Around Evart, the Muskegon River is smallmouth water

The Muskegon River does not pass by Evart so much as wind through it, looping around the edge of town on its way south. That river is the reason there is a town here at all. In the logging years it was a moving highway: pine cut upstream rode the current toward the sawmills, and Evart sat at a useful sorting point.

The Michigan DNR’s watershed assessment treats the broader reach from the Middle Branch confluence through Hersey to Big Rapids as smallmouth and walleye water. It found moderate populations of both fish and described the smallmouth population as self-sustaining. That is a good reason to fish the reach, but not a reason to promise that it is one of Michigan’s best or that every float will produce fish.

Here is the important location wrinkle: Evart is not part of the lower-river steelhead and Chinook fishery. The hydroelectric dams at Croton, Hardy, and Rogers block migratory fish from reaching this upper stretch. If a fishing report talks about salmon or steelhead below Croton, do not carry that advice upstream to Evart.

Around Evart, think resident warmwater fish first: smallmouth bass, walleye, and northern pike. That makes the day simpler to plan: choose an upper-river launch and takeout instead of building the trip around a Lake Michigan run that cannot reach town.