The Gordo River Steelhead Float

It is 0711 on Saturday and all I hear is the sound of the river it's one of the most calming sounds I know of. No matter how long it has been this make my being whole again. 

A great friend of mine and to protect the innocent we will call him TFN " The Fishing Nerd". He had an open seat in his canoe today. TFN offered me the opportunity to do a float today. 

Like a seven-year-old on Christmas Eve I kept waking up. Finally, I could not take it anymore I got out of bed at 0400. I made breakfast and carbed up. On the way to the river, I saw a deer almost T-bone a car ahead of me traveling at 70 mph.  This deer’s rack was so big that you could see the silhouette of it through the oncoming traffic headlights. 

TFN arrived and we planted the takeout vehicle and went back to the put in. We would also start our float thirty-one river miles from the mouth of the river. 

This would add more challenges to our day for several reasons. Here are some of the challenges we would be faced with. The Manistee Run steelhead tend to start in November and the factors that surround their runs are many. You have the photo periods “amount of sun vs moon light hours.” The lake temperatures in 0-30 FOW (feet of water) in my humble opinion need to be in the 50’s to trigger a strong run of fish and a bunch of rain. Sure, you will get these scout fish in some catchable numbers. 

We all know around the Great Lakes Region when the nights are cool (cold), and our rainy season starts it will trigger a better run of fish. The other challenges this river will offer us to figure out is where the fish will be holding, staging, and or traversing the river. 

This river topographical features are many. In her head waters she is a silty mess and that does tend to filter out in the bottom third of the river and it will turn that deep limestone green aka steelhead green. 

Up here we will be faced with that tannin to silt stained water column for most of the day. It does not look as pretty as her lower section.  

In some areas she is a broad river and has a lot I mean a lot of places to hide fish and yet another variable. 

Some of her pools, cuts, chutes, ledges, and bubble lines will tell us what the river bottom is doing. Some of the areas we will fish will have double and triple current seams that are not all parallel and are tough to fish while swinging flies. With that said let us get back to the fun stuff.

TFN brought four bug rods and I brought one. I would set up using tubes all day. I had my Scott L2H1157 lined with the Freightliner 440 grain with a twenty-two’ head. My tip I would stick with was a 14-foot section of T-8 (112 grains). In some of the areas I fished I should of went heavier, but I did not and should have. 

We only saw one other human on the section of the river we were fishing, and he or she was in a yak and not sure if that person was even fishing.

TFN would swing up a resident Walleye for the first fish of the day. It was a feisty 16-inch feller. Then out of the same run I would have the opportunity to net a nice Manistee buck. 

The buck would fall prey to a silver flash over pick and white sparsely tied intruder. As always I was paying a lot of attention netting my friends fish because we have all had those less than stellar moments when our friends try to net our fish and we will just say it does not go well.