My Middle-Minnesota Rivers

There is a river that I usually fish after the bass opener in late May, and then I do not fish it again. I've done that for years. It has been a poor decision. Saturday night and last night another series of anomalous and enormous August thunderstorms blew through the Twin Cities and north of the Cities that dumped quite a few inches on most of the central part of the state. My favorite part of the Mississippi came up about a foot and a half. It looked really good, but the sudden deluge uprooted all the eel grass that had been growing in the slow current. All I caught was grass. Every cast. A great percentage. But, no smallmouth.

So, I drove up the famous highway that leads to that most famous of Minnesota walleye lakes to fish the river the highway follows. This river gets no attention even from the locals, save a few authentic Huck Finns. The rest are on their way burning up the roadway with their massive deep-vee boats in tow to get to the walleyes--our sluggish battler of a state fish. The little river was really low. Too low for even a canoe. But, the quiet currents, the alder thickets separating the dense, white pine capped north woods from the water made it seem so wild. There were no cars, no outboard motors.

I began by walking downstream on a stretch that is earlier in the year impossible to wade. I began by catching small smallmouths, creek chubs, and rock bass--then I caught a little pike, then a bigger one. The farther I got away from the bridge, the better the water got, the bigger the smallmouths and pike got. I don't catch many pike on the Miss. so it's nice to have a change of pace on this stream. Actually, pike are very numerous here, and back in the day when I used to fish this stream often--back in high school--I frequently caught pike topping ten pounds. They are still there. They are big, green, and nasty. They have rows of needle-like teeth that steal a lot of my lures and flies. Wire leaders help keep flies and lures. But, the greatest moment of the day was landing a solid, four-pound, football of a smallmouth I caught out of an old beaver pond. While fishing this pond, the resident beaver, going about his evening business worked his way through a backwater of water lilies. I stood very still on the bank and waited to see how close he would come. Beavers must not see very well because he came right up to me. I had my camera ready, but when I moved he spun around and leaped in into the river like a Labrador. He surfaced and slapped his tail on the water as an alert to other beavers and glided back to his lodge on the other end of the pond.

The river flows south out of the big lake into the Mississippi. It flows through a part of the state that, prior to agriculture, was the point where the prairie, eastern deciduous woodlands, and northern forests met. Zebulon Pike, the guy Pike's Peak is named after in Colorado, wrote in his journal (circa 1800) while visiting the area of the huge numbers of Elk and Bison that thrived on the prairie mingling with the now extinct herds of woodland caribou and moose (now living hundreds of miles to the north). The bison, elk, and caribou are gone. But, if you pay careful attention to the landscape you can see the unique blending of prairie grasses, alder bottomlands, muskegs, and black spruce clusters and birch groves. To me, this is the part of the state that is so uniquely Minnesota. You can go to New England or eastern Canada and see the Great North Woods or to South Dakota and see the prairies, but this portion of Minnesota, the land neglected in favor of the huge area lakes, is what makes this state special, and it gives the rivers a character that I have found nowhere else. The last retreat of the glaciers left the river beds filled with stones large and small that can be found far into the arctic and out on the plains--granites, quartzes, slates, limestones, and basalts. It was also the glaciers that allowed for the migration of fish species--the pike, found in the waters surrounding the Arctic Circle on all northern continents and the smallmouth, found only in the meandering Mississippi drainage--to live in the same waters.

Along this river I saw several times a very large bald eagle, the beaver, king fishers, blue herons, white egrets, wood ducks, white-tailed deer, and plenty of leopard frogs. There were several crayfish of the size that you don't want to get caught in your swim trunks. There were also the all-important freshwater clams. This not only the sign of a healthy ecosystem, but sign of a waterway that is seldom traveled and used by humans.

The streams that I usually fish, trout streams in western Wisconsin, are today strictly the domain of Dry-Fly Divas--fashionably dressed yuppies out on the water to look good and practice their presentations for adventures in New Zealand, Kamchatka, or Patagonia. It's a scrimmage and not even about the rivers and land. But, they are also the sort of waters you'll find from Minneapolis to the Atlantic ocean. They are nothing special in that regard. Until it gets too cold I'll spend my free days on these central Minnesota rivers, largely forgotten--except by me.

If you flip open a map you'll see thousands of miles of such streams. They are small, often stained red with tanic acid, and run through thick woods dotted with remnant stands of red and white pine. They are also full of full. Most with have pike, lots of small pike. There will be a few walleyes, maybe some catfish. If you are really lucky they will have a good number of smallmouth bass. The rivers are everywhere. Explore them. You'll have them to yourself.