Fly fished the harbor area of Duluth on the St. Louis River. Scouted some spots as well. I took out Dave Severson from Duluth to try for some pike on the fly. We managed only 2 fish, one about 20" and one at 32". I'll post a couple pics when I get them off the camera. The surface water was in the low 70's and not a lot of wind and sunny. The 2 fish we caught we very sluggish, especially the big one, didn't put up a big fight, just very heavy. We were fishing in less then 5 feet of water over sub surface weeds with deciever flies over the tops of them. We had a few follows as well.
I think the water temps were just too warm for the shallow fish to real aggresive and sluggish. Basically just like us fly fisherman when it gets hot outside Most of Minnesota is experiencing some hot sunny weather, so the shallow water pike fly fishing for big pike will taper off a bit as the big pike seek cooler water and surface temps reach in the low 70's+. There will still be some big pike shallow, but they will be buried in thick stuff waiting for some easy meal to come close by and not moving very far.
If you catch any big fish during the warm weather, please try to keep the fish in the water as much as possible and release it as fast as possible to minimize the stress.
Tight lines and stay cool if you can!
Now for some pics
