sausageheavenoutdoors Enjoy making homemade sausage, Tasty way's to BBQ, smoking meats and poultry. See how northern Minnesota was settled and the life early homesteader's lived their lives and more!!

I went up to the North Shore last Friday to try for steelhead and Loopers [Kamloops strain of rainbow trout].  I knew it was early, yet just like at this time of the year these trout have the urge to go on the spawning run, I have the urge to go to try to catch some of them.  My brother Ed met me up there.  Few days before he caught a steelhead but that was it for the day.  Yes it is early.  The rivers are still a little low but did have good flow.  Most rivers were a little stained except the Sucker which was running on the clear side.

I did see some anglers at the new McQuade boat landing fishing within the boat landing area and also folks were out trolling from there near shore.  The French river was packed with shore anglers as usual.  However the rest of the rivers had moderate fishing pressure.  Fishing pressure will increase in the coming weeks.  Warmer weather and some rain will push the majority of the tout in the rivers to spawn.  I’ll be going up again soon.  I’ll give it a week, and by then I would think we will have more trout and a better chance to land one.  Remember to release all steelhead.  If they have all their fins then it’s a steelhead.  One clipped, and it’s a looper and you can keep them.

Even the smaller streams have a trout run.  You can see a few guys trolling in the background.  They troll stickbaits and spoons near the surface this time of the year.

There were still ice banks near shore in some of the shady areas of some streams.  Best not to stand on them this time of the year.  Ed was standing on solid ground.

Got a nice pic of a full arc of a rainbow formed by the spray from the falls.

Gooseberry Falls had many tourists the day we were there.  We were the only two anglers there.