2009 Spring Wrapup - Updated
Greetings Minnesota Steelheaders- I finally had the (delayed) opportunity to run some numbers from the 2009 Lower North Shore Spring Run and there are a few items of note. One important item illustrated here is the strong temperature-return correlation for Steelhead as well as Kamloops. While fish were undoubtedly in the streams as soon as they opened up (I saw a number of them in early April when there was still ice), once again we see that average stream temperatures which hit 40 degrees play a strong role in the start of upstream migrations of North Shore fish. You can use this information to your advantage when trying to locate active fish early in the run no matter what part of the North Shore you prefer. The following are plots of 2008-2009 Knife River Steelhead captures by date against both temperature and flow: ( Click images for larger version) Note that while the temperatures listed are for a couple different streams (real-time data is hard to come by), the overall temps were...