<\/a>A family weekend for the North Shore was planned for this October. We made a one day up-and-back trip last year.\u00a0 That was a lot for one day, and while we had a great time I was disappointed that the one-day trip left a lot of sights unseen, and left no chance for any angling.\u00a0 Put me that close to Lake Superior without and chance to make a few casts and I might surly.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And not the refreshing, \u00a0IPA kind of surly [Surley?] either, more like the grouchy, crabby, gonna complain about everything including traffic and restaurant food kind of surly.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year we would be heading up early Saturday, staying in Grand Marais, and then returning Sunday.\u00a0 This would allow plenty of time for hiking, sightseeing, and since the mouth of the Devil Track River was only two miles from our hotel, I would have a great opportunity to fish for a couple of hours.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have great fishing expectations, but anytime spent casting into Gitchee Gumee is time well spent.\u00a0 Fall is not prime time on the North Shore for any kind of fish except for pink salmon and lake trout.\u00a0 Pink salmon, [AKA Humpbacked Salmon, or \u201cHumpies\u201d] are pretty small [less than 2 lbs], and\u00a0fishing in Alaska will ruin Midwestern salmon fishing for anyone.\u00a0 Lake trout come into the shallows in the fall to spawn, and as a result, lake trout season is closed in October.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t seem fair that shore bound anglers can\u2019t target them during the one month when they really have a good shot at catching them.\u00a0 Meanwhile the charter boats keep limits all summer long.\u00a0 C’mon, DNR work with us here.\u00a0 How about letting us shorecasters keep one during October?\u00a0 Or just make it catch and release so I can cast at a river mouth guilt free? Maybe more people would\u00a0gain\u00a0a higher level of appreciation for one of Minnesota’s native trout species [yes fish nerds, I know a lake trout is actually a char].\u00a0 Sorry, didn\u2019t realize I had a lake trout regulations rant built up like that\u2026anyway, despite the rules I expected a lake trout would be the most likely thing I would run into.\u00a0 There could be a coho, maybe a looper, maybe\u2026. just maybe\u2026 a steelhead?\u00a0 I would have been fine with a laker.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t going to keep a fish anyway, and while lake trout aren\u2019t the glamour fish that some of the other trout\/salmon species are, I haven\u2019t caught one in quite a few years, and one thing you can say about lake trout is that if you do catch one, take a look at your surroundings\u2014I guarantee you are someplace awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n

We kept busy on Saturday.\u00a0 7 AM departure, stops included:<\/span><\/p>\n

Stony Point<\/strong> [climbing on rocks, looking at waves, agate hunting]<\/span><\/p>\n

Castle Danger<\/strong> [didn\u2019t stop, but was all agreed this was the coolest name for a town in Minnesota]<\/span><\/p>\n

Gooseberry Falls<\/strong> [typical tourist BS, walked the paths, saw pink salmon spawning]<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Black Beach<\/strong> [did some rock climbing]<\/span><\/p>\n

Finland<\/strong> [took a back road route through Finland and Crosby Manitou State Park, hoping to spot a moose.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Cross River<\/strong> [climbed on the rocks, looked for agates]<\/span><\/p>\n

Temperance River<\/strong> [walked through the gorge, discussed cliff diving during warm weather]<\/span><\/p>\n

Oberg Mountain<\/strong> [relatively easy hike to the top of one of Minnesota\u2019s \u201cmountains\u201d (elevation 1450 feet).\u00a0 At every vista from the mountain top the girls would exclaim that the scene below looked like a painting]<\/span><\/p>\n

Grand Marais<\/strong> [Hotel with pool\/sauna\/hot tub, ate at Sven and Ole\u2019s Pizza.\u00a0 Since I see so goddamned many Sven and Ole\u2019s stickers on cars around the Twin Cities I figures it must be some pretty fucking good pizza if it gets people to put a sticker on their car.\u00a0 How good would pizza have to be to get me to put a sticker on my truck?\u00a0 A lot better than S & O\u2019s.\u00a0 I rank their pizza average at best.]<\/span><\/p>\n

I like this place better<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our hotel was right by the lake.\u00a0 Close enough to hear the waves crashing in.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t windy, but the rollers were still coming in.\u00a0 When I woke up early Sunday it did not look promising. \u00a0As I get older I find it easier to talk myself out of early morning fishing, especially when conditions are less than ideal. \u00a0Sarah encouraged me to go anyway, so I grabbed a cup of coffee to go and five minutes later I was at the Devil Track bridge.\u00a0 I had never been to the Devil Track in the fall before, but have tangled with some nice steelhead up in the canyon in the spring, and once caught one on a spoon while casting off the river mouth.\u00a0 The bridge is only a hundred yards from the lake, and the waves were really crashing in.\u00a0 Fly casting in that would not be an option, I was glad to have a spinning rod and a box of lures with.\u00a0 I rigged up the fly rod anyway, figured I would fish a fly down through the lagoon area of the river and then cast the spinning rod into the surf.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have done a fair amount of casting into Lake Superior over the years, going back to when I was still in high school when a friend and I drove up to try and catch something.\u00a0 On that first trip I ended up catching a lake trout on a bucktail jig, we watched some guy with a proper surf casting rod catch several in a row on a jointed Rebel minnow bait.\u00a0 This all went on 35 years ago and a hundred miles away at the mouth of the Lester River, right on the edge of Duluth.\u00a0 The mouth of the Devil Track River is almost to Canada, and it has a much more wild and rugged feel than the shoreline to the south.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

A small flock of mergansers took off from the lake on my approach\u2014a good sign I thought\u2014there must be some baitfish out there.\u00a0 Where there\u2019s baitfish there are bound to be predators.\u00a0 I shudder when I think of the time at the mouth of the Stewart River when I hooked up on what I thought was a nice laker only to have it end up being a 4-lb. pike. I catch enough of them elsewhere.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The waves came in waves. Seriously\u2014they were all big waves, but then there would be 4 or 5 in a row that would be really <\/em>big, and casting a lure out into them was hopeless.\u00a0 My first lure of choice was a Husky Jerk Rapala. A Husky Jerk has a little more heft than a regular Rapala, good for launching into the wind. \u00a0There was a narrow spit of rocks that separated the lagoon from the big lake.\u00a0 I took a position just off the edge of where the current poured into the lake and began casting.\u00a0 \u00a0I was casting for about ten minutes when it happened\u2014the lure stopped with a jolt, I reared back and the rod started doing what every angler loves\u2014it came alive with the headshakes of an angry fish.\u00a0 As I was fighting the fish, which I assumed to be a lake trout, I now realized that landing a fish in these big waves was going to be a problem.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want a wave to wash the fish in, causing it to be flopping around on the rocks, so I let the fish tire itself out without getting it in too close.\u00a0 I got a glimpse of it.\u00a0 It looked kind of silver.\u00a0 I got another look at it, is it a steelhead? Can\u2019t be!\u00a0 It came up to the surface and revealed a pink stripe against pale silvery flanks.\u00a0 It was a steelhead, and a pretty good one at that.\u00a0 It floated in on a wave and I got it by the tail.\u00a0 I dropped the rod in the rocks and carried the fish quickly over the narrow gravel bar to the calm waters of the lagoon.\u00a0 I laid it down in water two inches deep and the fish was well behaved and didn\u2019t move a muscle while I unhooked, measured, and photographed it.\u00a0 \u00a0I scooped it back up and ran it back over to the lake.\u00a0 I waded out into the crashing surf, pointed the steelhead towards Wisconsin and in a flash he was gone.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

My hands were shaking as I retied.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u00a0 Willing to settle for a lake trout, coho, or looper, I ended up with the best prize the North Shore has to offer\u2014a wild steelhead.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A family weekend for the North Shore was planned for this October. We made a one day up-and-back trip last year.\u00a0 That was a lot for one day, and while we had a great time I was disappointed that the one-day trip left a lot of sights unseen, and left no chance for any angling.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}