St. Clair Fishing Report

This week’s fishing report is from Jason Davis.  Jason is a southeast Michigan fishing guide.  He specializes in finding steelhead in the Clinton at this time of the year for his clients.  His report below can be found at his website, The Downstream Drift: 

Steelhead take salmon spawn sacks and egg flies

The Clinton River has cleared up tremendously.  You can now see into some of the runs and spot the fish you intend to target.  This makes for a great day on the river, especially if you are a catch and release fisherman.  We tend to find ourselves watching the fish in the river more than we are catching them.

On Sunday we were fortunate enough to spend the afternoon fishing with the one and only Dan Keifer.  Dan is the Community Outreach Coordinator with the Clinton River Watershed Council and an active member of several conservation organizations throughout Southeast Michigan.

We found some fish on Sunday and landed three very nice fish.  We even got the pleasure of netting one happy angler’s very first steelhead.  We have fished with Kevin for a couple of weeks now and he has picked up on fly fishing very quickly.  For a kid that had never casted a fly rod a month ago he is doing very well.  The Downstream Drift is happy to have helped encourage a young angler and assist him in his pursuit of Clinton River steelhead.

On Monday, April 12 we fished for a couple of hours and searched a lot of the river before we found some fish.  With the sun being high in the sky for most of the day the fish we did find were rather spooky.  After a very long walk we were able to locate some fish that wanted to play for a little bit.

The best advice we can give anglers right now is that with the water clearing up it is important to use slightly longer leaders and to keep your fly line as far away from the fish as possible.  With this clear water the fish may become very “line shy” so make every attempt to deter this from happening.  We will use 6lb leader material for most situations but occasionally, in very clear water, we will step down to 4lb tippets.

Report and photos by Jason Davis, owner, The Downstream Drift.  Contact Jason at 248.535.6201.  Email: downstreamdrift@aol.com

Readers:  If you are not a fly fisherman but you still want to match wits with steelhead in the Clinton River system,  you can buy spawn sacks at Lakeside Fishing Shop.