Getting better

[Bob/MN]

The lakes in the area are still limited to tracked vehicles or plowed roads. If the temps hold travel should get better by next week.
I did get out yesterday and set up close to a crappie hole. I ended up catching a bunch of small perch and eight crappies. All of the fish were C & R.
The bite is still quite lite and a spring bobber is a must. I did get to try out Shipahoy41s Pinman lure and they did work quite well. The lure has a nice flutter on the drop which is a good fish attractor.

[ekim22]

When (what month) will I start seeing boats on the river again and what will be the first thing people start fishing for?

[Bob/MN]

When (what month) will I start seeing boats on the river again and what will be the first thing people start fishing for?

It all depends on the spring thaw and last year it was the last of march. It can be late March or late in April.
Last year I was on the Rainey river the 11th of April fishing for walleyes and sturgeon.

[no1son]

When (what month) will I start seeing boats on the river again and what will be the first thing people start fishing for?

Check with the Corp of Engineers about when they start opening the St Anthony Locks to boat traffic. If I heard right, this coming week they start opening shipping channels at Duluth for barge traffic and there is some correlation for barge traffic here in the Cities. And check with whoever runs the Coon Rapids Dam. That is a control on river levels above it and barge channel flow below it. The public works department in Elk River is another source to check out.

There will be lots of junk, some of it real dangerous to boats in the runoff from spring melt, so early outings need to be especially careful. Also watch out for forming or breaking up of ice jams.

The last few years, we have been both on the river and starting to fish receding ice edges in some lakes by close to this time for crappies and bluegills. There is a very important pre-spawn crappie run around here that is heavily fished and it actually starts before ice out in a lot of waters and then just keeps getting better. Carp also show up early, and the first channel cats to come up out of the winter holes on the Mississippi are also taken in March, too. The first sheephead start somewhere in there. Walleyes, bass and pike also show up as bonus fish, BUT season is not open for them until in May, and it is not legal to target them even as catch and release out of season, except for special autumn rules on smallmouths. There are also muskies in the big muddy but season for them does not open until June. The ones I have seen don't make the 48" minimum size for keeping anyway, although most muskie fisherman release every one whenever they take em. In general the first fish targeted by most river fishermen in the spring around here are the channel cats and carp.

Last spring we had the highest city lake water levels I had ever seen, but last summer was so dry that by fall we had the lowest levels I had ever seen. Fish patterns were all over the place. The river was more stable. How they handle the barge channels down stream from you on the Mississippi will affect the river upstream into your area. A whole lot depends on how the snow melt goes.

A few years ago snow melt came so hard that the Corps opened both gates on the top two locks at St Anthony falls resulting in a standing wave on the apron at the top lock that was easily 6-10 feet high from top to bottom of the trough with a spray curtain probably 40-50 feet high above it. I never saw anything quite like that raw natural power there before. Most years that doesn't happen but it can if the snow melt comes off all at once. They don't very often pass full trees through those locks but they sure did some that spring.

Head of waters which is as far up as the commercial barges generally go is in north Minneapolis some little ways above the St Anthony locks where they service cement plants and scrap metal yards. Lock and dam #1 is actually downstream from the St Anthony Falls pair of locks at the Ford Ave bridge between Minneapolis and St Paul. I guess one could say it is all down hill from there.

[ekim22]

nd it is not legal to target them even as catch and release out of season

Wow I REALLY need to read the regs closely...that's unbelievable.

There's a huge culture difference in the conservation mindset between Minnesota DNR and Georgia & Virginia where I've lived in the past.


The first major difference was the "1 baited pole in the water" thing. Down south they jug for catfish where they'll put out 100 floats in a cove and sit back and relax. That, to me is one extreme. The 1 pole rule is the other end of the extreme to me.

Now the "can't intentionally fish for something out of season" rule....wow. That's stupid. I understand that in off-shore fishing where when you pull up a fish from 200 feet their bladder pops they're going to die but not being able to intentionally fish for a small mouth in early May? That's just silly.

Ahh well, gotta cope I guess.

[no1son]

Fact of life in fishing. State regs vary dramatically. But then so does the climate, which the various DNRs have to cope with to manage it. You don't have to come north either. There are lakes in Texas where the crappies also go deep enough in the winter that mortality is well over 90% on all releases, including those that don't look to be stressed and swim away. There you may not release any during particular times of the year, but must keep all and apply any caught to the prevailing limit. There seems to be a point somewhere in the twenty foot depths below where crappies brought up too quickly cannot tolerate the rapid change in depth and are mortally injured even if not visibly at the time.

A whole lot depends on the professional experience of local managers and they don't always agree with each other or with the politicians who fund them either.

The farther north one goes generally but not always the more stress our game fish are under, especially as one approaches the northern limits of their ranges. That process reverses where northern species approach the southern limits of their ranges. They have to be managed differently in different areas. It is up to us to adapt, I guess.