Nobody knows precisely what the weather will be like for the Brule River steelhead fishing opener next Saturday. But odds are it will be nothing like last spring, when snowshoes were required and ice choked the river from just below Douglas County Highway FF to the lake.
The lower reaches of the river, from U.S. Highway 2 to Lake Superior, will open to fishing on Saturday. The Brule steelhead opener is a rite of spring for many anglers, a chance to once again feel the cold squeeze of current around a pair of waders and possibly the jarring fight of a mature steelhead.
“The good news is we won’t need snowshoes,” said Ken Lundberg, president of the Brule River Sportsmen’s Club.
Lundberg will be there, as will a lot of serious steelheaders from the Twin Ports and across Wisconsin, to see whether steelhead are moving upstream from Lake Superior to carve spawning beds in the river.
At least so far, this spring is far ahead of last year. Many expect the ice to be out all the way to Lake Superior.
Whether steelhead will turn up in numbers remains in doubt. Steelhead runs in the past two years have been well below average. Fisheries biologists with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources attribute that to extreme water-level fluctuations that occurred at critical times in the past few years.
The DNR has not yet compiled results from last fall’s steelhead run, which it tracks by video at the Brule River lamprey barrier. Paul Piszczek, Brule area DNR fisheries biologist, said personnel changes and a switch in video technology have slowed counts. Many steelhead typically enter the river in the fall and spend the winter before spawning in the spring. Others come up in spring to spawn.
Tom Champaigne, a Brule resident who lives just downstream from Mays Ledges, paddled the upper river from Big Lake to Highway 2 about a week ago looking for steelhead on their beds.
“We saw very few fish,” Champaigne said. “In past years, you could almost walk on ’em. This year, we saw two.”
He anticipates a slow opener because he thinks the number of spawning fish is down.
“I don’t know what the DNR is going to do, but they have to do something,” he said.
Some anglers have begun to think the DNR should stock young steelhead in the river, as the agency did for several years in the early 2000s. Others say it’s best to be patient, to let the Brule remain a natural fishery and recover on its own.
Piszczek will meet with the Brule River Sportsmen’s Club on Monday, and the club likely be asking him questions, Lundberg said.
“One is, if our (steelhead) population continues to decline due to the floods, what is the DNR going to look at as a policy to bring it back, or do they feel comfortable leaving it where it is and letting it respond naturally?” Lundberg said. “We worked hard to get natural reproduction. Is there patience to let it recover naturally or jump-start it?”
Jump-starting it probably would mean stocking.
Young steelhead typically spend a couple of summers in the river before migrating down to Lake Superior. Migrating down as so-called “smolts,” the fish are imprinted to the river so they return as adults to spawn. Champaigne is concerned about those young fish.
“Something has happened to the smolts in the river,” he contends. “In past years, I could go out in June fly-fishing and hook 40 rainbows 6 or 7 inches long in a couple of hours. Last year, it took me two hours to find three or four of those fish.”
No changes in regulations have been made for the opener. Fishing opens one-half hour before sunrise. Anglers may keep five trout and salmon in total, of which only one may be a steelhead, and it must be longer than 26 inches; and only two may be brown trout over 15 inches long.
