Minnesota Steelheader

Richard Goodkind of St. Louis Park has won the 2010 Minnesota Trout and Salmon Stamp design contest, the first time Goodkind has won the Minnesota contest. He had entered the contest many times before and was a previous finalist. His winning entry features an autumn scene depicting a brook trout feeding on a mayfly within the waters of a beaver pond in northeastern Minnesota. Goodkind, who used oil paints for his design, is an avid angler and especially enjoys fishing for brook trout. The design was selected from among 29 entries in this year’s trout and salmon stamp contest, held Aug. 6 at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) headquarters in St. Paul. Other finalists were Stephen Hamrick, Lakeville; and Steven Trofka, Maple Grove. The contest, which is conducted annually by the DNR, offers no prizes. The winner, however, retains reprint reproduction rights to the work, which is usually reproduced as a limited edition wildlife print. A Minnesota trout and salmon stamp is requi...

Good News- The money from the Clean Water portion of the Legacy act must be flowing (ugh, another bad pun...) I was attempting to clean up a program I wrote to extrapolate flows for the various NS tribs and it blew up on me yesterday. After I got done crying (I lost almost 10 years worth of grinding, dull work), I started recapturing data. I went to the MPCA/DNR archives for some Sucker River data and lo and behold, the sonde was once again transmitting real-time data. This will be yet another very useful tool for Minnesota Steelheaders. The new sonde displays discharge as well as rainfall amounts, just use your pointer. If you hover over the green spikes at the top it will tell you how much rain they got. So I guess it was one of those serendipitous things. I wouldn't have gone to the archives until early next year sometime and wouldn't have noticed the new live data until then. I already had some tools developed for the old Sucker station, so it won't take very long to de...

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...

This past April we did a little TV shoot with Kent Hrbek Outdoors - see earlier post. Below is a link on show times. http://www.khotv.com/show-times.php Check out out and feel free to post your comments here.

Water temperatures ranged from 46-55 degrees on the Lower Shore, 44-52 on the Middle Shore, and 42-49 on the Upper Shore. Interviewed anglers caught 2 Steelhead and 2 Kamloops on the Lower Shore, 3 Steelhead on the Middle Shore, and 9 Steelhead, 2 Kamloops, and 2 brook trout on the Upper Shore from Friday through Sunday. Flows have decreased on Lower Shore streams, and streams are fairly low, clear, and warm. A few fresh fish have continued to move into Lower Shore streams each day this past week. Middle Shore streams are holding their water and fish and will likely do so for the next couple of weeks. Runs of fish are occurring on Upper Shore streams, which should have fish through the end of the month. Trap totals after running the traps today are 245 unclipped steelhead, 215 clipped steelhead, and 46 Kamloops at the Knife River, and 382 Kamloops, 76 unclipped steelhead, and 8 clipped steelhead at the French River.

Water temperatures ranged from 57-61 degrees on the Lower Shore, 46-50 on the Middle Shore, and 47-52 on the Upper Shore. Interviewed anglers caught 1 Steelhead and 1 Kamloops on the Lower Shore, 5 Steelhead on the Middle Shore, and 2 Steelhead and 2 brook trout on the Upper Shore from Monday through Thursday. Flows have decreased on Lower Shore streams, and streams are fairly low, clear, and warm. A few fresh fish have continued to move into Lower Shore streams each day this past week. Middle Shore streams are holding their water and fish and will likely do so for the next couple of weeks. Runs of fish are occurring on Upper Shore streams, which should have fish through the end of the month. Angling pressure has been light since walleye opener, despite catch rates being good for those fishing. Trap totals after running the traps today are 236 unclipped steelhead, 209 clipped steelhead, and 44 Kamloops at the Knife River, and 361 Kamloops, 74 unclipped steelhead, and 8 clipped ste...

Water temperatures ranged from 48-55 degrees on the Lower Shore, 46-56 on the Middle Shore, and 47-49 on the Upper Shore. Interviewed anglers caught 7 Steelhead and 12 Kamloops on the Lower Shore, 44 Steelhead and 3 Kamloops on the Middle Shore, and 9 Steelhead on the Upper Shore from Friday through Sunday. Flows have decreased a lot on Lower Shore streams since flows peaked last Wednesday, and streams are getting fairly low, clear, and warm. Just a few fresh fish are moving into Lower Shore streams each day at this point in time. Middle Shore streams are holding their water and fish and will likely do so for the next couple of weeks. Early runs of fish are just starting on Upper Shore streams, which should have fish through the end of the month. Trap totals after running the traps today are 214 unclipped steelhead, 199 clipped steelhead, and 42 Kamloops at the Knife River, and 348 Kamloops, 70 unclipped steelhead, and 8 clipped steelhead at the French River. report provided by the MN ...