Fishing and Thinking in Minnesota

New Rules

Been out a couple times between deer season and Jan1 full winter opener. This former trout fishing dead period was fully addressed by MN DNR and stakeholders such that one can now fish three of our SE MN state parks year-round (C&R only though). I applaud the process and the decisions that came of it. At the heart of the benefit is provision of another reason to walk streams in November and December. I've heard reports of a lot of anglers out and about thus far on weekends. In this case I was fortunate to have some time during the week, thus ran into no one with any manner of fishing gear; just a couple people out walking dogs and taking photos along the main trails. Once the trails were behind me, no more persons. One marked failure was that I did not pay special attention to likely locations for redds (except for where I put my feet, which is a habit for winter trout fishing: pay attention to where your boots meet the riffles). I believe this is because I was pretty excited to be out, and most of the fish were stacked up in the slow/deep tails of pools (so didn't look at riffles much). Will take some more focus regarding this matter in next outing.

Suppose I started around 10:30 AM and walked out around 3:30 PM. It was cold and windy. At one point my left hand was pretty numb; prompted me to walk up into the floodplain, set my gear down and warm up under some good cover. Maybe 10 minutes and full bloodflow restored. I'd note here that the past few years I've found a good compromise between gloves and not-gloves: those mufflers used by NFL QBs and hunters alike. I wear one in winter. Barely notice it (i.e. not that encumbering) except when I need it. A person can often high-stick with one hand, keeping other warm. Walking streamside both hands can be warm while rod tucked under arm. Nice piece of gear; basic approach. Probably $15 anywhere you look.

Streamers first (any streamer; I've made a point of not tying [what - are you out of flies I ask myself and the answer is always no you are not out flies you have so many hooks with materials tied just pick one and make it work like a bug or a minnow would work through the water]; rather trying to put what I have to use; clean out those boxes; becoming more and more apparent though that I need some drab typical sized streamers) - just casting up and across trying to move fish out of slower water. Letting streamer sink to bottom and then retrieve. This produced some good fish; no really big ones. Had an urge to nymph, so did that for a while. Then back and forth: nymph, streamer, etc. Saw a couple great white-mouth takes on the streamer follows. I think approx 12-15 fish, of which four were RBT. No big fish but no dinks. In a good show of irony every fish was perfect for the frying pan and yet every fish swam away without any sort of concavity in or around its skull.