Ausable River Fishing Report

[lonehunter]

We left the Manistee late Saturday afternoon and headed for the au sable , arriving around 4:30 , fished untill dusk , nothing was happining . O ne fellow steelheader reported he saw one fish taken around 10 A.M. , we did see that fish and it was a nice one !
It was the only fish of the day .
Sunday , we returned just after another angler , Sam , cought his one and only for the day , a small male .
Everyone took turns trading off spaces and that was pretty cool , ocasionally someone would get a good bump and everyone would croud that spot for a bit and then return back to their favorite spot after a half hour or so .
Around 11:30 a guy had a hit and a little bit of a battle on his hands . This fish decided to head downriver than back up to the dam , not just once either , 3 or 4 times this repeated untill the fish tired out . It wasen't untill the fish was netted and pulled out that the reason for the behavior became aparent .
He had hooked into a beautiful male King Salmon , 33" long and 11 to 12 pounds in weight , probably a week or two into the river system by the black color that was starting to show on it's belly .

Steelhead that were being cought were on waxeys and stonefly patterns , numbers are very minimal at this time and very few are being cought in the upper streches of the river .
People were also icefishing foote pond at it was totally covered in ice .

Lakes cadillac and mitchel also saw quite a few icefisherman on saturday .

We did fish the tobacco river in beaverton , nothing going on there , the upper stretches of the au greys and rifle were void of any fishing activity and Omer reports were nothing spetacular that we did hear from the locals .
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[lonehunter]

I'm working this weekend but had just enough time to shoot over for a couple hours this evening .
Thw water is very high , in fact you couldn't see the small dam for the coffer (under water ).
The slow side was anything but slow , one of the large spillway gates was wide open . The water is slightly stained like a cup of weak tea .
The fishing , that was unreal !
Not one steelhead cought under 10 pounds , most were a week or two into the river , some were fresh .
All were hitting very light on the bite .
The color , I'm keeping that a secret [] .
Now what was really a treat was the walleye I was catching and putting back , man if the season was only open !

5 to 8 pounders at least ! I gave up counting the fish after an hour or so , all on my home tied flys !
I'm heading back wendsday for shure , darn cold over at the dam , lots of snow blowing and that bald eagle soaring around the river till dusk !
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[lonehunter]

The fishing has slowed down since they closed the overflow gates , three to five fish are being cought per day at the dam .
Further downriver the bite is going fair , pier fishermen are doing the best in Oscoda .
The color is orange this week for your spawnbags , go small on the size .
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[Jaackrabbit]

Wednesday ???? As in the 23rd?

I might be able to do that.

I've been itchin to get up to the Ausable for some walleye.

Let me know.

Mike

[Jaackrabbit]

When is it open season for walleye again in the LP? I think it's the last saturday in April which would be the 26th is that right ????
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[lonehunter]

Yep , walleye opens this Saturday .
I did fish the Au Sable on Sunday .

One steelhead on until my leader snapped , inspection showed a few nicks and freys from the rocks and zebra mussles . If I had landed that fish it would have been the third fish anyone had seen that day .

One shore fisherman landed a cromer , a boater latched into a jumper but later lost the fish when it wraped around his anchor line and finally there was my near catch .

The bite was very light from the steelies , I did have to change the presentation from a 5" sinker drop to a 2" drop , the leader line was shortened from a 5' to 6' lead line down to a 3' lead line . Hooks , from a #8 to a # 10 . Color was small red bags , last week you had to use pink or green . Flys , well absolutley nothing worked for steelhead until I switched over to a tan olive wing (#8 ) .
Several suckers were fowl hooked an all the other flys used , all of the bugle mouth bass were released .

While I was there , some dillweed was fishing the coffer and continued to fish the area even after a few of us warned him about it being illeagle . A few hours later after a fellow angler called the R.A.P. line a D.N.R. C.O. showed up .
No license , clamed no one warned him and did not see the signs he kept walking past . The C.O. was in a good mood and let him off with a warning after taking all his information , if cought again he would recive full penalties .

Just before I left Footesite , the D.N.R. trainees were installing the lamprey live traps in the river . It's great to see the future caretakers learning the finer points of maintaining a fishery , they had several questions to ask their instructor and a few for us anglers on the rivers edge .
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