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River Portage Creek (Michigan) — a popular fishing spot. About 20 km long. Nearest town — Kalamazoo. This page shows an hourly bite forecast for today and the week ahead; the algorithm factors in the weather, atmospheric pressure, and the moon phase.
Drizzle: 59–70 °F
Recorded 2 catches here. Most commonly caught: Brown trout. Peak season: September–December.
Measured river conditions are available for Portage Creek: current gauge height, streamflow, and water temperature when reported by the source.
USGS gauge PORTAGE CREEK AT KALAMAZOO, MI, 3 mi away · measured 2026-09-02 03:15 · data source · provisional data, subject to revision
Wednesday, September 2
The bite is strong — fish are active. Weather is steady, with no sharp swings — fish behave predictably.
Best time — 06:00–07:00 (dawn bite) and 19:00–21:00 (dusk bite).
Work the cover — snags, weed edges, hole entrances; retrieve the lure with pauses.
The water's turning murky — go with bright, noisy lures: small jig or minnow bait.
It's a hot day — a hat, sunglasses, and plenty of water are a must. Rain is expected — don't forget a rain jacket or a waterproof shell.
Worth going — it's a productive day.
The computed water temperature is around 67 °F — inside the 57–75 °F comfort range for Black crappie, so baseline activity is high.
Black crappie works the twilight: the peaks are pinned to sunrise and sunset — their times are in the sun-and-moon card above.
Pressure is flat: it moves no more than 0.03 inHg over the day, so the weather isn't shifting today's bite.
One more input — the moon's feeding windows: within their hours the score sits higher than across the rest of the day. The window times are in the “Solunar feeding periods” card below.
September is an active season for Black crappie here.
These are the same values the bite curve above was computed from. How the forecast works
Partly cloudy · feels like +79°
The day is 3 min shorter than yesterday.
Sunshine hours count direct sun only — cloud cover cuts it, so it is shorter than daylight.
The windows are set by the moon's transit and rise, and the forecast above already accounts for them: within these hours the bite score sits higher than across the rest of the day, while the day's overall level still comes from the catch-calibrated model.
What are solunar periods?