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Showing posts from 2014

Fall stream-side clinic is scheduled

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Our fall streamside clinic is finally scheduled and  registration  has begun.  If you are interested in participating we recommend you sign up ASAP as angler space is limited. Date: Saturday, September 27th, 2014 Time: 9:30am to 12:30pm - after our adopt-a-river clean-up Location: an awesome middle shore river* How do you register? Simple.   CLICK HERE   or try this link:  http://www.minnesotasteelheader.com/fallsalmonclinic.html What is the Streamside clinic? We developed this clinic in 2011 as way to teach beginners and intermediate steelhead anglers the fundamentals of fishing our North Shore streams and rivers.  Timing the clinic in the fall was easy.  The pink salmon migration is in full swing,  the weather conditions are fairly stable and the rivers are running lower than the levels during the spring steelhead migration making them much more manageable.  Pinks also utilize some of the same migration and spawning waters as our steelhead and most north shore

Creel Project - The Beginning

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    To better understand why Minnesota Steelheader went off the deep end so to speak with regards to looking closely at temperature and its influence on the initial upstream migration of steelhead and kamloops, we have to go back to the beginning.     The true genesis was born out of sheer frustration, and a manic quest for information on fishing the North Shore. At the time, the frustration arose from the conventional wisdom that flow was the be-all, end-all factor in steelhead and kamloops movement: Flow goes up, fish start moving; only significant anecdotal evidence suggested otherwise.     Over the course of many years of North Shore steelheading, conventional flow-wisdom proved itself over and again, but there were also far too many outings where, at the end of the day, you wanted to snap your rod in half, chuck it far out into Lake Superior and take up anything but steelheading; knitting for example...     The final straw was a trip in which I took a number of North Shore n

2014 Upper Shore Creel Project Results

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2014 Upper Shore Daily Trends We use the daily trends as our primary means of: Looking at pre-run conditions Assessing when significant upstream migration is likely or about to occur As a way of illustrating all of the granular interactions between the fish, the flow and the temperature on a daily basis.     Note the red arrows at various points on each chart, these will be discussed, and each point will be noted by a corresponding text highlight at the start of the paragraph. In other words simply jump from the discussion to the chart, find the corresponding date, look at the humps and bumps in the data     Annually, once we start seeing signs of ice-pack movement on index streams in February and/or March, we begin tracking the stream temps. As Creel reports start rolling in, we track those trends against the daily temperature and flow values which results in the Daily chart below.     2014 Upper Shore tracking began in early April with the first

2014 Mid Shore Creel Project Results

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2014 Mid Shore Daily Trends We use the daily trends as our primary means of: Looking at pre-run conditions Assessing when significant upstream migration is likely or about to occur As a way of illustrating all of the granular interactions between the fish, the flow and the temperature on a daily basis.     Note the red arrows at various points on each chart, these will be discussed, and each point will be noted by a corresponding text highlight at the start of the paragraph. In other words simply jump from the discussion to the chart, find the corresponding date, look at the humps and bumps in the data     Annually, once we start seeing signs of ice-pack movement on index streams in February and/or March, we begin tracking the stream temps. As Creel reports start rolling in, we track those trends against the daily temperature and flow values which results in the Daily chart below.     2014 Mid Shore tracking began in late March but as with the

2014 Lower Shore Creel Project Results

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      Once again in 2014, Minnesota Steelheader followers stepped up to the plate; without your continued support and reporting, none of this is possible. We here at Minnesota Steelheader say, "Thank You!"   2014 Lower Shore Daily Trends         We use the daily trends as our primary means of: Looking at pre-run conditions Assessing when significant upstream migration is likely or about to occur As a way of illustrating all of the granular interactions between the fish, the flow and the temperature on a daily basis.     Note the red arrows at various points on each chart, these will be discussed, and each point will be noted by a corresponding text highlight at the start of the paragraph. In other words simply jump from the discussion to the chart, find the corresponding date, look at the humps and bumps in the data       Annually, once we start seeing signs of ice-pack movement on index streams in February and/or March, we begin tracking the strea

Wake up sleepy!!!

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    August - Right smack in the "Dog Days of Summer". You know, the Romans widely believed the Dog Days to be "an evil time where the the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies."     I don't know from hysterics and phrensies, but August just seems like the time when fishing is so off the radar, that actually contemplating a trip is like saying, "Why yes, I would love to bushwhack through a nettle-patch in 90+ degree heat until I'm so sweaty that the leaves simply stick to my body. It sounds Delightful!"       Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit because August is an important transition time for a steelheader. Even though you might not realize it, the days are getting shorter, stream temps are beginning to edge downward, and most importantly, fish are quietly beginning to run.       Now, you'll have t

Creel Project Information

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    Most of the heavy-duty analysis has been completed with respect to the 2014 Spring run data collected, and a tremendous Thank You to all who submitted information again this year. Without your help, none of this is possible. Just a quick note, there's just so much information to present that we are trying to figure out the best way to do so without it becoming overwhelming. There's simply too much to show all in one or a couple blog posts; so while we figure that out, here's some interesting information which came out of the analysis.     MS talks quite a bit about initiation temps and how that appears to affect initial upstream movement of adult steelhead on the North Shore. There are many ways to illustrate it, but we thought we would take it one step further. Previously we have focused on illustrating the daily creel numbers against temperatures and flow, and while this does a good job of showing you the granular interactions and how they appear to influence moveme