Where are the fish biting?

In between the raindrops, a few scattered snowflakes and plenty of cold, some hardy souls have been getting out to ply the waters for fish, while others are waiting until the weather warms and the bugs hatch.

Tyson at the Beaver House reported that walleyes are biting on Devil Track, Two Island, Elbow, Seagull, Gunflint, Sag and Crescent lakes. For your best chance to catch fish, Tyson recommends that you use Beaver Flick spoons and Beaver Flicks and leeches.

A large 21-inch coastal brook trout was caught and released near the Poplar River on the opening of walleye fishing.

Bruce Zimpel of Lutsen recently caught a Kamloops rainbow near the mouth of the Poplar River. Catching “Loopers” as they are often called is now something of a rarity ever since the Minnesota DNR quit stocking them in Lake Superior last summer, bringing a 42-year-old program to an end.

The stocking program was called to halt when it was learned that Kamloops and steelhead were crossbreeding, but the resulting hybrid steelhead produced far fewer and weaker offspring, than the natural, hardier rainbow.

An employee of Naniboujou Lodge & Restaurant caught and released a steelhead out of Brule River two weeks ago. He took a picture of it on his cellphone and was showing it off at Chuck’s Barber Shop. The fish looked to weigh in the sixto seven-pound range. In between work, the young college student from South Dakota said he plans to spend plenty of his free time fishing.

A party of two caught and kept their limit of lake trout last Saturday on the Big Lake. Weighing two to four pounds, the fish were just the right size for the frying pan. The lake trout were hooked and netted just outside the Grand Marais harbor, caught on light green and orange flutter spoons dropped to a depth of about 200 feet and then slowly reeled up. The lake trout hit the spoons around 150 feet.

Area streams and rivers are riled with thick brown brick-colored rushing water, making it close to impossible to wade the streams and fish for brook trout. Still, some big brookies have been caught in slower moving water or in beaver ponds using spinners and night crawlers. Just be careful. Wading across even a small stream is dangerous right now. The fish can wait. Once the water drops, fishing for speckled trout will be even more fun.