St. Louis River, Minnesota, 18 Sep 2010

[BlueDaksi]

I came very close to heading over to fish a deep lake, but got away later than expected from the conference I am attending and decided to give the St. Louis River another shot because it is closer to where I am staying. I fished the river just downstream of it's confluence with the Cloquet River and about 10 miles upstream of the urban section that I fished on Thursday. There is a nice public access ramp where I put in where Highway 2 crosses the river just North and West of the town of Cloquet, MN.

What a beautiful stretch of water, part of which is on the on the Fon Du Lac Indian Reservation. The foliage was just beginning to turn colorful in the surrounding forest and the water has dark coffee-colored water stained from the tannic acids found in the roots and leaves of local vegetation. There are also huge boulders and riffles, so finding likely holding spots for fish was no problem.

I fished from noon until 6pm - not ideal fishing time, but I did manage to catch four smallmouth bass. None of them were very large, but paddling through the awesome scenery and the sunny but cool weather made up for the slow fishing.

I started fishing white plastics to try to contrast with the darkly stained water and got some bites, but it wasn't until I tied on a crayfish colored Gitzit tube that I started catching fish.



As you might expect in this naturally dark water, the fish were very dark as well...


I'm heading home early in the morning and look forward to the Salmon fishing that is just picking up in Lake Ontario. Hopefully, I'll get to try to catch them from my new Malibu Kayaks eXtreme.

[bamabassman]

man that looks great blue. hope oyu get some good fishing tomorrow my friend.

[coachpurdy]

You my boy blue! It looks really buetiful.