and in the second spot Tony finally hooked and landed his own steelhead! Saturday I ran a full

Monday March 7th, my partner and I wheeled it close to 500 miles to Alexandria Minnesota to start pre fishing for the Team Extreme Nationals. We had heard chatter about the tournament possibly being cancelled due to bad ice and a week forecast of 50 degree temps. Tuesday we started on Lake Mary where I found one suspended crappie in 35fow. After a few hours I decided it was time to load the wheeler and check out the south end of the lake. Once we got to the boat launch we ran

During February I ran a contest at The Beef Jerky Outlet Store for one lucky winner to win a half day guide trip for spring steelhead. Out of the over 100 entries Jarred was the lucky winner. He asked if he could bring his buddy with and sure why not. We met up on the root this morning and of course there were two guys in the first spot I wanted to fish with 3 steelhead on the stringer. We hit two other spots before ending up in a spot on the lower section of the river.

Saturday i had the pleasure of running the last ice trip of the year in McKinley Marina. The goal was to get my client on a bunch of steelhead but the brown trout had other ideas. I ran every close to every rod in the top 6' of water with a mix of shiners and spawn sacs on. it didn't take long after setting up for the first automatic fisherman to pop off with a very nice 12lb brown. While my client was fighting that one, I looked up and a second automatic was on the verge

This week has just been shy of outstanding! Despite a few days of high water on one river, low water on another and heavy foot pressure, it didn't stop the steelhead from biting. With my home river getting low and a hair clear, Creek Candy Beads were the trick the past two days, especially in the upper sections. Otherwise pink spawn sacs have done very well. I'm going to soak up more steelhead the rest of this week before the long truck to Alexandria Minnesota monday to pre f

Today I met up with a buddy and his two friends on the river for a few hours of hunting chrome. It didn't take long to get a first timer into his first steelhead (3 drifts actually). Soon after he landed his chrome bullet, it was my turn. After getting a few pictures and putting her back in the water my buddy ended up falling on a few big rocks and splitting his thumb wide open. Even though he got some river first aid he decided to call it a day. I continued down the river pi

This past weekend was full of high's and low's. Friday while pre fishing in 50mph winds I did more chasing down my ATV than actual fishing which made it a pretty short day. Saturday we decided to pre fish the south end of Delavan lake and it seemed like we couldn't do anything wrong while catching large 13'' crappies and 8-9'' bluegills and a slob of a pumpkinseed. Despite blue bird skies and a warm up fishing actually became stupid as for how active the gills and crappies we

My first NAIFC tournament was definitely a learning experience. Pre fishing lead to be a tough struggle trying to find any decent bluegills. After cover all of the safe ice and weed beds I could find, all we found were small perch, small bluegills and a lot of large mouth bass. Sunday morning while we were launching I decided to pack in with the crowd on one weed bed that seemed to hold all of the big bluegills and crappies. Even though the bite was extremely tough, I was