For fishing guide, May is a time for trout on streamers
Friday, May 20, 2006
By Howard Meyerson
Press Outdoors Editor (Grand Rapids Press, May 20th 2006)

NEWAYGO -- It was late in the day that Chad Betts let a long cast go, dropping his fly into a shallow riffle near shore.

..The commotion that followed would have made any fishing filmmaker proud. There was a flash and a leap and lengthy struggle.
Betts, a 28-year-old fishing guide and my host for the day, was stripping line in madly, working a beautiful 17-inch brown trout back to the boat. The fish was reluctant. It dove underneath the boat and refused to give in.
But Betts, a Newaygo native and 11-year veteran of professional guiding, has a deft touch.
...A few more moments and it was within netting distance -- capping off an excellent day of fishing trout on the Muskegon River.
We had boated and released roughly two dozen trout, a mix of browns and rainbows up to 10 or so inches. Hardly big fish, but eager and fun to catch.
Then there were the two larger, dark-speckled browns, running 15 or so and now 17 inches. Fat and sassy fish that made a day of sitting in the cold worthwhile.
Some would have called the conditions less than stellar this day. Many anglers steer away from fishing when a cold front comes through. And others might have wondered why we were fishing the little shallow riffles.
But the little riffles, with just a foot of water, were where the fish seemed to be. And though we fished both shallow and deep, the big fish screamed out from the shallows hunting for exactly what we gave them -- streamers.
"I fish streamers in May because there are no hatches unless it is unseasonably warm. The water is low and fish are dialed in to fry," said Betts, the owner of Betts Guide Service in Newaygo.
"Trout key in on bait fish( Salmon Fry)at this time of year."
And that was the game: to entice them with bits of feathers and fur that resembled bait fish. Streamers are flies that imitate a variety of bait fish, both large and small. They are fished below the surface using split shot or sink-tip fly lines to get them down in a current.
The 200-grain Rio sink-tip line we were using has 24 feet of weighted line married to a shooting flyline. Casting it requires shortening up, making a false cast or two to get the rhythm and then let it fly.
The flies are cast accross the current into the shallows and other fishy looking places and retrieved as it drifts by stripping line in, creating a realistic darting action. Our trip was a relaxing mix of floating downstream and casting to likely spots or anchoring and casting using what Betts calls a "slip-strip" method for the retrieve.
That means a steady rhythmic alternating pattern of a strip followed by a release of line, strip-release, strip-release.
"That gives it a natural look," Betts said.
The choice of streamers were several. We started with what Betts called a large bunny leech streamer that ran two- to three-inches long, a fly that seemed to get more nips at its tail than hookups. So Betts switched us over to a shorter streamer. Most fall into to four broad categories: the salmon and steelhead fry immitations, the general baitfish immitations, the sculpins and things like leeches and crawfish.
"I could live on this one," Betts said pointing to the smaller yellow mallard flank streamer, the steelhead frypattern that he tied -- the one just retrieved from the mouth of the big trout.
It was the same pattern that hooked the other big trout of the day -- a a wholchunky, full-bellied fish that had gorged itself on steelhead fry, regurgitated one when it hit the net and was hungry enough to still be mouthing Betts' streamer.
We had anchored near a gravel bar mid-afternoon. Betts was busy working the fish in the shallows. It is where the fish come to feed, he said. Then they return to the pools to rest and digest.
"This is the time of year they go around eating fry in all the little pockets," said Betts, who cut his teeth fishing the river as a Newaygo High School student and eventually went to study fish biology at the University of Michigan. Two years into his curriculum he opted to cut his education short, succumbing instead to lure of the river and becoming a full-time guide.
"Guiding gets in your blood. It's hard to walk away," says Betts who guides clients over 200 days a year whether that is for trout, salmon, steelhead or smallmouth bass.
"You may fish a river several days in a row, but you never have the same day twice. You can't put a price on seeing a bald eagle or osprey come by or being out and enjoying the weather."
Today, we see the eagle, not the osprey. And, of course, it never hurts to see a client smile after hooking a couple of good size Muskegon river brown trout.
"I've fished in Alaska and Colorado and what keeps me coming back here is that the Muskegon River has everything. Here the seasons are all married together. We have salmon in the fall, followed by steelhead in the winter. When those are done we have some nice trout and when those are done we get into smallmouth.
May, Betts says, it time for trout on streamers.

© 2007 Grand Rapids Press. Used with permission

Trophy Trout of May 2006

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