2016 On the Move

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March 6th 2016 Satellite Imagery
Greetings from the ops center at Minnesota Steelheader! We've been in a bit of a holding pattern, keeping tabs on conditions as we like to do at this time of year, and things appear to be on the move.

2016 already looks to be a bit of an anomaly. Weather conditions have been all over the board, but we do look like we are in for an early warming trend. How this will affect steelhead overall is just too difficult to say at this moment, but we can tell you that monitoring of conditions is about to kick into high gear.

Currently there are a number of items of note:

  • With the warmer temps, the snowline is rapidly moving north. We are not seeing too much in the way of brown-up in the St. Louis valley, or along the eastern edge of the shore near the Lake, but it cannot be too far away
  • Not much in the way of daily warming cycle as indicated by classic "heartbeat" signatures in North Shore tributary discharge and stage, but we are now watching closely for the first signs. We don't anticipate seeing ice-movement or mud plumes at the outflows just yet, but we are watching now
  • Although we don't typically post regarding non-North Shore activity, one of the early signs comes from the WI Brule. If you aren't already aware, the Brule gauge went live on February 18th which is incredibly early. This means ice-out has reached the USGS Station near the DNR HQ.  
  • Kamloops activity is picking up and coho, which are following the smelt and foraging on them as they stage for spawning, are also increasing in the shore catch
We are gearing up for a number of exciting projects which we will tell you about shortly. As conditions begin to change, we will start posting regularly in the blog, so stay tuned.

As always, the Creel Project will be open soon, so if you get a chance, we would appreciate any and all reports. Best of luck and good fishing in 2016!
Regards-
Minnesota Steelheader  

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