Our annual trout opener fishing weekend is in the book, or the blog anyway. It was cold and windy, and we were missing a few people. My father-in-law has been taking this trip with his buddies for 30 years but for various health reasons, it was just him and I this year. These guys have been taking 3 or 4 annual fishing trips every year for three decades, their absence was felt. The June trip to Lake of the Woods should be better attended and less physically demanding than climbing up and down these hills in search or trout.
The evening view from our shack,
we could see trout rising in the riffle.
Spring is just starting poke up through the detritus.
We fished private land outside of Preston. The farmer is 88 years old, he's happy to chat with us and the turkey hunters who visit him. We got a bit of the family history and some stories from when he was in the marines in the 50s. Around lunch time he came down to the stream to visit us. He and his son-in-law, who was very busy, birthed two calves that morning, one needed some work to get on its feat. Super nice guy, it was good to visit with him again.
In the above picture, the river runs into a bluff.
This is the view from the valley floor.
The trout were sporadically rising to bugs that I couldn't see.
The cold weather put an end to what was a glorious caddis hatch.
All my fish came on a partridge and green wet fly swung to feeding trout.
These were tough conditions: windy, no real hatch, low rivers, and clear water.
That and the fish had just spent the week gorging on bugs.
This fish was destined to become dinner.
I talked to one of the DNR fisheries managers, they stocked the stream on Wednesday. I caught this rainbow trout on the following Monday. Its stomach was stuffed full of nothing but caddis fles. It's likely that this fish was one they recently put in.
Many of the streams in south east Minnesota are put-and-take fisheries, there is no documented case of rainbow trout reproducing in south east Minnesota. All the female "bows" the DNR sampled have had no viable eggs. The DNR also stocks brown trout, native to Europe, and brook trout, our native trout. Both brooks and browns reproduce at sustainable levels in Minnesota.
We fished some habitat "improvement" work done by Trout Unlimited. When done wrong it's like fishing an amusement park. This stuff was done right, but even then, I prefer the natural streams. We caught a nice rainbow trout here. After checking in with our DNR friend, we leaned that rainbows were never stocked in this stream, it must have migrated out into the bigger, warmer rivers and found its way into Trout Run.
Not a bad hunting shack/ rental property.
It was like living inside a puzzle.
The camper followed us down,
it's now parked at a friend's house waiting for us to disturb the peace.
April 18th - 20th | 45f and windy | 2 dozen trout or so
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