I was able to get out for a few hours for some fly fishing on the St. Louis River. The water is about a foot lower than normal. For whatever is "normal levels" on the lower sections of the river. It has been fluctuating quite a bit this year. With the low rain fall and affects from Lake Superior and all the influences on the water levels.
Anyways, the fish are biting quite well in the shallow rocky areas of the river. There are some fish coming off the main river weeds as well. Almost all the fish I caught were spitting out small minnows. I used a black strip leech and large or small poppers with marginal success. I switched to a small deciever like pattern, that was dark on top and white on the bottom. Threw that up into the shallows and caught quite a few fish doing that. All the fish were between 8-12 inches, nothing big but fun to catch. I had a few approaching the 14"-15" mark, but no big brutes yet. The water temps were still in the low 70's, which is still a little warm for some of the bigger fish to be cruising the shallow areas.
I noticed alot of sub 14"'s sitting in less then a foot of water chasing minnows all over the place. The wind was calm with a slight overcast and thought the smallies would be busting on the surface on topwater flies. I did see John from Great Lakes Fly Company out there tossing small poppers and saw him catch a few small ones.
As September approaches and the water starts to cool down towards the 65 degree mark, the fishing should really kick in with alot of the bigger fish going on feeding binge. But that is when alot of guys are chasing steelhead on the Lake Superior streams, that's to bad for them, cause they are missing out on some excellent big smallie action.
Alright, thats it for now. I'll be mainly fishing the St. Louis River pretty much for the rest of the season. I've been keeping accurate logs everytime I fly fish the river, and hopefully I'll get some good patterns going.
