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The best action is usually from the Croton Dam, which is above the town of Newaygo, downstream to the Village of Maple Island. There are many good access locations and public boat launch facilities.

"Brown trout and rainbows go on a feeding frenzy each fall, with the largest fish of the year being caught," said Dennis Skiba of Drift Away Charters (231-798-2257).

Skiba runs a guide service and a drift boat rental business. Drifting a river in a drift boat is a pleasure that anglers should experience.

"Hand-sewn minnows are my No. 1 bait when fishing for trout," Skiba said.

Skiba uses a live minnow and sews the minnow onto the hook so that it runs straight as an arrow.

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Muskegon trout best from boat
Newaygo, Mich.—"Most anglers catch more trout in a day in the drift boat than what they caught in their lifetime," says Sciba of Drift Away Charters (231-798-2257). The Muskegon River gets overlooked in the fall for its fine brown and rainbow trout.

The best section starts at the Croton Dam above the town of Newaygo. From the dam down to the town of Newaygo takes 12-plus hours if you want to hit it hard. Otherwise, this area is best broken down into a few sections.

If a half-day trip is desired, then the following three sections will work fine. The section from the Dam to Pine Street is best during the early fall. Lots of oxygen and some swift water draw the trout.

The next section is between Pine Street and Thornapple Road. This section has a mixture of fast runs and deep holes. Walleye have a tendency to show up on occasion. This section is real good after a cold blast of northern air.

Some of the largest browns are caught after Thanksgiving, and the section from Thornapple Road down to Newaygo is excellent. Anglers often get a mixed bag of trout with smallmouth bass thrown in. Trout caught in this section must be 15 inches in order to keep them.

"I use live bait because it catches trout and is easy to teach," says Sciba. To my knowledge, this is the only service in the state that uses live bait. The Muskegon River is a put-and-take stream. Very modest reproduction takes place on the river. Instead, the DNR stocks tens of thousands of trout each season.

Now comes the tricky part of the equation. There is live bait and then there is live bait that will land the most fish. Sciba has a few tricks up his sleeve that are well worth the guide fee to learn.

"I use sewn minnows and scented crawlers for my best success," says Sciba. A sewn minnow is a minnow that is rigged so that it runs straight in the water. To be productive, it can't rotate and turn over. This trick takes a few minutes to rig up. Once the minnow gets chewed up or won't run straight, it's time for a fresh minnow.

"Wash your 'crawlers in the river before adding the scent," says Sciba. He washes a half dozen in the river and then scents them down with his special concoction. Anglers use a piece of the 'crawler at a time. A couple of dozen 'crawlers will go a long way.

King salmon will start showing up in late September and peak in October. About this time, a few steelhead will show up. Therefore, anglers should be prepared for any type of battle. The Muskegon River is a fabulous river in the fall.

Jack Payne

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Float on 'holy' river honors cancer fighter

Saturday, April 30, 2005, By Susan Harrison Wolffis, CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

She called the Muskegon River "holy waters."

Whenever she needed solace from the storms of cancer, or simply wanted to satisfy her passion for fly-fishing, Roe Konopa-Ashley went to the river -- and waded in.

"They call these holy waters," she said, "and you can see why."

On Sunday, her friends, family and a whole slew of strangers will honor Konopa-Ashley, who died last June, by going to her beloved river and holding a memorial they're calling "Roe's Float 2005."

People will begin to gather about 7:30 a.m. Sunday six miles north of Newaygo on the Muskegon River "to reflect and fish for a day," said Debra Johnston-Visch of Jenison, one of the event's organizers.

She and Konopa-Ashley met in 1997 at a fly-fishing retreat for women with breast cancer, which Johnston-Visch organized and ran. Konopa-Ashley attended every "Reeling and Healing of Michigan" retreat from then on, unable to leave the river for long.

She even volunteered to work at the August 2003 retreat, although she had just learned she had a malignant mass in her liver and was in fragile health. She knew it would be her last retreat.

She was 56 when she died; she battled cancer for nine and a half years.

"It's so hard to explain what brings me here ... to the river," she said in a Chronicle interview. "It's just something that grabs you and doesn't release you. (The river) keeps you. It claims you."

At least 15 fishing guides, all operating Hyde drift boats built for fly-fishing, have volunteered to take part in Roe's Float Sunday.

Each guide will take two people, many of them cancer survivors, most whom have never fly-fished before. The boats will launch between 8:30 and 9 a.m., 15 boats in a line, all floating on the river: thus the name, Roe's Float.

By 2 or 3 p.m., the boats should reach Henning's Park in Newaygo.

Newaygo County Parks system has waived entrance fees for those who want to see Roe's Float.

"Everybody's been touched in some way by cancer ... or lost loved ones and friends," Johnston-Visch said. "What better place to go than the river to remember them?"

Roe's Float was the brainchild of fishing guide Denny Sciba of Muskegon, who co-owns Drift-Away guide service. He and Konopa-Ashley, who lived in Twin Lake, grew up in Manistee "and fished together when we were kids."

Sciba invited his fellow fishing guides with Hyde drift boats to take part in the memorial. His work on behalf of his friend's memory drew the attention of LaMoyne Hyde, owner of the Hyde Drift Boat company in Idaho.

Hyde, a cancer survivor, traveled to Michigan to take part in the Float. He even will operate one of the boats and teach his "passengers" how to fly-fish.

Guides and passengers will be taken by bus from Henning's Park to Loomis Lodge in Newaygo when the event is finished.

Roe's Float is not a fund-raiser; it is meant as a memorial for Roe, and all the people she represents, Johnston-Visch said.

"This is a wonderful way to bring people together," Johnston-Visch said. "I'd like to see this happen every year."

By the way, fly-fishing season officially starts today.

The weather forecast was calling for cloudy, rainy, cool weather for the weekend, but that won't stop Roe's Float. That goes on, rain or shine.

"Bring your rain gear and your sense of humor," Johnston-Visch said. "Good advice for all of life, don't you think?"

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Old-fashioned technique suits trout angler just fine
Sunday, May 21, 2006
By Bob Gwizdz
NEWAYGO -- Dennis Sciba doesn't pretend to have mastered the latest in fishing techniques. He says he fishes an old-fashioned way and it suits him just fine. And if you spend some time with him on the Muskegon River, you can see why he feels that way.

Sciba, 55, uses sewn-on minnows, an approach that he says produces 30 to 50 trout a day whenever he fishes.

"This is a technique anybody can master," he says. "It's a different kind of fishing. It's geared toward a fisherman who wants to spend a day on the river without a lot of fuss."


There's certainly not a lot of fuss for the folks fishing with Sciba. But Sciba buzzes like a hummingbird the whole time.

"If you're doing this yourself, it would be a long day," he admits. "I spend a lot of time threading. That's the negative.

"On an average trip, I go through 10 dozen minnows."

Sciba essentially uses a needle to thread a leader through a minnow. It keeps the bait on the line better when the fish are hammering it, as they were the day we fished.

The key to Sciba's approach is how he has his lines rigged. He uses a pair of snap swivels, threading his 6-pound test line through one, then tying the other to the end of the line. He uses the sliding snap swivel to attach a sinker -- anywhere from a 1/4 ounce to a 1/2 ounce, depending on depth and current. Then he ties a leader (4-pound test, about 16 inches) with a loop on the end that attaches to the terminal snap swivel.

To bait up, Sciba uses an open-eyed needle to run through the length of the minnow, from behind the dorsal fin to near the head. He snags the leader with the needle's eye, runs it through the minnow and snaps it on the rig. That leaves the small single hook (size 8 or 10) exposed near the minnow's tail.

As for the fishing, it's not too different than fishing with spawn or nightcrawlers or any other bait in the current. He either side-drifts it, drags it behind the boat or fishes it straight downstream, walking it back up. Each approach produces; the key is staying in contact with the bottom, noticing the rat-a-tat-tat of a trout biting and setting the hook with a slow, steady, deliberate motion.

How does it work? Well. Very well.

Over the course of an eight-hour day, I caught about 40 trout, about a third of them keepers, mostly browns in the 11- to 14-inch range (though I did have two rather nice rainbows as well).

Sciba, a quality engineer in a foundry who lives in Muskegon, says the key to his approach is that he always follows the same process. And it is repeatable -- just like foundry work.


"You can catch them year-round, even when the (inner)tubers are on the river," he said. "The real hot month is July when the smallies start spawning. That's wild fishing. And in the summer, we catch walleyes in the deep holes."

But those other fish are bonuses, Sciba said. He's fishing for trout.

Sciba was born in Manistee, the son of a commercial fisherman who used sewn-on minnows to chug for lake trout, he said. But Sciba never learned the technique from his father, who died when Dennis was a child.

Sciba kept his father's metal tackle box, which contained some needles. He talked to old-timers and experimented with the technique before figuring it out. He's been doing it for years now, guiding for the last four.

Sciba fishes anywhere from shallow riffles to deep holes, adjusting his pattern with the conditions.

"As the summer goes on, you have to go for the faster water," he says. "But right now, if you walk down the bank, you're going to see minnows everywhere. And your browns are sitting in about four feet of water."

Sciba says he endures a lot of grief from purists, who sneer at his live-bait (actually dead bait; the minnows don't live long after being impaled with a needle) approach. But I paid close attention to the fish we caught; not a single fish was hooked so badly that it couldn't be released in good shape. Still, Sciba doesn't think there's anything wrong with not releasing all the fish he catches, anyway.

"It's a put-and-take fishery," he said. "That's what it's here for. This is a wonderful thing the DNR has done here, creating this fishery.

"If ever the DNR can no longer afford to stock this river, I'll be the first in line to go to catch and release. But as long as my customers have a trout and salmon stamp, I'm not going to tell them they can't keep fish.

"It's not a sin to eat a trout."

To reach Sciba, call (231) 798-2257 or try his Web site at www.driftawayllc.com