- Hello everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

I'm Jenny Silek, and we've got a great show headed your way this week.

I'll take you out on the Detroit River after dark trolling for walleyes with a technique you may have never seen before.

You won't wanna miss that story.

And Jordan's targeting a different fish species on this week's show.

- Well that's right, Jenny.

We do have another story on this week's show.

Before we highlight the Detroit River at night, we're gonna head to the northern part of the lower peninsula and do a little trout fishing.

A beautiful story from Northern Michigan, you won't wanna miss that.

Make sure you stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger, and it's time for Michigan Out of Doors."

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(gentle music) (upbeat music) (gentle music) - [Jimmy] A few weeks back, I was able to spend a day on the water with a couple of anglers targeting trout and steelhead.

The weather and the water conditions were about perfect.

We're all excited to hit the river.

- So today, we're here in Northwest Michigan on a small stream chasing brown trout.

Potentially a couple bonus steelhead if they're still hanging around.

And mostly using streamer tactics here today with the potential maybe for some dry fly fishing if we're lucky.

And then maybe chasing some of the steelheads on some nymph patterns, things like that.

It's looking like a gorgeous day, so we'll kind of see how she goes.

Just getting started here right now.

So there's a few spawning steelhead on a gravel bar here, and there's been a lot of brown trout kind of hanging out in the vicinities around where our spawning steelhead are.

So we're just kind of running the dark water behind these gravel flats looking for that.

Oh, and he's gone.

(laughs) All right, that was a hot one.

- [Jimmy] Awesome.

Yeah, that was sweet.

- That was cool.

- Good timing.

- All right, try that again.

So that was a steelhead.

That was not a brown trout.

- [Jimmy] In the dark water though probably feeding on some eggs down there.

- That was a pretty hot fish.

Wasn't expecting that.

- Try that again.

- That's how it goes.

Never know when they're gonna come out.

- [Jimmy] You never do know.

- Yeah, so trout, this time of year, it's really cool where there's so many different ways to catch these fish.

A lot of our salmon and steelhead rivers that have eggs and salmon fry starting to hatch this time of year, you can use small little nymph patterns to kind of mimic some of those steelhead fry and salmon fry that are starting to hatch out right now.

Lots of leeches, oh.

Leeches, sculpins, small bait fish here in the river.

So using small streamer flies can be really, really good at this time of year.

And then we're also gonna be throwing some eggs out there since we still do have a few spawning steelhead in the river.

So we try not to target them on the gravel too much.

But if you do see some spawning steelhead out there, it's a great idea to kind of look in the back water right behind where those steelhead are spawning and see if you can see any brown trout kind of dodging around back there.

Or just kind of throw a egg fly right off kind of the dip off those shallow spots where those steelhead are sitting.

And a lot of times, you'll find a brown trout sitting back there.

Nice and high.

- Yes, let's go.

- Yeah, buddy.

- Look at the colors on that fish.

- That's a pretty one.

- That is awesome.

- [Cole] Hook that anchor up for me.

- [Luke] You betcha.

Awesome, look at that, that thing crushed it.

- [Cole] Star right there, brother.

Nice.

- Kind of right around some polished up steelhead gravel there too.

There's no fish sitting on it right now.

But these brown trout, they're kind of keyed in on some of those spots right now where they've been gobbling up steelhead eggs for a little bit, and now he's looking for a bigger meal.

That is gorgeous.

Look at the spots on that.

- [Cole] Yeah, that's where it's at.

- [Luke] That's what you come out here for, fish like that.

That's awesome.

- What a grab too.

I mean he came right up to the top and just boil out- - Oh yeah, just destroyed it.

Yeah, so now that these water temperatures are getting warmer, these trout, they'll come up and just crush streamers on top of the surface because they're starting to look up looking for bugs and all of a sudden a bigger meal comes in, they're on it quick.

So yeah, he engulfed that fly.

That's awesome.

And I tied that this morning.

That is hot off the the vice, hot off the the vice.

- I love it.

- Sweet.

So out here, we're using nine foot eight weight fly rods today, we have a 250 grain sinking line on here, and then off of your fly line, kind of leaders range depending on how deep of the water that you're fishing.

Normally we're in that three to four foot range.

If the water's really dirty, you could go down two feet, doesn't matter too much.

But we do kind of like a little bit of a longer leader sometimes to kind of get it away from that kind of heavy black sinking line.

- [Cole] About six feet today, I would say total.

- [Luke] Yeah, about six feet on our river today.

So that fly looks good.

I like it.

- Ready to rock - [Jimmy] Early season trout can be targeted using a variety of different methods, partially because there's so much food in the system this time of year.

- Pretty diverse diet this time of the year.

The aquatic bug life is really starting to pick up as the water temperatures are rising.

I mean they're eating a lot of nymphal stage bugs in the river, that's probably the vast majority of their diet.

But when these steelhead are spawning like they are right now, these eggs offer a great protein source for them this time of year.

And as you can see, like every fish that we've caught is pretty chunky, in good shape, good health.

So it's important.

We'll fish to a lot of fish today that aren't around steelhead, and they're making their living on quite a variety of different food types.

- [Luke] Yeah, not uncommon this time of year to catch one of these brown trout around the gravel, and you can look inside of its mouth and there's some eggs in there.

There might even be some Alvin stages of some salmon fry, which they still have the egg sac attached to them, but they're also, they're kind of part fish egg part minnow at this time of year.

And that's pretty cool to see kind of Mother Nature, those salmon that did all that spawning in the fall.

And now those small bait fish are starting to hatch and work their way back down to Lake Michigan.

And they're a good food source for the brown trout in here.

- [Cole] You got timber right here, Luke.

(gentle music) (water splashing) - We are just floating down here, saw some active gravel right down below us with some steelhead that were spawning on there.

And that's always kind of a telltale sign that there might be some other fish around.

Like we kind of talked about, we're not really trying to target the fish that are actively spawning right now, but this fish was just up above him in some deeper water looking for some other steelhead eggs floating down, and it was first drift, he was on right away.

- [Cole] Quick grab.

- Yeah, looking for some of those gravel spots this time of year is great.

And then generally, we like to fish the dark water around them.

And we got ourselves a nice steelhead.

- He's spunky.

- Nice wild fish.

- [Jimmy] We were using several different tactics today with streamers being the primary option, but we did have a dry fly rod tied up.

And as we made our way downriver, we ran into the perfect opportunity to use it.

- [Luke] Yeah, so we were just kind of doing a little bit of steelhead fishing through this hole here.

And as with springtime, there's a lot of different things going on.

And we saw a pretty nice brown trout kind of rolling on some dry flies over in this slack water here.

So we're gonna switch up our game plan a little bit and see if we can get this fish to feed up on the surface.

So let's see what we got.

There he is, right there, right in his wheelhouse.

That is a nice trout.

- Beautiful trout.

- [Luke] Oh my, yes.

Good job, Cole.

- First drift magic, man.

I think I'm gonna just strip this beauty in.

Coming in hot.

- Strip down a little more.

Strip down more.

You got a four weight.

- He's a spicy one.

- Yes he is.

- [Cole] Bring him up and then lift.

- [Luke] And there he is.

Nice, look at that.

- [Cole] That's the first dry fly fish of the year for me.

- [Luke] Yep.

Things are getting going here.

That is a beautiful trout.

- [Cole] What a beautiful brown trout.

- [Jimmy] The first half of our float really couldn't have gone much better.

And as we rode over the halfway point, our overcast skies turned to rain.

Not ideal for the camera, but just about perfect for fishing.

- Springtime fly fishing, especially with these streamer rods like we're doing mostly today, you're really looking for kind of those overcast, gloomy days, nice and rainy.

A little bit of stormy weather's not a problem at all.

Lower light kind of conditions for sure.

And then water types, just kind of like what we see today.

A little bit of stain to the river, a little bit of off clarity to it.

Not looking for those bright sunny days with low clear water.

Those are kind of the toughest days that we encounter.

So if you can get those overcast kind of gloomy rainy days with some stain to the water, it's quite, quite good.

Nice.

Nice and high.

Sweet.

Heck yeah.

- Man, that was awesome.

- Yeah.

He take a couple stabs out of there?

- He did.

He did.

- Sweet.

- All right, so things have been going good out here.

We just had a little rain shower come through and have some good overcast conditions right now, which brown trout fishing, especially in the springtime, that makes them a little bit more comfortable coming out of their log jams and looking for some bigger meals out here.

So we've been turning some nice fish and bringing a few to the net here, and this guy came out and swallowed an eight inch streamer.

So they are looking for some larger meals right now.

- [Jimmy] These two spend a ton of time on the water and love just about every minute of it.

They are constantly wanting to learn more about the fish they target and teach others along the way.

- [Luke] It's really just always been a big passion of mine being out here.

Even if I'm not guiding on my days off, I still want to come out, I still want to go fishing, just every day you're out here on the water, you're learning more, learning more.

So definitely with the guiding, trying to stay as busy as possible.

Cole and I both kind of have our own separate guiding services and we kind of do some all-inclusive hosted trips together, kind of food, lodging, and fishing all mixed together.

But we have a pretty cool program where we'll do almost anything on the west side of the state here.

Whether it's small, narrow rivers out of a raft like we're in today, larger drift boats for bigger rivers like the Pier Marquette, and then even some jet boat fishing on the big Manistee and Muskegon Rivers.

So we try and just follow the fishing around the state and just seek out the best fishing throughout the seasons and gear it towards what people want to do and what kind of experience they're looking for.

So we're flexible.

We love moving around and chasing these fish.

- We've got it, little timber fighting.

All right, no broken rods, we're good.

- Sweet.

Okay, that was awesome.

- That was super cool.

- Good job.

So here's a little look at some of the flies that we've been throwing today.

As you can see, we have a lot of different colors with us.

Today, we kind of caught fish on a wide variety of flies.

Definitely our hottest patterns seem to be kind of black and copper today.

We did get some fish on a more bright and flashy white fly, maybe mimicking some of the steelhead smolt that are out here.

But you can see we have a lot of different sizes in the box, lots of different colors.

We're changing flies pretty frequently if you know that you're fishing through what looks to be good water.

If we went 10 minutes, 15 minutes without moving a fish, then we were changing, changing, changing.

Just trying to figure out what these fish wanted.

So definitely whenever you're out here, do yourself a favor at home, tie up some flies.

All these flies are hand tied by us when we're out here, but a lot of your local fly shops have fantastic patterns, so stop in there, talk with them, see what they recommend for your local streams.

But big thing is just having options when you're out here.

- [Jimmy] Spring in Michigan is pretty tough to beat.

There's just so much going on all around the state, but this trip will be tough to top.

We caught fish from start to finish and enjoyed some incredible scenery along the way.

Special thanks to Luke and Cole for letting me tag along on a great day of trout fishing here in Northern Michigan.

- Big brown.

Big brown.

Oh buddy!

(gentle music) Yep!

- Nice.

- All right.

- Well as you can see, Northern Michigan is a beautiful place to do a little trout fishing.

One of the other rivers that really tracks a lot of people this time of the year is the Detroit River.

Jenny's about to take us on an adventure down there after dark.

(gentle music) - Oh, we're gonna go out and do a little Detroit River night trolling.

Yep, it's kind of a little bit of a specialty that we got going on.

It's real shallow water.

And we'll show you tonight how we're rigged up and stuff.

I'm gonna have Theron do that.

Theron's the one that taught me how to do it.

There's a lot of people out trying to do it, but it's kind of a special technique, and yeah, we'll show you.

- I've been fishing out here since I was probably four years old.

My dad actually used to bring me out in a car seat I think, so maybe a little bit before four.

I'm third generation since 1943 on the river of hand liners, and long lining, which we're gonna be doing tonight, they came in around mid-'80s.

The hand liners figured they wanted to get up into the shallows where all the fish were.

And they didn't have to pull a pound sinker up there.

So they already had the same baits, so they just put them on rods and started pulling them through the shallows.

This is the setup that I run out here for long lining.

This is the Denali Rod, eight foot medium, and then we're pairing it with the Okuma Cold Waters.

And we have 25 pound braid on here.

- [Jenny] And a line counter, is that critical?

- And the line counter is definitely critical.

And then you can see I have a leader tied on here with a bead, a swivel, and then a split shot, which just kind of helps it pull it down a little bit more, because we are running the floaters.

- How long is your leader?

- Leader, we usually go about five foot.

Well we're gonna wait until it gets about dark.

We're gonna set the rods back, starting anywhere from 70 to 100, and you're gonna be holding the rod over the side of the boat.

You can also run boards doing this, but it takes away from the fun of it.

You don't want to take up a bunch of room, you don't want to be dealing with boards at night.

And the best part of fishing is feeling the hit, right?

So this way, you're actually able to feel the hit.

If you miss the fish, you're actually able to drop your line back and they'll hit it again.

- [Jenny] Joining Brandon and Theron tonight were Jim Waggoner, and my husband Matt.

Before dark set in, Theron showed us his technique while Brandon ran the trolling motor.

Are you letting it out now?

- So right now what we're gonna do, this is how we let our rods out, put our thumb on it, let it come back, and then we pull forward.

Put your thumb on it and let it back.

But it's important when you let it back to make sure your line stays tight because the fish will grab it.

I usually start at 100.

What happens is in the shallow water, when you're going over the fish, they tend to go out to the sides and then they come back in.

So putting the line farther back usually helps to let the fish come back in and grab it.

- [Jenny] All right, but then once you get 100 feet of line let out, then what?

- [Theron] Then you're just gonna be holding the rod and pumping the bait.

- [Jenny] As Theron and Jim got their lines out, Brandon talked more about the gear they use out here.

- [Brandon] You want a nice light rod and a very light reel because all night long, you're swooping that rod.

And the board thing, it works, but you're just basically trolling like you're trolling the bay.

Them fish seem to take it when it stops, you know?

Or you want to take it away from them.

That's when they nab it.

- [Jenny] Well Jim had one on that hit his bait like a freight train.

Before it was completely dark, we were about to have our first fish in the boat.

- There we go.

- Woohoo!

- Woohoo!

One in a row!

- [Matt] A little bit of belly there.

- [Jenny] Oh nice, good job.

- That's what we're looking for.

- [Jenny] How long do we think this fish is?

- [Theron] I'm gonna say 24.

- That's a long fish.

- Yeah.

- That's a good one.

- [Jenny] He hit.

- That's a hungry fish right there.

- Those are my favorite kind.

- Yeah.

- I'll run two rods.

Somebody will catch a fish, like Jim just got that fish, and then he'll go sit up front and the next guy will take the turn, and usually it gets going so fast that there's just a constant rotation.

The guys are just constantly rotating.

- Musical chairs.

- Musical chairs.

- [Theron] I remember taking Brandon out for his first time and he was like, "I feel like a little kid," talking to a guy that fishes almost 300 days a year, and he's like, "This is something very special.

Don't show many people."

Well, cat's outta the bag now.

People are kind of figuring it out.

So we figured we might as well do a tutorial on it so they know how to do it the right way.

- [Brandon] Well he says, "Let's go fishing."

I said, "It's the middle of the night."

And we went out and it was great.

I mean, you're hooked holding this rod in your hand.

The first time you feel a a walleye hit this bait, and it about will take the rod right out of your hand.

And I'm talking like a 16 inch walleye.

It's just something you're gonna get hooked, you're gonna be addicted to, and what really, this isn't a big secret, but it's not really talked about a lot because when the water becomes really blue and clear out here and the charter captains can't jig fish up like they want to, we'll start switching our charters to the nighttime.

And this is a great way to load the boat quick.

And they seem to enjoy it.

They really like being out there in the dark.

It's a whole different scenery on the Detroit River at night than it is during the day.

- [Jenny] That was quick, Brandon.

- You know, sometimes the captain's gotta get on the rod.

- [Jenny] You just had it for half a minute.

It was fun to see these charter captains enjoying the action instead of just running the boat.

Both Brandon and Theron are passionate about this fishery.

You could say it's in Theron's blood.

- [Theron] Yeah, my father, he was probably one of the first, he's been out here 65 years on the river, and I've been out here over 30 years on the river.

So he's got to watch everything change on this entire river to what it is now.

- [Jenny] Theron's dad Tom was one of the very first people to try this style of trolling in the shallows on the Detroit River.

And it's grown in popularity in recent years.

Matt was loving it out here.

- There we go.

That was the first solid hit.

I had a couple tugs earlier, but that one grabbed it and ripped it.

- [Theron] It's an aggressive hit, isn't it?

- Yep, straight off the back.

- [Theron] Bring that rod tip over the back.

- [Matt] There we go.

Nice fish.

T-boned it.

- Nice Wyandotte walleye.

- Proud of my crew here.

- Nice fish.

- [Jenny] Jim Waggoner was originally one of Brandon Stanton's students at a Mark Martin fishing weekend, and the two have become fishing buddies.

- I am from Chelsea, Michigan.

- [Jenny] All right, and you come down here very often?

- I keep my boat in the marina for the month of April and fish as many days as I can.

Hopefully, I aim for 25 out of the 30.

- [Jenny] Wow.

That's saying something for this April.

- [Jim] Yeah, it hasn't been the most exciting fishing this year.

It's been really muddy with the wind and the rain, but it's still fishing.

- [Jenny] Yeah.

What do you like about doing this type of fishing that we're doing tonight?

- This, the action is usually pretty steady.

And you know, you get to feel the hard hit.

It's just usually a lot of fun.

Something different.

I come to Detroit usually to jig, but this is a nice little change of pace to break the month up.

This is the hardest part of this style of fishing is getting it out.

- [Jenny] Yeah.

We got another fish on?

- Another fish on.

- That man.

- Woohoo!

(group chattering) - [Matt] There's another one on right now.

- [Jenny] The bite was ramping up and the guys were enjoying some great action.

Brandon says there's a particular type of structure that's key to trolling like this.

- [Brandon] What we do is we find flats off the channel, and they'll come up to feed in them flats at night, rather, you know, all these males are down in the channel during the day, everybody's jigging them.

Well at night, they'll come up into that three foot of water, chase the minnows, that kind of stuff.

And that's what we're targeting right now.

Anywhere we can find a flat off the channel that we can get in in three to five, three to seven foot of water is what we're targeting.

- [Jenny] It was a perfect night on the Detroit River, and Jim and Matt were keeping Theron busy at the back of the boat with a steady stream of fish on and a couple of doubles coming in.

As we talked about wrapping up for the night, the guys insisted that I reel one in.

That's when we were finally able to see how other walleyes will chase the bait that's already got a fish on.

- [Jim] All right, swing that fish.

- [Jenny] Yeah!

- [Matt] There we go.

Swing it in.

- Nice.

- Woohoo!

- All right.

- You got him.

- Wow.

And there was one following it, one or two, I couldn't tell.

That was crazy.

Thanks guys, ton of fun.

- [Brandon] A second flash or something.

- Yeah, thank you, Brandon.

Always fun hanging out on Captain Brandon's boat.

And thank you, Theron.

Theron's the camera guy now.

(group laughing) (gentle music) What a great ending to a perfect night on the Detroit River.

Thanks to Theron Hoffman and Brandon Stanton for showing us a fun way to fish those amazing Detroit River walleyes.

It's just one more way to enjoy our tasty renewable resources here in Michigan's out of doors.

Thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

Make sure you come back in upcoming weeks, lots of great things headed your way.

We're still out there trying to get some more successful turkey hunts on camera.

We'll do a little bow fishing, and then the entire crew is gonna head to the Keweenaw Peninsula up in the UP to grab a few stories up there.

If you'd like to see where we are on a regular basis, you can always check us out online.

- Well that's right, Jenny.

Online is a good way to kinda keep track of us.

Probably our social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram are the best ways to see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis.

Make sure you are joining us over the next few weeks.

There is so much going on right now in our great state.

Get out and enjoy it.

And if we don't see it in the woods or on the water, we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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