# River, not lake: the Muskegon near Sears

_The Muskegon runs cold and rocky west of town, past Evart and Hersey — where to reach it, and when._

There’s no dam near Sears. Get that straight first, because the Muskegon does get strangled eventually — Rogers, Hardy, Croton, three impoundments that flatten it into lake water and stack the fish up behind concrete — but all of that happens far downstream, an hour and change south, out of your afternoon. Up here it runs. Cold, gravel under it, always going somewhere. What the water gives you around Sears is current, not a shoreline.

The river doesn’t touch Sears itself. It’s west, a short run on US-10 into Evart, where the Muskegon bends through the southeast corner of town and a city park sits on the bank. This is the upper reach — the water that runs from Evart down through Hersey toward Big Rapids — and it’s a rock river. Gravel and cobble on the bottom. Crawfish in the rock. That’s smallmouth country, the fish that eats the crawfish, and the state’s survey work backs it up: walleye, northern pike, smallmouth, brown and rainbow trout all hold in this stretch. The same work says the young fish are thin, that reproduction here struggles against silt and temperature and the barriers downstream. So you’re fishing a river that works harder than it looks. Keep that in your head before you brag about the one you caught.

Riverside Park is the way in. Southeast corner of Evart, seventeen acres on the Muskegon, with a boat-and-canoe ramp, a walk along the bank, and a campground that runs electric and water from the first of May to the end of September. It’s a city park. Nobody there is going to perform for you, which is the point.

If you don’t own a boat, there’s J & J’s River Run on East 7th — old US-10 as it cuts through Evart. John and Judy Wynia rent canoes, kayaks, rafts, and tubes and put you on the same water for the afternoon. I won’t pretend a tube is fishing. It isn’t. But floating covers ground a wader can’t, and this reach rewards it: the bridges out here sit far apart, which means long quiet stretches between the places a road bothers to touch the river.

Downstream the Muskegon takes in the Hersey River at the village of Hersey, and from there it keeps working south toward Paris, in the next county. Put in, take out, wherever a bridge lets you down to the water. The map is honest about the distances. The river is not — a reach that reads like a lazy float turns long when the wind swings around and pushes back at you the whole way.

If it’s flatwater you want — a lake, a paddle with nothing fighting you — the Muskegon near Sears won’t give it. You leave the river for that. Rose Lake, up by LeRoy, has a county park with a launch, a fishing pier, and a sand beach, and it’s the nearest still water worth the drive. But that’s a different day and a different kind of quiet. The river doesn’t sit still, and it won’t let you either.

Come in summer. Not because summer is the postcard — summer is when you can get in the water without regretting your whole body, wade out onto the gravel, and feel the current shove at the backs of your knees while the smallmouth sit behind the rock doing math about your line. The water smells like cold stone and cut grass off the bank. July afternoons it’s loud with other people’s coolers. Go early. Go on a Tuesday. I fished it two summers back and came home with a sunburn and one bass the length of my hand, and I’d do it again this weekend.

Base yourself in Sears and the river is a morning errand, not an expedition: a short run west, a day on the water, home before the grill’s gone cold. one of our [Michigan A-frame rentals](https://roamstays.com/type/a-frame/), [Rivers Edge Retreat](https://roamstays.com/properties/rivers-edge-retreat/), sits close enough that the wet boots by the door dry overnight and you go again. The [Sears](https://roamstays.com/location/sears/) page has the rest of what’s near. When the day’s done and you want it fed, the Where to Eat piece for Sears handles that end.

Bring old sneakers. The rock takes skin off bare feet and doesn’t care. Wet them once.

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- Last updated: 2026-08-07
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