Minnesota Steelheader

If you are new to North Shore steelhead fishing, you will soon find out that yarn is a popular and effective "fly" for our migratory steelhead, trout, and salmon.   Many anglers simply snell a hook and place a chunk of their favorite colored yarn inside the main loop, pull the snell tight, trim up the yarn, and you are off fishing. These anglers often have several colors of yarn tucked away in their vest along with a few hook sizes for easy access. For those anglers yet to learn how to snell a hook, there are two alternatives.  You can visit your local fly shop and purchase some, or you can make your own. There are several ways to tie your own yarn flies, but if you want to try a simple alternative to a more traditional yarn fly tying pattern, give pom-poms a try.   You can find pom-poms at most craft stores.  They come in all sorts of sizes and colors, but look at the variety packs for starters.  When selecting a size, keep it to a size smaller than a dime or a...

Be part of the solution. Join the Adopt-a-River program. Since 1989, volunteers have removed over 6.5 million pounds of trash from thousands of miles of shoreline on Minnesota’s lakes, rivers and ponds. Minnesota Steelheader, a non-profit conservation group is one such volunteer group. We sure are! We (Minnesota Steelheader) have been part of the program since 2011, pulling hundreds of pounds of garbage and debris from the Sucker River over the years. The year 2014 was a memorable clean up year.  The weather was terrific.  It was a cool clear morning as the sun was gently rising in the southeasterly sky over Lake Superior.  One of those picture perfect mornings that made you just want to sit back and enjoy the scenic splendors the North Shore offers. We had an eager group of volunteers show up to help with our efforts that September morning.  We also had our staff photographer along to capture the day.  After some basic instructions a...

JOIN US!   Annual Adopt-a-River Clean up is Saturday, Sept. 19th 8:00am. Please join us for our annual Sucker River Clean up event. This is open to anyone, no need to sign up, just show up!  What to Bring: work gloves, warm clothing, rain gear, waders are optional. We will supply trash bag and a few extra gloves. We are meeting at the scenic HWY 61 parking lot at 8:00am. We hope to have a good turn out to help speed things up and head out later for a day of fishing. No worries if you are running late, just grab a trash bag and join in.  This is not only a perfect opportunity for you to give back a little time to the fishery you enjoy, but also a great opportunity to meet some of our staff! We will be on hand to answer questions, give advice, share tips and offer guidance about our fall fishery. We will also be providing the most current fishing report to those planning a weekend on the water!

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 19th, 2015 Time: 9:45am to 12:45pm - 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...

    One of the other big questions we are trying to answer with the Creel Project is, "Is there a "Normal", "Standard" or "Typical" run picture?" In other words, what if anything, is common to the runs across the North Shore with respect to steelhead, and what does that look like?       That picture is beginning to resolve itself in a big way; but the key has been figuring out whether there is a common denominator and how to apply it.       We have to go back to one of the things that frustrated us initially. That is to say, conventional wisdom at the time was that flow was the be-all, end-all in steelhead fishing: Flow goes up, fish move, flow goes down, movement changes and or decreases. Turns out that what we are learning is while this still holds true, it really depends on for lack of a better description, what stage of the run we are in, and the key factor appears to be stream temperatures early in the season. ...

    Seems like steelheaders always have more gear than they have pocket-space to carry it in, so being able to organize effectively is always a good thing.     A couple weeks ago, my wife was in the bathroom organizing and putting jewelry into these neat little boxes. So I just had to ask because when I saw all the little compartments, the light-bulb went off....     Turns out they were just pill organizers. Couple nice things about them: You can get them with varying numbers of compartments, you can remove the entire divider making for one big compartment, they are very low profile which means they fit well in smaller pockets and can be stacked, and the lids close pretty securely. But best of all, they are a dollar or less depending on size and are available from most pharmacies, Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart etc.     These boxes make for great yarn boxes, hook organizers, spare fly boxes, sinker holders, bead boxes and indicator boxes....

A Little bit about the Creel Project and how we prepare the data:     Each year since 2010, Minnesota Steelheader has asked anglers for voluntary catch reporting of Steelhead, Kamloops, and what are presumed to be Coaster Brook Trout, caught in the tributaries during the Spring migration. We collect those reports along with daily flow, temperature and other open-source data, then run them through an app we created. The results are subsequently plotted in Daily, Weekly and Historical formats in what we hope are intuitive and easy to use charts.     This is not a scientific creel by definition, but we do try to use and present as much of the available scientific literature as we can in the context of the charts with the goal of better understanding these various species. The information is presented to you for your consideration in the hope you'll find it useful.     A long time ago, we began with the premise of Informing, Educating, Entertai...