Brule River Fishing

[Odonata]

Did well last Sat. before the rain. Was hoping to fish after dark, but the storm rolled in. Caught a few resident browns. River was its usual gin clear but had decent flow. Am going tonight, hoping to fish beyond 8 PM

[Jarrid Houston]

St. Louis forum in the Duluth section will give you some info about the river, but I can tell you it has been really slow the last couple weeks

[BigHitter]

McNeil's is a real place on the Brule. Should be listed on the map available through the Brule River Sportsman's Club. Don't believe what you hear about water levels, flow rates etc. It's September, cohos and steelhead are entering the Brule right now. A drunk at Jack and Edna's Bar (Hungry Trout now) once described the Brule as a highway for the fish. He was right. You still have to work to catch them though...

[Chad Holst]

P.P> i cleaned out my messages, you should be able to PM me now.

BigHitter, we were joking around... yes there is a place called McNeil. Just being silly.

I see there is rain falling now...thats good. Wouldnt mind if they got about 3-4-5-6 more inches over the next 10 days, get the flow really going.

[Chad Holst]

I picked up a good assortment of Flat fish today. What size are people using? i didnt realize how small and large they are. The ones i got are 1 1/2 inches (F4) upto 2 3/4? or so. red, red/white, green/frog, yellow/red dot..and a couple old ones that are black/white (minnow?) and orange.

I also picked up a few jitterbugs. most people are saying use black... i see the black ones have spots, and the ones i got are used and not black...so i am going to paint them myself...Any suggestions on the paint color? Solid black or would you throw some color in? Since im painting them anyway.. figured id ask.

Finally, Im going to be lining one of my fly reels for the flatfish/ike's What would you guys suggest for line? I have seen oniline posts about using fireline and then a XXlb "leader" of mono for the last...10-20-30 feet... Should i just go all mono? use the fireline? use my regular backing and flyline and then add mono to it? Use a heavy fly leader and full flyline set up?

[Poacher's pariah]

Personally, if you're looking to do some drifting with a flyreel, I'd avoid the super-lines. They tend to be really limp and wrap/tangle up the tip of your rod. I lost the tip of a favorite rod years ago when I tried spiderwire. The tip tangled and I hooked a fish. Good bye tip! I use a 10-12lb hi visibility main line with 6lb fluorocarbon leader. If you're winding a spinning reel, that's a different scenario where a superline might help a newbie detect more bites.

[Odonata]

It really depends on how much time you will spend fishing with the flatfish and or switching between setups or spools. If you're spooled with fly line I would just go with 6 to 8 pound mono directly tied to the fly line and or leader off your fly line. If you respool with mono, leave your backing to make up much of the gap on the reel and spool up with 6 to 8 pound mono. Whatever you end up doing, depends on how often you want to switch rigs. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to decide which method you prefer to fish: fly cast, swing/drift rigs, or casting gear.

[Chad Holst]

Which method i prefer? I prefer only one method...the one that is catching fish Seriously, i dont mind pitching spinners, ducking flatfish, floating a rig...anymore than the next. Truth be told i would rather catch them all on a regular fly set-up...but we dont get to do a trip like this very often, and even though i want to catch steelies on a fly, i want to be able to catch some fish on anything if the fly bite isnt happening for us.

I have the gear, so bringing several set-ups isnt an issue. I just want to make sure i have the right thing going on between my ears when i set these reels up.

So far the plan is 3 reels, to switch out as needed. 1 just for flies. One with fly line 9wf with floro 10 pound limp 50 yards for rigging and one with all braid and then 50 yards of 10 lb mono for tossing flatfish, "diggers" or for jitterbugs at night, etc.

Then our spinning rods for throwing spinners, etc..

[Odonata]

Catching was good today, all fish on bead-head X legs, mostly residents, but a few nice lake browns. Missed two nice fish in a deep hole.

[Chad Holst]

Any steelies?

[Slabasaurus]

It's that time of year again... sundays and mondays and thursdays spent in front of the TV, watchin football and preppin for the fall steelhead season.

Here are a few things I've been workin on.

X-leg PT Nymph (Tungsten Bead Head and a lead free wrapped thorax)

X-Legs and Pat's Rubber Legs

Bad pic of an egg sucking leech tube fly

Tonight and Thursday I'll be tyin up some more flies, and figuring out the plan for my first weekend up there...

I'll post up some reports here and/or in the fly section in the next month or so.

[Odonata]

Nice tying Slab....Great flys, love those patterns. SirLips - I did not catch any, but heard of one other guy catching one. They are there, but numbers are not high yet. IMO. Lots of lake run browns in the deep pools, missed two slobs.

[BigHitter]

I went up to the Brule for the day on Saturday with Rocco Beware, a 100% Finn who's parents were born in Brule where he still has uncles, aunts and cousins. We worked the whole river from the Pine Tree Canoe Landing north to the Horseshoe. Rocco got a small brown on a spinner. I lost a small fish on a spinner. I used spinning equipment and threw spinners and Flatfish. Didn't find anyone who caught any steelhead or cohos. Did manage to fall into the river for at least the 6th time in 35 years. A branch gave way... Anyway, I love using spinning equipment in the Fall because the fish hammer the lures. Next time I'll bring my fly fishing gear as a backup. I did talk to a couple of fly fishermen who landed a few browns in the 14 to 18 inch range. The river is higher and darker than the previous two years which is good.

[Chad Holst]

It's 5:30AM. We have been on the road about for about an hour. Not a lot of sleep happened last night. To excited for the trip and worried about forgetting something. We will be sure to put the go pro to wok so we can show videos. I'll try and send updates of the fishing if we have service.

The plan is to make Duluth by 9:30. Hit up the local fly shops and the marine store and then swing by the falls on 2 for some pictures for the Stevens outdoors site. Camp set up by 1:00. Wet lines by 1:01.

[Jarrid Houston]

Good luck!

[Chad Holst]

Thanks Jared. Wanted to post more but service is spotty. Sitting at jacks hungry trout on county H waiting for a pizza and having a rootbeer...minus the root. Fishing has been "ok" so far. For to the brule about 3:00 pm on Wednesday. (The plan was to be fishing sooner but set up took a bit longer as we brought half the house and all of the garage) I am from from the school that you bring it and don't need it instead of the other way around. After setting up the tajme hall we tosses home made beaded dubbing nymphs and superior x legs from superior fly. They wanted the beaded nymphs over the x legs but had some nice fish on both. I pitched egg sucking leaches, princes and a couple home tied stones. Nothing on those. I did have a nice rake on a dropper below an x leg, pink yarn fly, but missed that one.

We ended day one with a hand full steelie, 3 short brown and a very impressive 16" sucker that was tail hooked and made me shat my pants until I realized what I "didnt" have. All in all a better day than expected. Talked to 2 other guys(yah only ran into two people all day...[PoorWordUsage]? Awesome!)

Late night visitors woke us up twice. They wanted the chips but the masked bandits made off with only one forgotten bag of buns before we chased them off. One was not as shy as the rest and had to be shoo off the biggest a second time.

2nd day was the a carbon of the first, except on a spinning rod. A nice handful of steelie and a few browns. When we switched from spinners to worms we did the same plus 3-4 suckers between each target fish. I used a walleye hook with a float 1 inch above it and a green bead, held down by a slinky. My partner used a plain hook and 2 good sized shot stuck above a swivel 18" inches up. Both had action but his took 2 more steelies.

All steelies were within 2 inches of 21. No big browns. No Brookies yet.

I don't know the hole names so ill say location in terms of "parking spots". Started at the second closest from the lake ( on east side of brule) and fished the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th. Best was from the forth. Down stream from the trail is a horseshoe) we did great both days in the big bend at the tail of the horseshoe.

Pizza is here... Be sure to buy some jam from Beth at the hungry trout...omg her pepper jams are crazy good! Pineapple pepper... That's some good shat right there.

Ill try to add pictures after pizza.

[Odonata]

Can't wait to see pics! Finish yer pizza and post:). Will only be fishing pinks this weekend. From the sounds of it, all steelhead were lower than 13?

[Chad Holst]

Sorry, not enough service to load pics, local bar has wifi will post them later.

The steelies were all lower than 13 yes. All off of the brule road parking spots. However we have not fished anywhere else. Talked to dave at dnr just now and he said guys are getting salmon upriver farther. Gonna try for some of them today.

Late start this AM... The rootBEER was stronger than I thought and "flavored" cokes too...

[Chad Holst]

Few pictures of aaron with some steelies and one of mine second from bottom.

Not sure if these pictures worked or are the wrong size...

[BRULEWADER]

4th pic is a coho

[Odonata]

Nice work SirLips, i'll be down there tomorrow, if you want to compare notes look for a silver Toyota tundra. Great to see you have success.

[Chad Holst]

Hmm....are you sure about the coho? They all had white mouths. Thought coho has a black mouth? We really want fish to eat and take home but none of the steelies went 26 and don't think we had any salmon.

Got more [PoorWordUsage] today all shorter than yesterday. Fished from 13 just south and the north to cooper ridge. My feet are soar and legs are shot but its been worth it. All fish today were on spinners. Copper and brass colors. None on the fly and none on bait in the big holes.

I think we may try upper brule on say and night fish for some browns if webcam find the place to put in right at big lake. Superior fly worker said there is a spot right on the lake that people use. Haven't used the canoe yet so we better get it wet.

[Odonata]

Catching browns and steelhead today?

[Jared Grangroth]

Hard to tell but all of them look like cohos. Tail is almost too forked to be a steelhead and the no spots on the tail or any sign of pink on the cheek.

[BRULEWADER]

4th pic coho for sure. Spots only on upper half of the tail and you can see she is full of roe. But when in doubt you did the right thing.