The Michipicoten River's Fall Salmon Run

It was a sunny day, with perfect weather—a beautiful opportunity for fishing. After a pleasant boat ride upriver, we ventured into a nice pool in the river and began casting our lines. It didn’t take long before we hooked a stunning rainbow trout. The fish were active and hungry, some hitting our lines with such force that they would peel out line before we could even set the hook. Often, we barely had time to place our rods in the holders before another trout was biting. Next, we slowly drifted downriver and fished along the way. Some spots yielded fish, while others were disappointingly barren. After a few hours of fishing, we had successfully landed and released a good number of trout and kept a couple for dinner. This river can be challenging to fish, with its deep cold pools, back eddies, logs, and large rocks and many snags, almost everywhere looks promising but often prove void of any biting fish. The elusive nature of the trout, which move frequently, adds to the difficulty so does there feeding patterns, some days they bite eagerly, while on others, it feels as if the river has fish at all.  

This time of year, the fish are particularly eager to bite, especially with the right setup. For trout fishing in rivers during the early fall season, a straightforward technique: a couple of split shots to reach the bottom placed about 3ft above the bead and hook, followed by a small, sharp hook with a colored float bead placed before the hook works great also, tipped with salmon roe, I use green mesh for color and green spawn sac floaters to keep the roe just off the bottom orange spawn sac also work well. Some bites are so subtle that the tip barely twitches; if you’re not quick enough, the trout will squish your roe and disappear. Other times, the strikes are so vigorous that the rod bends almost in half, with the drag screaming as it peels out. These fish put up a fierce fight, leaping out of the water, making powerful runs, and providing an exhilarating challenge. We didn't hook any giant salmon on this trip.

On this trip, we compared our bead rigs tipped with spawn sacs to plain hooks with the same exact bait. While the plain hook setup did yield some catches, the bead rigs proved to be remarkably effective. The vibrant colors of the bead rigs made a noticeable difference in our results, averaging five to 1 in favor of the bead rigs tipped with roe, compared to just one trout on the plain hook setup, such a small change made a big difference in the numbers of fish caught.

We also observed a few key distinctions: the plain hook setup tended to attract mostly larger fish, but the overall catch numbers were relatively low. In contrast, the bead rigs drew both large and small fish, significantly outperforming the plain hooks in terms of quantity. Additionally, fish seemed to strike more aggressively at the bead rigs.

We conducted a similar test this spring with our bead rigs and found results that mirrored our previous findings. We have these same bead rigs for sale at our online store.

We fished in both the deep and shallow pools, some yielding a good number of fish. While the larger fish were scattered throughout the river, smaller trout seemed to be more plenty full. The fishing was fantastic, with nearly constant action in some sections. We released many fish and kept a couple for a delicious meal.

The boat ride was a highlight as well, with bald eagles everywhere, perched in the trees along the riverbank, swooping down across the river in front of us and gliding just in front of our boat as we traveled upstream. We only spotted one big salmon jumping, but the run is just beginning, and in the coming weeks, we can expect to see giant salmon everywhere in this river.